Candidates nominated to contest Dec. 29 General Election

With less than three weeks to go before the country heads to the polls , 150 candidates are now ready to contest the election following Nomination Day activities on Monday.
With no official report of violent incidents, the governing Jamaica Labour party (JLP) and the opposition People's National Party (PNP) each nominated 63 candidates.
The National Democratic Movement (NDM) , the party that was founded by former leader of the JLP, Bruce Golding in 1995, formed an alliance with the Marcus Garvey People's Progressive Party (MGPPP) and nominated 17 candidates.Six independent candidates also threw their hats in the ring.
While the Jamaica Alliance Movement (JAM), fielded one candidate - Ras Astor Black.
Across the island there was a carnival like atmosphere as supporters - mainly from the two main political parties flooded the streets in the party colours, with green representing the JLP and orange and red being the colours of the PNP.
In one constituency , the constituency of East rural St Andrew, the presiding officers were caught off guard with the nomination of two persons with the same name. On Monday morning the PNP's Damion O. Crawford was nominated , however minutes later to the surprise of officials of the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ), another man came to be nominated with Identification card in hand that said he too was Damion O. Crawford.
The independent candidate, Damion Crawford, was duly nominated and provisions will be made for a symbol to be assigned to his name for the general election.
The EOJ's Returning Officer, Eric Malcolm, said he had never seen such an occurrence before and said voters will have to be careful on election day.
"I have never seen two people with identical names, including middle names, coming to (be) nominated at my centre over the years. It doesn’t impact the process ... we’ll just have to differentiate through the different symbols and we ill used the middle names separately and the voters will have to choose when the time comes," he said.
Meanwhile, Director of Elections, Orrette Fisher who will be presiding over his first poll since his appointment, the Nomination Day activities were event free.
"I am a hundred per cent satisfied with the work that was put in by the staff and the results that we got……I would like to go on record as congratulating all the returning officers and other members of the filed staff because my reports were that persons were treated very courteously and that persons felt they were treated with due respect, irrespective of whatever party they were from." he said.
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