JAMAICA | The Minority Rules: Clarendon's Mayor Stops a Vote He Could Not Win

An ex parte injunction sought by May Pen's JLP mayor and deputy has frozen a no-confidence vote the PNP says it would carry 12–10. The road to removal of the governing party once mapped out has now been closed — by court order.

MAY PEN, CLARENDON, Jamaica, October 16, 2026 - Calvin G Brown | — There was a special meeting on the calendar, motions of no confidence on the agenda and, by the People's National Party's count, 12 votes waiting in a 22-seat chamber. What Clarendon did not get on Friday was a vote.

Instead, a Supreme Court order presented at the special sitting of the Clarendon Municipal Corporation barred councillors from debating or voting on the removal of May Pen Mayor Joel Williams and Deputy Mayor Clive Mundle. The application had been filed only a day earlier — by Williams and Mundle themselves — and the stay holds until November 13, when the matter returns to court.

The PNP says the order was granted ex parte: its councillors were neither notified nor represented when a judge decided their meeting could not go ahead. In a statement on Friday, the party called the outcome “profoundly anti-democratic” and said it would return to court to have the order set aside.

How the numbers moved

The arithmetic is the whole story. In the February 2024 local government elections, the Jamaica Labour Party won 12 of Clarendon's 22 divisions, even though the PNP edged the parish popular vote by 57 ballots — 28,591 to 28,534. The death of JLP councillor Marjorie McLeod-McFarlane, and the PNP's win in the Aenon Town by-election that followed in November 2024, left the council deadlocked at 11–11.

The PNP demanded the mayoralty then, citing the popular vote. The JLP refused, and the law appeared to be on its side. In February 2025, Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie said the Attorney General and Solicitor General had advised that a sitting chairman could be removed between elections only by a no-confidence motion backed by a majority of all councillors, and not sooner than 12 months after the last local poll. Mayor Williams put it more bluntly at the time:

“Once you're sworn in as the mayor, you remain the mayor.” — Mayor Joel Williams, December 2024

Then, on October 8, May Pen North councillor Tanyalee Williams — who won her division for the JLP in 2024 by 861 votes — announced she was crossing to the PNP after a public falling-out with Clarendon Central MP Delroy Williams. Eleven–eleven became twelve–ten.

The route the JLP mapped

Here lies the uncomfortable irony for the governing party. Every condition its own minister set out has now, on the PNP's account, been met. More than two and a half years have passed since the local elections. The opposition claims a majority of all councillors. And in November 2024, Mayor Williams himself said a change in control would require something extraordinary — a no-confidence vote, or a councillor crossing the floor. Clarendon has now had the crossing, and was hours from the vote.

Having pointed the PNP to the only door in the building, the mayor has asked a judge to lock it.

The case for the mayor

Fairness demands the other side be heard, and it has arguments. At the October 8 meeting the mayor ruled Tanyalee Williams' declaration inadmissible because, he said, she had not followed the council's standing orders. The JLP says it never received a formal resignation letter from her and has started the process of expelling her. Whether her switch was properly recorded, and whether Friday's sitting was properly convened, are legitimate questions for a court. An interim injunction is a lawful remedy, not a coup, and that a judge granted one suggests, at minimum, that the applicants raised an issue worth trying.

But ex parte relief exists for genuine emergencies — cases where pausing to hear the other side would cause harm that cannot be undone. The ‘harm’ averted here was a vote by elected representatives, under a procedure the governing party itself spelled out. Losing an office that the law says can be lost by majority vote is not irreparable damage. It is the system working.

There is a better precedent

Jamaica has seen this resolved with grace. When the death of a JLP councillor in St Thomas handed the PNP a majority ahead of the 2024 local polls, JLP Mayor Michael Hue resigned, making way for the PNP's Hubert Williams. The president of the Association of Local Government Authorities described it as the more efficient transition. No court. No paralysis.

Clarendon, by contrast, now faces four more weeks of limbo, layered on nearly two years of disrupted sittings, walkouts and abrupt adjournments. Roads, markets and drains do not pause for litigation. Portmore Deputy Mayor Alric Campbell, a PNP voice, framed the principle this week: the minority, he argued, cannot lead the majority in a functioning democracy.

November 13

The court will now weigh whether Tanyalee Williams' crossing stands and whether the meeting may proceed. If the PNP's 12 are real, they will still be 12 on November 13. If they are not, the hearing will expose it. Either way, this is a question that belongs in the council chamber, settled by a show of hands.

A mayor confident of his mandate lets the count happen. One who goes to court to stop it has invited Clarendon to draw its own conclusions.

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