JAMAICA | How Jamaica's Constituted Authority Shut Down Buchanan's Challenge to Holness' Victory

By WiredJa Caribbean Correspondent

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica October 2, 2025 -  Fourteen days to gather sworn affidavits. Eight witnesses willing to risk political retribution. Multiple reports of ballot box irregularities, voter intimidation, and a polling station invasion. Yet it took Jamaica's Constituted Authority just six pages to dismiss every single allegation that Paul Buchanan raised about his September 3, 2025 electoral defeat to Prime Minister Andrew Holness in St. Andrew West Central.

The September 30 ruling reads less like a judicial assessment and more like a masterclass in bureaucratic deflection—a document that reveals how Jamaica's electoral challenge system may be designed not to protect democracy, but to insulate those in power from serious scrutiny.

The Allegations Section

The complaints Buchanan assembled paint a disturbing picture of election day chaos across at least ten polling stations. 

Marsha Powell swore she witnessed a presiding officer placing a supposedly spoiled ballot directly into the ballot box before issuing a replacement—a fundamental breach of electoral protocol. She described men invading polling station 51 while ballots and an open ballot box sat unattended.

Avia Myles testified that a presiding officer repeatedly went behind voting booths with voters "to show them what to do"—a violation of the sacred principle of secret balloting. 

Everton Sands alleged that legitimate registered voters were turned away because their names mysteriously didn't appear on voter lists, despite their registration.

Perhaps most intriguingly, Gary Francis presented data analysis suggesting systematic voter suppression, noting suspicious deviations from historical voting patterns in specific electoral divisions. 

The crowds, the delays, the intimidation—multiple witnesses described an atmosphere designed to discourage voting in areas presumably unfavorable to the incumbent.

The Authority's Surgical Dismantling

But here's where the story takes its most cynical turn. The Constituted Authority didn't dispute that these events occurred. Instead, they deployed a more insidious strategy: death by a thousand qualifications.

The Authority's response to Powell's explosive allegation about the ballot box invasion? They noted she hadn't specified what improprieties occurred with the unattended ballots—as if the mere fact of armed men storming a polling station while ballots sat exposed wasn't impropriety enough. 

When Powell reported the presiding officer's irregular handling of a spoiled ballot, the Authority faulted her for not stating whether the officer "made any note in her log about the event." The message is clear: unless you're a trained election monitor with perfect recall and access to official logs, your testimony is worthless.

Most revealing was their treatment of the intimidation claims. The Authority made much of the fact that "not one deponent has asserted that he or she did not vote because of the prevailing conditions." 

This is jurisprudential gaslighting at its finest. How exactly would Buchanan produce witnesses who didn't vote? Should he have stationed representatives outside polling stations to interview the intimidated citizens who fled? The very people most affected by voter suppression are, by definition, absent from the voter rolls.

The Authority dismissed Francis's statistical analysis with a single line—"not helpful"—offering no explanation of why documented deviations from voting patterns warranted no investigation.

The Systemic Trap

The real scandal isn't just this particular decision; it's the system that produced it. Section 52A(3) of the Representation of the People Act gives candidates exactly fourteen days after an election to compile "evidence by affidavit" sufficient to trigger a formal investigation. 

Fourteen days to investigate irregularities across multiple polling stations, find witnesses willing to swear statements against government officials, and meet evidentiary standards that would challenge seasoned prosecutors.

The Authority itself acknowledged that "police were not able to assist in the limited time available." Think about that admission: even law enforcement couldn't investigate these serious allegations within the statutory timeframe, yet a defeated candidate with limited resources was expected to build a court-ready case.

The Blake v Holness Standard—A Poisoned Precedent

The Authority leaned heavily on the Blake v Holness precedent, which requires proof that irregularities caused "substantial distortion or subversion of the process of free and fair election." But they've weaponized this standard into an almost impossible threshold. 

How substantial must distortion be? If armed men invading a polling station while ballot boxes sit unguarded doesn't qualify, what does? If presiding officers entering voting booths with electors doesn't meet the bar, where is it set?

The Authority's interpretation creates a perverse incentive: as long as electoral misconduct is widespread enough to prevent proper documentation, or subtle enough to leave room for inference, it's effectively unpunishable. 

They've constructed a legal framework where only the most incompetent electoral fraud could ever be proven—and competent fraud, by definition, wouldn't leave such obvious tracks.

The Democracy Implications

What message does this send to future election challengers? Simply put: don't bother. Unless you have video evidence, multiple corroborating witnesses for every incident, access to official logs, and perhaps a signed confession from the perpetrators, save your time. 

The Constituted Authority has effectively announced that the evidentiary bar for challenging an election—especially one won by a sitting Prime Minister—is so high that it exists in name only.

This isn't just about Buchanan versus Holness. It's about whether Jamaica's democratic institutions serve their stated purpose or merely provide a veneer of accountability while protecting incumbents from genuine challenge. 

When the Authority dismisses invasion of a polling station because the witness didn't specify exactly what happened to unattended ballots, they're not upholding electoral integrity—they're providing a roadmap for future misconduct. 

Just ensure your irregularities are numerous enough to overwhelm documentation, your intimidation subtle enough to avoid specifics, and your violations complex enough to muddy the waters.

The Unanswered Questions

The Authority's letter ends with a chilling courtesy: "You, no doubt, know of the options available to you." What options? Buchanan could theoretically pursue a private petition, but without the Authority's backing and resources, it's a fool's errand. 

The same fourteen-day deadline applies, the same impossible evidentiary standards remain, and now he'd face the government's legal machinery alone.

Justice Ferdinand Smith and his colleagues on the Constituted Authority had an opportunity to demonstrate that Jamaica's electoral system takes allegations of irregularities seriously enough to investigate them properly. 

Instead, they've shown that the system is working exactly as designed—not to protect democracy, but to provide plausible deniability for its erosion.

The true verdict here isn't about whether irregularities occurred in St. Andrew West Central. It's that Jamaica's electoral challenge system is structured to ensure we'll never really know. 

In a democracy, that's not a bug—it's a feature. And for those in power, it's a feature worth protecting at all costs.

When institutions tasked with safeguarding democracy instead become its gatekeepers, deciding which challenges deserve hearing based on impossibly technical standards, we must ask: who watches the watchmen? In Jamaica's case, the answer appears to be no one at all.

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