The JLP won 11 of the 12 Parish Councils plus the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC). Given that it controlled none of the councils going into the elections, the JLP's victory is a dramatic turn of the political tables. In the last local government poll, in September 1998, the PNP took all 12 councils and the KSAC.
JLP leader Edward Seaga was keen to portray the success as 'the beginning of the end' of the PNP's 14-year political dominance in Jamaica. He faced considerable pressure to step down and make way for new blood after presiding over seven consecutive defeats in general and local government elections.
The result was more a rejection of the PNP than an endorsement of the JLP. There has been a groundswell of discontent since Prime Minister P J Patterson won his fourth term in October, with voters feeling duped over the economy. The JLP gained much political capital from finance minister Omar Davies's confession earlier this year that the government made errors in its handling of the economy that had led to a widening of the fiscal deficit. This prompted rating agencies to downgrade their outlooks on Jamaican debt. The JLP accused the PNP of misleading the public by campaigning on a platform of sound economic management in the general elections.
It is only the second time since Jamaica's independence in 1962 that a governing party has lost the local government elections.
The president of Puerto Rico's pro-statehood Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP), Carlos Pesquera, has officially presented his candidacy for the governorship of the island in 2004.
Pesquera will stand against former governor Pedro Rosselló González in November's PNP primary elections. Rosselló retired from politics two years ago after having governed Puerto Rico between 1992 and 2000, when Sila Calderón of the Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) came to power.
'As governor I will work unstintingly to escape from our colonial heritage and will promote and advance a plebiscite (to determine the island's status),' Pesquera said. 'We have been partners for too long, we need to become brothers to complete the union that this people wants with the United States', he said.
Roselló is also seeking re-election on a pro-statehood ticket. Puerto Ricans are not especially attracted to either option, preferring instead the status quo - an estado libre asociado, or Commonwealth. PNP members are concerned that a bitter campaign between the two party strongmen might undermine the PNP's challenge to the ruling PPD next year.
The Prime Minister of Antigua & Barbuda, Lester Bird, briefly lost his parliamentary majority after a backbench revolt last month and was forced to call elections for October after an emergency cabinet meeting and a consultation with Governor-General Sir James Carlisle.
Four members of the ruling Antigua Labour Party (ALP) - Sherfield Bowen, Hilroy Humphreys, Bernard Percival and Langford Jeremy - resigned, leaving the ALP with only 8 out of 17 seats in the House. Bowen, also the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, filed a no-confidence motion in Bird last May on the grounds that he was mismanaging the affairs of the island and had lost 'public confidence in the integrity of the Prime Minister'.
The other three rebels expressed similar views in their resignation letters. However, to restore his majority, Bird managed to coax Jeremy back into the fold by promising him a ministerial portfolio in a reshuffled cabinet. He was appointed Minister of Information, Home Affairs and Youth Empowerment.
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