The Jamaican Supreme Court has ruled that, effective immediately, the removal of People’s National Party (PNP) campaign signs in the St James Municipal Corporation is to be halted.

The origins of this saga have their roots in the decision taken by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Mayor of Montego Bay, Richard Vernon, to remove all of the opposition party’s signs in his city. In April of this year, the St. James Municipal Corporation announced that until the official calling of the election, all political advertising was to be put on hold. Vernon claimed that this was because political signs took up otherwise heavily used advertising space, disrupting local businesses.

Members of Vernon’s own political party followed the mayor’s guidelines, but those in the People’s National Party did not, and went about setting up their campaign signs.

In response, the St James Municipal Corporation unilaterally took action to remove the opposition party’s posters, billboards and placards, whilst also footing the bill of their removal to the PNP members that placed them there.

With the controversy only growing, the Political Ombudsman, recently subsumed into the wider Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) requested Vernon provide legal reasoning and justification for his course of action. The mayor did so, though his lawyers argued that there was no basis for this requirement, and that their client intended to fight out the matter in court.

The People’s National Party candidates for St. James West Central, St James Central, and St. James Northwestern, (Andre Haughton, Janice Allen, and Allan Bernard respectively) filed a collective lawsuit against the parish’s municipal corporation, claiming that with the election season already upon the country, they had the right to put up their signage.

On Monday, June 6th, senior puisne judge Lorna Shelly-Williams appeared to have settled the matter, taking the side of the Opposition caretakers in her ruling. Shelly-Williams declared an injunction to be in effect, which calls for a freeze on any further actions by the St James Municipal Corporation to remove any further PNP signage or stop the posting of new ones. Haughton, Allen and Bernard have also been granted the right to Judicial Review of the St James Municipal Corporation’s actions.

Vernon’s lawyers were granted leave to appeal the ruling.