Chamber:
	House of Representatives
Dates of elections / renewal (from/to):
	30 March 1993
Purpose of elections:
	Early elections were held for all seats in the House of Representatives 11 months before they were constitutionally due. General elections had previously taken place in February 1989.
Background and outcome of elections:
	Incumbent Prime Minister Percival Patterson announced on 10 March 1993 that early general elections would be held on 30 March. He had succeeded Prime Minister Michael Manley in 1992 when the latter had resigned for health reasons. The two main contenders were Mr. Patterson’s social-democratic People’s National Party (PNP) and former Prime Minister Edward Seaga’s conservative Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). The three-week campaign was marred by violence, which left at least 10 people including an election supervisor, dead. The PNP government had just granted significant salary increases to teachers and the police. It advocated free-market policies and stated its intention to privatize State-owned corporations and deregulate the foreign exchange market. In addition, it promised to pay attention to the problems of the public transport sector. As for the JLP, it accused Mr. Patterson of racist overtones in his campaign and denounced the scandals that had plagued the PNP’s management of the country. Polling was fraught with violent incidents in spite of an undertaking by candidates of both parties to restrain their supporters. Voting operations had to be suspended in at least one constituency (Kingston, the capital) as a result of this violence. Voter turnout was about 60%, the lowest rate in Jamaica’s post-independence history. This relatively high abstention rate was widely attributed to voter apathy because of the similarity between the two parties programmes and the habit of giving each party two terms in office. On election day, the PNP won a landslide victory (the largest in Jamaica’s history of free elections), with a total of 51 seats. Mr. Seaga denounced the results, alleging fraud and irregularities and announced that the JLP would boycott Parliament until an enquiry was conducted into these allegations and reforms carried out in the security services and electoral sector. Prime Minister Patterson subsequently formed a new 16-member Cabinet, retaining most of the previous Ministers.

STATISTICS

Round no 1: Distribution of seats
Political Group	Total	Gain/Loss
People’s National Party (PNP)	51	+6
Jamaica Labour Party (JLP)	8	-7

Comments:
	Plus one undecided seat.

Distribution of seats according to sex:
Men:	53
Women:	7