Police maintained a strong presence yesterday in Southside, a part of central Kingston, which had been unsettled by sporadic violence over the last several days. - Rudolph Brown/Staff Photographer

THE POLLS will open at 8 a.m. today for nearly 20,000 members of the security forces and election day workers who are eligible to cast their ballots.

Roughly 12,000 are Election Day workers, just under 6,000 are members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, the remainder being members of the Jamaica Defence Force.

Voting today will free them for their duties on election day.

The rest of the population will vote next Wednesday, October 16, the 14th time parliamentary elections are being held in Jamaica since Universal Adult Suffrage in 1944.

"We are all prepared. We expect the day to run smoothly," Danville Walker, Director of Elections, said yesterday at a press briefing at the Election Centre, Hope Road, St. Andrew.

Soldiers will cast their ballots at six locations, including JDF Headquarters, Up-Park Camp, Camp Road, Kingston, and the training bases at Newcastle, St. Andrew, and Moneague, St. Ann.

Police will vote at 21 locations islandwide, including Elletson Road, the Central Police Station and Mobile Reserve in the Corporate Area and police stations in St. Ann's Bay and Montego Bay. Election Day workers, for the most part, will cast their ballots at designated constituency offices throughout the island.

Electoral officials in the County of Cornwall have declared complete readiness for today's voting and are predicting that it will flow smoothly.

Sharing the sentiments of her counterparts in St. Elizabeth, Hanover, St. James and Trelawny, a confident Violet Tennant, the Returning Officer for Westmoreland Central, told The Gleaner yesterday that everything was in place.

"We are ready, everything is in place in terms of location, ballot papers and boxes," said Mrs. Tennant.

In St. James, where Election Day workers will vote at five designated locations, the members of the security forces will vote at the Police Divisional Headquarters at Freeport, Montego Bay, under the supervision of Hugh Miller, the Returning Officer for St. James North West.

Yesterday, Mr. Walker pointed to a joint statement from the People's National Party, the Jamaica Labour Party and Bishop Herro Blair, the Political Ombudsman, which spoke to the two major parties committing themselves to removing violence from the remainder of the campaign and from election day.

The issuing of the joint statement followed a meeting of representatives of the two parties, their legal advisers and the Political Ombudsman on Tuesday. The meeting discussed the campaign since Nomination Day, particularly the recent increase in incidents of violence. Also, it discussed the need for candidates and party supporters to show their commitment to peaceful elections by appearing together in public and by prayer over the next few days.

"Both parties agreed to take fresh steps to promote peace actively by positive public acts, undertaken where possible," the statement said.

These would take the form of both candidates in each constituency attending church services this weekend to pray for peace, together if possible.

"They would also contact the Ministers' Fraternal in their constituencies over the next few days, to arrange a public peace gathering attended by both candidates before the elections," the statement added.

Bishop Blair said: "I trust that the candidates take this opportunity to show that, whatever their political differences, they all share with the vast majority of the Jamaican people, a desire for elections to take place in an atmosphere of peace and mutual respect".

Also he called on Jamaicans to come together in their places of worship this weekend to pray for peace and for free and fair elections