AFTER A campaign geared mostly to national issues, Local Government elections are back on track after two postponements since the last such voting on September 10, 1998.

A total of 226 polling divisions in the 14 parishes will be contested by 494 candidates presumably seeking to bring a new vision to local concerns, inadequately served in the four-year interregnum.

But judging from the focus of the campaigning since Nomination Day on May 30 both PNP and JLP have been concerned with the major issues of national concern. In effect, the JLP speakers on the hustings have challenged the government's performance and the PNP speakers have sought to defend it.

In effect, both major parties have fashioned a referendum of sorts some eight months after last October's General Election. The intermittent references to purely parochial concerns would have enlivened the rural contests. This may have accounted for some of the incidents of actual party clashes in St. James and St. Thomas and once again invoked the intervention of the Political Ombudsman Bishop Herro Blair as peacemaker.

The significance of such incidents, even in a low-key Local Government election, is that the leadership of the parties still cannot restrain the temper of activists at an acceptable level of civility.

Even with the national-issue flavour of these local elections, the newest elements involve the Portmore Muncipality of 11 polling divisions directly electing a mayor ­ a first in our Local Government history and presumably a pointer to further reform.

The greatest interest, however, will be in whether the ruling PNP can retain its control of all the Parish Councils and the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation. The extent to which the JLP challenge succeeds in this particular contest will define the balance of political power at the level of Local Government.

* THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.