Jamaica Elections 2025: Final debate between Holness & Golding slated for Aug 28 ahead of Sept 3 polls

Jamaica: Election Season is in full swing in Jamaica as the two national league parties headed by Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness of Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and Mark Jefferson Golding, Leader of the Opposition of Jamaica and President of the People's National Party (PNP), are set to go head in head in a national debate set to be held on August 28 2025. 

The announcement was made on the Tuesday of August 19 by the Jamaica Debates Commission (JDC). 

Brian Schmidt, JDC chairman stated that for the first time in the history of its 23-years of hosting debates, this year's debate is set to be a group format debate organized by the Commission ahead of the September 3 general election. 

According to the JDC the debate is set to be held on August  23, August 26 and on August 28, finishing only days before the set election day. 

The debate schedule by the JDC is as follows. 

The first Debate scheduled to be taking place on Saturday, August 23, with candidates of both JLP and PNP set to face off as they debate on topics related to social issues. 

The PNP party  is set to be represented by Damion Crawford, Raymond Pryce and Sophia Fraser-Binns, whilst the JLP team is set to include Government Ministers such as  Pearnel Charles Jr, Kamina Johnson-Smith and Matthew Samuda. 

The second debate set to take place on August 26, is said to be a debate on economy, representing the JLP will be Finance Minister Fayval Williams, Dana Morris Dixon and Health Minister, Dr Christopher Tufton. Whilst on the PNP side are Julian Robinson, Peter Bunting and Kisha Anderson. 

The JDC further announced a change in the format of the debates, stating that the debate opening statements will be abandoned in order to favour more questions from the panellists.

The Jamaica Debates Commission have also confirmed that this year’s first as well as second debates will be moderated by Janella Precius, and George Davis while the questions will be posed by Romardo Lyons, Natalie Campbell and Dashan Hendricks along with Andrea Chisholm.

Whilst Archibald Gordon is set to moderate the final leadership debate with questions coming from Dionne Jackson Miller, Giovanni Dennis and various social media platforms. 

PNP threatens to Boycott debate 

Prior to the JDP national debate announcement, the PNP party had long expressed their discontentment with certain journalists from the Nationwide (NNN) channel. According to sources the party expressed that they will not be showing up to the entire election debate if any  of the NNN Tv and Radio journalists are present at the function. 

The party expressed that their presence ‘will be a deal breaker for them’ as multiple journalists of the channel are known to usually attack the party. 

The JDC have not responded to the requests nor have they addressed the PNP requests although they did state that they will be making their final decision on which journalists will be selected to  ask questions or be moderators soon.