Farmers and candidates raised hell during much of the day's proceedings, forcing director of the elections, Noel Lee, to - in at least one instance - alter the rules to ease the rather cumbersome two-tier election process shortly before it started late in the afternoon.

A decision had to be taken to allow both campaign teams to elect two persons to observe the process of voting in the booths after delegates and candidates raised concern about how people who would have difficulty reading and writing the names of the candidates would be treated.

Following the start of voting, another quarrel developed as observers supporting Rickards' 'Team for Change' demanded that a man supporting Harris' campaign, who tried to make himself a third observer, leave the polling booth.

People shouted and fingers were pointed in faces, including in the face of the director of elections himself, as he tried to intervene.

Those protests only grew louder when vice-presidential candidate Norman Grant also tried to intervene.

Dispute over counting

The whole incident delayed voting for about 15 minutes.

After the presidential ballots were cast, yet another quarrel developed, as both teams insisted that the presidential votes should not be counted as planned until the votes for the vice-presidential nominees were complete, as they believed the results could influence the pattern of voting in the vice-presidential race.

People had to be chased away continually from the counting centre, which was also placed in the open pavilion just a few feet from the booths where voters were still casting their ballots.

Eventually, a barricade had to be put up to keep pesky voters from disturbing the counters, but that proved ineffective.

At the end, preliminary counts showed Harris the winner of the presidential race by a thin majority. He claimed 210 votes to Rickards' 205. There were nine spoiled ballots.

Harris will work with campaign supporters Norman Grant, who defeated Bob Miller by 39 votes to be elected first vice-president, and Glen Cruickshank, who received a vote majority of 15 over Maria Azan to become second vice-president.

Rickards has demanded a recount.

The votes will be recounted at 10 o'clock Monday morning and the winners will be then officially declared.

gareth.manning@gleanerjm.com