‘Election Day a fi mi Christmas’ - Downtown vendor ready for a PNP celebration

On Orange Street, Kingston, where campaign trucks and sound systems jostle for space with vendors, Sylvia Bryan's voice rose above the noise.

Carefree and stylish with her freshly dyed, ginger-orange hair and her stall neatly packed away, the 63-year-old swayed and sang: " Mi nah sell nothing tomorrow ... a Christmus fi mi."

For Bryan, Election Day is more than voting. It is celebration, tradition, and music. Her anthem of choice is Blood and Fire Comrade, the fiery chant now trending on TikTok and X. She links it to the Michael Manley and PJ Patterson years of leading the People's National Party (PNP), recalling political meetings with her parents.

"A from me a pickney eno," she added, before breaking into song.

Her performance carried special weight on Orange Street. Blood and Fire Comrade emerged in the the 80's drawing on church-style rhythms and rally cries, branding PNP members as "comrades" united in struggle. Like Better Must Come and other anthems of the time, it was more than a song, it was a tool of mobilisation during some of Jamaica's fiercest political rivalries. Bryan remembers singing Blood and Fire Comrade near Parliament doors during debates over the Causeway bridge. This week, when she sang on Orange Street, passers-by raised clenched fists in salute.

"Well them put in some other things inna it now and nice it up likkle nicer. Mi love how dem mix it," she told THE STAR. "Mi know them good, and yuh have plenty young girl cya do that."

Politics, she said, is family inheritance.

"Mi mother and mi father a PNP and we always a go meeting," said Bryan. This year she plans to head to the polls early today, in a short skirt and a T-shirt which will sport the face of either PNP President Mark Golding or veteran Member of Parliament for Kingston Eastern and Port Royal Phillip Paulwell.

"Mi plan fi dance dung the place. Mi a go out 'bout 8 o'clock fi vote," she said.

Her joy is matched by resilience. At 22, she was shot in Rose Lane while attending a birthday party.

"It wasn't election time," she recalled. "Some man come a the corner and me stand up after the police drive out eno. Dem (gunmen) just stand up a the corner a fire shot down the road."

Even after surviving that, Bryan insisted that her loyalty never wavered.

"Lawd, issa joy ... it's gonna be a joy and happiness," she declared ahead of today's polls.