by STAFF WRITER

ST. JOHN’S, An­tigua, Jan 19, CMC – Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne led his rul­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Labour Par­ty (ABLP) to a nail-bit­ing vic­to­ry in Wednes­day’s gen­er­al elec­tion, win­ning nine of the 17 seats for a third con­sec­u­tive term in of­fice, ac­cord­ing to the pre­lim­i­nary re­sults re­leased here ear­ly Thurs­day morn­ing.

The par­ty had won 15 of the 17 seats in the 2018 gen­er­al elec­tion.

“You know I have al­ways said to peo­ple, you must al­ways give thanks, no mat­ter how small the bless­ing and I see this de­ci­sion as a bless­ing up­on the peo­ple of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da,” Prime Min­is­ter Browne told sup­port­ers.

He said the re­sults will give the ABLP gov­ern­ment the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re-align “and al­so cre­ate the op­por­tu­ni­ty for fresh tal­ent.

“Truth be told, when­ev­er you try to re­move in­cum­bents it is very dif­fi­cult. So when you re­move in­cum­bents then it cre­ates the space you could bring in new tal­ent to the or­gan­i­sa­tion, to the gov­ern­ment.

“So we do not see this as a bad thing per say, we see it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty at the same time. How­ev­er, I want to thank those of my col­leagues who would have served this coun­try well over the last eight and a half years and of course we will con­tin­ue to stand by them, so we will not leave them out in the cold,” Browne told sup­port­ers.

Prime Min­is­ter Browne, who be­came the first gov­ern­ment leader here to win three con­sec­u­tive gen­er­al elec­tions, head­ed the vic­to­ri­ous ABLP can­di­dates, as the main op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Pro­gres­sive Par­ty (UPP) won five ad­di­tion­al seats as com­pared to the soli­tary seat it had gained in the 2018 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Browne polled 1, 295 votes as against 621 for Al­is­ter Thomas of the UPP and Jamel Knight of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Na­tion­al Al­liance (DNA) to win the St. John’s City West seat.

“I want to thank you all very much …I say thank you sin­cere­ly from the bot­tom of my heart. I feel hum­bled, again to be the first Prime Min­is­ter to get three con­sec­u­tive terms and that is a sig­nif­i­cant amount of con­fi­dence and trust which I shall con­tin­ue to ho­n­our,” Browne told sup­port­ers, adding that he would be sworn in­to of­fice lat­er on Thurs­day morn­ing at 10.30 (lo­cal time) and the cab­i­net named on Fri­day.

Browne said he would have sig­nalled to his par­ty that it need­ed fresh legs and new tal­ent.

“Truth be told af­ter two terms some min­is­ters be­come lethar­gic. They do not have the will to fight,” he said, adding that some of “our col­leagues did not have the en­er­gy to mo­bilise, you could have seen it at our events, it is some­thing the lead­er­ship dis­cussed…

The De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Na­tion­al Al­liance (DNA) failed to make any im­pact in the elec­tion with its leader, Joanne Mas­si­ah polling on­ly 22 votes.

UPP leader Harold Lovell, failed to win the City East seat for a third con­sec­u­tive time as In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Melford Nicholas held on to win by six votes..

Pre­lim­i­nary fig­ures re­leased by the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Elec­toral Com­mis­sion (ABEC) showed that Nicholas, who has de­feat­ed the for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter on all three oc­ca­sions, polled 791 votes while Lovell re­ceived 785. Leon Smith of the DNA got 13 votes.

In the last gen­er­al elec­tion, Lovell lost by 153 votes. He has since called for a re­count.

“If you are go­ing to lead a gov­ern­ment, you have to win your seat,” said re­gion­al po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist and poll­ster, Pe­ter Wick­ham.

On the sis­ter isle of Bar­bu­da, the Bar­bu­da Peo­ple’s Move­ment (BPM), re­tained the seat with the in­cum­bent, Trevor Walk­er, com­fort­ably win­ning against Kna­cyn­tar Nedd of the ABLP, ac­cord­ing to pre­lim­i­nary re­sults re­leased here on Tues­day.

Walk­er polled 624 votes to Nedd’s 456 votes.

Among the ca­su­al­ties of the elec­tion were Works Min­is­ter Lennox We­st­on, Saman­tha Mar­shall, the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Fish­eries and Bar­bu­da Af­fairs, Michael Browne, Min­is­ter of the Cre­ative In­dus­tries and In­no­va­tion and Dean Jonas, the Min­is­ter of So­cial Trans­for­ma­tion, Hu­man Re­source De­vel­op­ment and the Blue Econ­o­my.

Ja­maica based poll­ster, Don An­der­son, who had con­duct­ed sev­er­al opin­ion polls pri­or to the gen­er­al elec­tion, said while the UPP “will do much bet­ter than they did in 2018,” it failed to dri­ve home the is­sues dur­ing the cam­paign.

“The shift we are see­ing is a vi­tal one,” An­der­son said on a ra­dio pro­gramme here, not­ing how­ev­er that the shift was not suf­fi­cient to dri­ve the UPP home “be­cause they start­ed too far be­hind”.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Ja­male Pringle, who was the sole UPP leg­is­la­tor in the last Par­lia­ment, eas­i­ly won the All Saints East and St. Luke con­stituen­cy, de­feat­ing Col­in James by a mar­gin of 1, 799 to 1,047.

Avory Knight of the DNA polled 52.

The high­light of the elec­tion was the vic­to­ry of in­de­pen­dent can­di­date, Asot Michael, the for­mer gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tor, who had been the par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tive on four oc­ca­sions, but was had been pre­vent­ed from con­test­ing the seat on be­half of the rul­ing par­ty.

Michael had tak­en his mat­ter to the courts in a bid to get the ABLP to re­verse its de­ci­sion and had even en­ter­tained the idea of be­com­ing prime min­is­ter if none of the two ma­jor par­ties had failed to win suf­fi­cient seats to form the gov­ern­ment.

Browne told sup­port­ers that Thurs­day would not be a pub­lic hol­i­day to cel­e­brate the vic­to­ry, adding “ I want to make an ap­peal to all An­tiguans and Bar­bu­dans, es­pe­cial­ly our po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents to ac­cept the re­sults of the elec­tions.

“Let us come to­geth­er as a unit­ed na­tion that will fight to­geth­er in or­der to ad­vance this coun­try. There will be yet an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal cy­cle some time down the road…but let us cool the rhetoric go­ing for­ward, let us pri­ori­tise the ad­vance­ment of this coun­try recog­nisi9ng the chal­lenges that we are faced with, and let us not be daunt­ed by the chal­lenges,” he added.

CMC/pr/ir/2023