PM Browne leads ABLP to victory in Antigua general election

Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne’s gam­ble of call­ing a gen­er­al elec­tion near­ly two years ahead of the con­sti­tu­tion­al dead­line paid off on Thurs­day, when he guid­ed his rul­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Labour Par­ty (ABLP) to a com­mand­ing vic­to­ry.

Pre­lim­i­nary re­sults show that the ABLP had won 15 of the 17 seats at stake in the elec­tion, re­vers­ing the slim vic­to­ry it had achieved in Jan­u­ary 2023, when the par­ty scraped home by a 9-7 mar­gin.

“We are hum­bled and ho­n­oured by your sup­port and con­fi­dence. Now is the time to move for­ward to­geth­er, build on our gains and con­tin­ue our work on this long jour­ney to­ward the bet­ter­ment of our so­ci­ety and the up­lift­ment of our peo­ple. From each and every one of us, THANK YOU,” Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne wrote on the of­fi­cial Face­book page of the rul­ing par­ty.

In his ad­dress to sup­port­ers, PM Browne said he was grate­ful for the con­fi­dence showed in his lead­er­ship and that of the ABLP to con­tin­ue the so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da.

“We are here to serve all the peo­ple of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da. Ed­u­ca­tion, jobs, busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties will be open to all who are pre­pared to seize them and I say to my dis­tin­guished coun­try­men and coun­try­women … when we cre­ate these op­por­tu­ni­ties for you, please seize them.”

“And I add here again that no one will be left be­hind who is will­ing to move for­ward. And notwith­stand­ing your po­lit­i­cal per­sua­sion, this is not a time for lag­gards. This is a time for all of us to per­form, to in­crease our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and to make sure that An­tigua and Bar­bu­da be­comes one of the most pro­duc­tive small is­land states glob­al­ly.”

He told sup­port­ers that the work has al­ready be­gun and that across the na­tion projects are un­der­way, trans­form­ing com­mu­ni­ties, strength­en­ing our econ­o­my and im­prov­ing lives.

“And we will build on that foun­da­tion, ad­vanc­ing new ini­tia­tives that up­lift our peo­ple, en­hance our dig­ni­ty and deep­en our pride as cit­i­zens of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da,” he stat­ed.

“And I want to say to you that we must re­main a dig­ni­fied peo­ple. We must not cow­er to any­one. We must not be timid. We must stand tall in every fo­rum, every re­gion­al, every in­ter­na­tion­al fo­rum as An­tiguans and Bar­bu­dans.”

“And as we build on the foun­da­tion and we ad­vance new ini­tia­tives that up­lift our peo­ple, we will make sure that we con­tin­ue to en­hance the dig­ni­ty of our coun­try,” PM Browne said, adding that now is not a mo­ment of tri­umph.

“So, just in case any­one ex­pect­ed me to gloat, at the end of the day, the con­test is over. From all in­di­ca­tions, the peo­ple who have sup­port­ed us to get be­tween 15 of the 17 seats, that in it­self is a re­sound­ing man­date for which we are eter­nal­ly grate­ful,” he added.

Pre­lim­i­nary fig­ures re­leased by the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Elec­toral Com­mis­sion (ABEC) show that the leader of the main op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Pro­gres­sive Par­ty (UPP), Ja­male Pringle, was the on­ly can­di­date of the par­ty to have with­stood the ABLP on­slaught.

On the sis­ter isle of Bar­bu­da, the in­cum­bent Trevor Walk­er of the Bar­bu­da Peo­ple’s Move­ment (BPM) re­tained the seat, polling 609 votes as against 398 for Kendra Beaz­er, a for­mer BPM mem­ber, who con­test­ed the poll on be­half of the ABLP.

Pringle de­feat­ed the ABLP’s An­tho­ny Smith.

“I want to thank all An­tiguans and Bar­bu­dans who have sup­port­ed the Unit­ed Pro­gres­sive Par­ty. We’re in­deed grate­ful and you will hear from us in a short time,” Pringle said, ex­tend­ing con­grat­u­la­tions to the ABLP.

He said while he is thank­ful for win­ning his seat and “we still main­tain the con­stituen­cy un­der the col­umn of the Unit­ed Pro­gres­sive Par­ty…there’s no sec­ond place in pol­i­tics.”

“Just as we did in 2018, we’ll still be stand­ing. We can’t get enough of the Unit­ed Pro­gres­sive Par­ty. We’ll still be there,” he added.

Among the oth­er de­feat­ed can­di­dates was Harold Lovell, a for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter who, fol­low­ing his de­feat in the Jan­u­ary 2023 gen­er­al elec­tion, had quit ac­tive pol­i­tics. Lovell lost to An­tho­ny Smith in the All Saints West con­stituen­cy.

Prime Min­is­ter Browne, who eas­i­ly re­tained the St. John’s City West seat he has rep­re­sent­ed since 1999, be­comes the first prime min­is­ter here to have won four con­sec­u­tive gen­er­al elec­tions.

He had called the snap gen­er­al elec­tion telling sup­port­ers that the cam­paign was a “Re­nais­sance” and vic­to­ry was nec­es­sary to con­tin­ue the progress the coun­try had been achiev­ing un­der the ABLP ad­min­is­tra­tion since 2014.

Among the oth­er vic­to­ri­ous ABLP can­di­dates is Browne’s wife, Maria, the pub­lic works min­is­ter in the last gov­ern­ment, who eas­i­ly de­feat­ed the UPP’s Ash­worth Azille in the St. John’s Rur­al East seat.

The three in­de­pen­dent can­di­dates were un­able to make any sig­nif­i­cant im­pact, all los­ing their de­posits.

Re­gion­al poll­ster Pe­ter Wick­ham said that the re­sults un­der­score the di­vi­sion with­in the op­po­si­tion par­ty not­ing that the strong show­ing in 2023, when the UPP won sev­en seats had “com­plete­ly evap­o­rat­ed.

“I am see­ing over­all a swing of more than five per cent, which will al­low the ABLP to prob­a­bly win all the seats on the main­land,” the Bar­ba­dos-based Wick­ham, who con­duct­ed opin­ion polls ahead of the gen­er­al elec­tion, told tele­vi­sion view­ers.

“The swing is con­sis­tent,” he said, adding “I am hap­py that the polling was telling us ex­act­ly what is hap­pen­ing.”

Pro­fes­sor Justin Robin­son, the Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor and Prin­ci­pal of its Five Is­lands Cam­pus here, said that the elec­tion re­sults an­swered a num­ber of con­cerns that had been con­fronting the elec­torate.

“Can I see this per­son as lead­ing my coun­try and be­ing the prime min­is­ter? And you’re al­so look­ing at can­di­dates, you know, who might be the health min­is­ter … So, peo­ple are look­ing at that,” said Robin­son, one of the mem­bers of the pan­el on the state-owned ABS Ra­dio and Tele­vi­sion.

“Now, so that seems to me said to be one of the UPP’s weak­ness­es And I think one of the chal­lenges, one of the is­sues go­ing for­ward, I think the chal­lenge is that the elec­torate has ac­tu­al­ly cho­sen a leader for them if things go to form.”

He said that among the oth­er con­tenders for lead­ing the op­po­si­tion par­ty, Pringle has emerged as the “on­ly man stand­ing to­day.”

He said that it al­so re­minds him of the re­sults in St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines “where a lot of peo­ple had ar­gued that the elec­tion re­sult was a re­jec­tion of Gon­salves, but he was the on­ly man who held the seat.”

“And one of the the­sis or ar­gu­ments tonight is that the UPP’s loss is in part a re­jec­tion of Pringle as leader. But he’s the on­ly man hold­ing his seat. So that’s an in­ter­est­ing dy­nam­ic,” Pro­fes­sor Robin­son added.

But Wick­ham be­lieves that Pringle should step down even though he may be the lone UPP can­di­date to have won a seat in the elec­tion.

“My sense now is that I don’t be­lieve that he will lead the UPP for much longer,” he said. “I think that they will re­vert to a sit­u­a­tion where they have ex­tra par­lia­men­tary lead­er­ship. I mean, I think if they’re wise, they will do that.”

“And if he is wise, he will es­sen­tial­ly give them the op­por­tu­ni­ty for do­ing that, be­cause I do agree that it ap­pears as though the elec­torate has said they put their con­fi­dence in him. But the re­al­i­ty is that he had the strongest seat. So that’s the rea­son why he’s the last man stand­ing,” he not­ed.

“It’s the same thing for Gon­salves. He had the strongest seat. And the same thing for Alan Chas­tanet (in St. Lu­cia). He al­so had the strongest seat, and that’s the rea­son why when all of the swing goes, he is the one that’s most able to re­sist the swing.”

“But that doesn’t have a lot to do with lead­er­ship. In many in­stances, it has a lot to do with con­stituen­cy strength that you were able to main­tain over time. But I think that you have to have the ma­tu­ri­ty as a leader to un­der­stand that this does not mean that you are the best per­son,” Wick­ham added. —ST. JOHN’S, An­tigua (CMC)