By Robert Andre Emmanuel
The position for the Antigua Barbuda Labour Party (ABLP) caretaker for All Saints West remains vacant as party sources confirm that the two recent polls to determine a winner have proven to be futile.
On March 15, Lamin Newton, Regis Burton and Arry Simon stood to become their party’s representative for the constituency—currently represented in Parliament by United Progressive Party’s (UPP’s) Anthony Smith Jr.
Newton, who himself served as the constituency’s caretaker for the UPP, received 157 votes while Burton amassed 142 votes, while Simon garned 60 votes.
However, this was not sufficient to completely clinch the caretaker position for Newton as a primary agreement signed by all three candidates said that if none of them was able to receive more than 50 percent of the overall vote, then the primary would enter a run-off between the top two.
This led to the ABLP Executive convening a meeting to determine the next steps as Newton’s main challenger, Burton, had raised concerns about the results of the primary and demanded that the agreement be adhered to.
To date, Newton has not publicly commented on the issue, but it has been suggested that he was not interested in participating in any run-off and the Executive moved to quash the agreement and conduct the polls to select its next candidate—with Don Anderson and Peter Wickham picked to conduct them.
However, party sources confirmed that this proved to be inconclusive with both Burton and Newton each emerging the winner from one of the two polls.
Additionally, the sources confirmed that the results were within the margin of error of 5 percent with both sides only winning by 2 percent in the polls.
Prime Minister Gaston Browne commented on the issue, stating the party will host the runoff contest “maybe in a few months”.
“We want to allow for a cooling off period after the hostilities of the first primary, with the hope that there will be less hostilities going into the next primary and to make a final determination,” the Browne said.
Whomever emerges the winner of the primary will most likely face off against opposition Member of Parliament Anthony Smith Jr in the next general election which is constitutionally due in 2028.