A local registered voter who has insisted on anonymity has shared with the Daily Observer their exasperation at being repeatedly phoned by staff of the disgraced St Peter MP Asot Michael and being asked again and again if they will support the MP in his bid to retain his seat in the next election.
“I have been contacted at least five times by his office in recent months, but there are more missed calls in addition to that.
“I remember being called twice one morning while driving to work and also getting calls while at work,” the resident said to Observer in an August phone interview.
They said that, for them, the level of persistence from Michael’s campaigners is bordering on harassment.
“They ask the same questions. I am tired of getting these calls. Will you support Asot? Will you support Asot? Do you need transportation on election day? Often it’s a different number and I wonder if it’s someone else calling me, so I answer and it’s Asot’s office again,” the resident said.
Asked if they had told the callers not to phone back, the resident said they had not.
When asked why they did not want to be named, they said, “This is an incredibly powerful man. And just picturing the backlash from my name being out there for something like this is terrifying enough.”
When contacted for comment yesterday, Michael told Observer the residents’ claims were “absolutely no lie”.
“We have a campaign headquarters, we have a database, we are doing house to house calls and making telephone calls. It’s the norm; it’s customary at every election to do so,” he said.
“We encourage people to register, to collect their voter ID cards for those who have not, and we also encourage people to vote for the candidate.
“I have been doing this for 18 years,” he added.
Michael has been replaced as the Antigua Barbuda Labour Party (ABLP) candidate by newcomer Rawdon Turner after being deemed unfit to run by his party, ostensibly due to corruption allegations which he continues to deny.
In 2018, Michael was forced to resign from Cabinet when shocking allegations emerged that he had been recorded by foreign law enforcement in 2016 apparently discussing a bribe to be paid to him by British investor Peter Virdee.
At first, Labour Party leader and Prime Minister Gaston Browne entertained the idea of Michael’s return to Cabinet, but relations between the two soured between 2019 and 2020, whereafter Browne became openly intent on keeping Michael out of his Cabinet and off the party slate.
Browne has been repeatedly criticised for only taking such a stance in 2020, even though serious allegations of corruption have dogged Michael for more than two decades now.
In spite of all this, Michael made clear his intention to run as an independent most recently in an interview with Observer Radio host Dave Lester-Payne on August 10.
Without the support of the ABLP behind him, and with Rawdon Turner likely to take a significant portion of traditional Labour votes, the four-way race in St Peter between Michael, Turner, Trevaughn Harriette and Chaneil Imhoff is likely to be the most watched in all the 17 constituencies.
Harriette is the chosen candidate to represent the United Progressive Party (UPP). The UPP has traditionally performed very poorly in St Peter. In 2018, Michael took away 1,736 votes while the then-UPP candidate garnered just 577.
Imhoff is the candidate nominated by the Democratic National Alliance (DNA), which did not run a candidate in that area in the 2018 election.
Both parties will naturally expect to capitalise on the rift in the Labour Party, with Michael, its sitting four-term MP, now planning a run as an independent against the new Labour candidate.
The question many have asked is whether Michael’s support base are merely supporters of the party, or staunch supporters of Michael personally.
The MP has spoken more openly since his forced resignation from Cabinet in 2018 about the vast sums expended by him, personally, on his constituents for assistance in education, healthcare, community development and sponsorship, among other things.
This has prompted many to wonder whether his seeming generosity has endeared voters to him personally over time.
For example, on February 17 2022, during the budget debate in Parliament, the St Peter MP declared that he had “spent more money than any other member of parliament in the history of Antigua and Barbuda out of [my] own pocket” amounting to “millions of dollars” over his political career.
In the 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 budget debates, he accused his party of neglecting his constituency since it returned to office under the leadership of Gaston Browne in 2014.
He made no such accusations when he was a minister in Gaston Browne’s Cabinet in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. In fact, he routinely heaped praise on the PM and other minsters in previous budget presentations.
On the question of neglect in St Peter, the resident who spoke to Observer said they felt frustrated at the “seasonal” nature of political attention to the problems in the area.
“It is infuriating to me when this happens like clockwork every election year. In between, the place is glum, ugly, and unkempt. And why is it that after every weather crisis, the island is ravaged, flooding and mud, you know, no preparation,” the resident told Observer.
“The only time they fix anything is in the months before elections. Do the work. Don’t sit down for four years until election time and then give out money and gifts. It’s madness. It doesn’t make any sense to me,” they added.
General elections are due in Antigua and Barbuda in 2023 but PM Browne has the constitutional power to call them early – something he did in 2018 and has hinted at doing again. Added to that, the ABLP has cleared what many saw as its last pre-election hurdle and held a long awaited convention on July 10 2022, a Sunday.
Meanwhile, another controversy could be unfolding in St Peter. Following a September 7 Cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Lionel “Max” Hurst wrote last week in his routine post-Cabinet press circular that “Cabinet members have been informed by scrutineers that an unusually high number of electors have been transferring their registration into the constituency of St Peter” and that this would be investigated.
He also stated that the Labour candidate, Turner, would pursue claims and objections against anyone who “untruthfully and unlawfully transferred their registration to that constituency while remaining resident in another”.
It is not known what supposed evidence the government’s ministers had seen that would have prompted such a statement, but the language was clear enough to suggest that they might be wary of the possibility of organised voter fraud through falsely registered electors who do not actually reside in the constituency.
The Chief of Staff included the information in his circular before the Antigua and Barbuda Electoral Commission (ABEC), the neutral statutory body responsible for elections, made any statement about the issue.
Turner has declined to comment publicly, but Michael has responded by saying that the announcement was meant to undermine him and his re-election effort. He also accused the Gaston Browne administration of a desire to suppress votes and warned central government against usurping the functions of the ABEC.