By Robert Andre Emmanuel
Lamin Newton’s main primary challenger, Regis Burton, has called on the Antigua Barbuda Labour Party (ABLP) to hold a run-off election, following the announcement that Newton will be the party’s standard-bearer heading into a future general election.
On Friday evening, the ABLP elected Lamin Newton to be the caretaker for All Saints West constituency, overcoming his primary challengers, Burton and Arry Simon.
According to a letter sent to the ABLP Executive, Burton has expressed significant concerns with the primary process, including “several inaccuracies and procedural irregularities”.
“The initial voters list released by the ABLP Secretariat contained numerous inaccuracies, with certain individuals who were known to be involved being excluded,” he wrote.
He added that the revised list, sent out two days before the primary, still contained errors as “persons who paid their registration fees were left out”.
Another point Burton raised were in relation to the night of the primary where there were major discrepancies between the number of ballots.
He noted that, originally, ABLP agents indicated 456 ballots were cast on the night, which was subsequently agreed to by auditors; however, Burton’s agent did not agree with that number, and was told by an ABLP agent was her approval of the ballot count was “not of importance”.
“After counting, the ballots totalled 359 votes. Due to this discrepancy of the number of votes being less than the total number of persons who were claimed to have voted on that day, and there were no spoiled ballots, the Regis Burton agent did not agree to sign, but instead, wrote that her voters list count was 356,” Burton’s letter stated.
Newton, who once served as the All Saints West caretaker for the United Progressive Party (UPP), received 157 votes while Burton had 142 votes and Arry Simon placed last with 60 votes.
Although the ABLP primary rules, which all candidates signed on to, stated a person must receive 50 percent plus 1 of the total votes cast in the primary to be declared the outright winner, otherwise a run-off shall be held between the two top candidates, Newton was declared a day later by the ABLP Executive to be the winner of the primary.
Burton, however, stated in his letter that not going through with a run-off election could “undermine the trust and confidence of our constituents and compromise the credibility of our party”.
“I urge for immediate action to address these concerns, particularly the scheduling of a run-off per the contract signed by the three candidates,” he wrote.
Observer media has made multiple attempts to reach out to the ABLP Chairman, Chet Greene, for a comment but was unsuccessful at the time of writing.
