Antigua & Barbuda prepares to elect a new government, June 12

Incumbent Prime Minister of Antigua & Barbuda Baldwin Spencer (l) and Opposition leader Gaston Browne (r). PHOTO/File

Voters in Antigua & Barbuda go to the polls on June 12. If the opinion polls are to be believed, then incumbent Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer will be out of a job on election night.

His replacement will be Gaston Browne, the leader of the main opposition Antigua & Barbuda Labor Party (ALP), who is confident that the party, which was swept out of office in 2004, will make a comeback into government with 13 seats, and possibly a clean sweep of all 17 seats at stake in the election.

Spencer is equally confident that his ruling United Progressive Party (UPP) will be triumphant when all the 164 polling stations close and the ballots cast are counted.

“I am pretty confident that the United Progressive Party will win the elections on 12 June. I am satisfied that the people of Antigua & Barbuda have been able to weigh the situation extremely carefully and we are satisfied that they now see there is a clear choice between whether to return to the decadence and the corruption and the mismanagement prior to 2004 or whether they would want to move forward with United Progressive Party,” he told reporters.

“All we need to do is win enough seats to form the government, the extent of the margin is open but we can make the same argument that the way things are going we may be able to end up with all 17 seats,” Spencer said.

“The important thing is that we want to be in a position to continue to be the government of Antigua & Barbuda,” adding that the UPP believes that the “people of the twin-island nation will answer the call of the UPP and give the United Progressive Party (UPP) yet another opportunity to stamp its brand of politics, its vision for the future of Antigua & Barbuda”.

But Browne, who is leading the ALP into a general election for the first time, says citizens have had enough of the bad policies of the ruling administration over the past decade and points to an ailing economy, high unemployment and crime as major reasons for change. -(CMC)