By Kieron Murdoch | Opinion Contributor

 

A by-election has been announced for January 14th, 2025 in St. Peter to fill the seat left vacant by the death of the late MP Asot Michael. A deeply controversial figure, Michael’s more than 20-year stint in public life was dogged throughout by persistent accusations of corruption and other abuses. Nevertheless, he remained a highly influential political financier within his party until his removal from the Labour slate before the January 2023 general election.

Come January 2025, who wins the seat that Michael retained consecutively since being first elected in 2004 will be impacted by several factors, not least among them, the fact that his last victory there was as an independent, which ostensibly suggests that voters were willing to be swayed away from the two established parties.

In reality, however, the fortunes of the candidates in the upcoming by-election will be chiefly determined by whether or not the apparent shift from voting solidly Labour – which the electorate in St. Peter had been doing consistently since at least 1971 – to voting for an independent candidate in the most recent election in 2023, was a genuine repudiation of the Labour Party by the voters of St Peter.

Many would assert that it was not. They would argue that it had more to do with MP Asot Michael himself and the amount of resources he had at his disposal to effectively outspend and out-campaign his rivals, which he did. No one should dispute that. He advertised more, hired more workers, ran larger a longer campaign, gave more inducements (gifts), and likely outspent all his components combined, several times over. The results bore that out.

Of the 3680 votes cast in St. Peter in the January 2023 general election, Micheal amassed 2137 votes (58.07%) to the ABLP’s Rawdon Turner’s 899 (24.42%), the UPP’s Tevaughn Harriet’s 601 (16.33%), and the DNA’s Chaneil Imhoff’s 29 (0.78%). In the run-up to the election, St. Peter registered the largest increase in voters of any constituency at a staggering 51%. No other constituency came close.

Some commentators laid accusations against Michael of inducing voters to fraudulently transfer in from other constituencies – something he denied. The Antigua and Barbuda Electoral Commission (ABEC) reported around mid-January 2023, a week before the election that 4,609 people were registered to vote as compared to the 3,041 people who were registered in 2018. That’s an additional 1,568 people.

Anyone who visited the polling centre at Parham Primary School on election day in 2023 would have noticed workers for Turner and Harriet milling about and gathering at their chosen space outside the school, with clipboards and markers, visible but not conspicuous. The candidates themselves were hard to spot at times.

By contrast, Michael’s team had established a virtual encampment opposite the polling station, their sheer numbers making it impossible for them not to be noticed immediately. A row of large tents sprawled along the roadside leading to the school gate. Under them, a dozen tables and more dozens of chairs were set out with workers clad in grey shirts seated at laptops or on their phones. In the centre was Michael relaying orders and gesticulating feverishly as if directing a battalion as to which hill to cross in order to outflank the enemy.

Besides the resources brought to bear for the actual campaign, Michael’s win was no doubt assisted by the relationship of patronage he had established there over 20 years. A multi-millionaire at the very least, Michael spent two decades lavishing his constituents with millions of dollars worth of gifts and social support funded ostensibly from his own pocket, paying tuition, school fees, medical bills, funeral costs, sponsoring sports teams, repairing homes, and sometimes just handing out unsolicited cash. He would take a piss in someone’s home and leave money on top of the toilet.

His unmatched resources in the 2023 St. Peter campaign, the supposed loyalty he bought through years of inducement and patronage, and his ability to paint himself as a victim of Gaston Browne wrongfully cast out of the Labour Party, would combine to support his resounding win in the last election. That brings us to where we are now.

The UPP has not won in St. Peter in over 50 years. As it stands, we think the odds weigh more heavily in favour of the Labour candidate Rawdon Turner. We are also curious as to whether the UPP’s Tevaugh Harriet is indeed running again. The party has been replacing candidates lately, and we are not sure as to whether he is still in favour. That should have been determined the moment news of Michael’s death came to the fore.

Turner has the benefit of the Labour Party having won in St. Peter for decades before Michael’s independent run in 2023, as well as the fact that Michael’s campaign was not an anti-Labour campaign per se, which is to say that he did not rally 2137 voters explicitly on an anti-Labour platform. Nevertheless, Michael did get 2137 voters to vote against the Labour Party by siding with him when there was a Labour candidate on the ticket. This reality must not be overlooked and it should present an opportunity of some kind to the main opposition.

The real challenge is in trying to understand and replicate the motivations of the massive cadre of voters who went Michael’s way in 2023. Turner will want to tell them that Michael was born in Labour and died a Labourite, despite the falling out there might have been between the party Leader and the late MP. Harriet or whoever emerges as the UPP candidate will want to tell St. Peter’s voters that Michael recognised the failure of the Gaston Browne administration and knew that change was needed.

What both sides may not want to acknowledge is that perhaps more than anything, voters were influenced by Michael’s money and patronage, and given that none of them can hope to seriously match that level of largesse, none of them can hope to mobilise or capture his vote share in the same way. We are eager to see the voter turnout in this by-election as it may give some indication of whether voters feel motivated to come out in the same numbers in the absence of Michael’s largesse.

Still, unless the UPP can strategically capitalise on Michael’s support from the last election and encourage them to keep voting against the Labour Party, we anticipate that when the dust settles, it will be Rawdon Turner who is sworn in as the new MP for St. Peter, continuing 50+ years of Labour dominance in that seat broken for just two years (Jan 2023 – Jan 2025) by a longstanding Labour MP turned independent.

 

About the writer:

Kieron Murdoch is an opinion contributor at antigua.news. He worked as a journalist and later as a radio presenter in Antigua and Barbuda for eight years, covering politics and governance especially. If you have an opinion on the issues raised in this editorial and you would like to submit a response by email to be considered for publication, please email staff@antigua.news.