Tag Archives: UPP

Antigua and Barbuda

Antigua and Barbuda elects new government, PM

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gastonbrowne

Though Antigua and Barbuda’s elections were postponed from an originally planned date in March, the result was perhaps worth the wait, bring an end to Baldwin Spencer’s decade-long rule as prime minister.antigua and barbuda

On June 12, Antiguans and Barbudans instead turned to Gaston Browne, the leader of the Antigua Labour Party (ALP), which won 14 out of 17 seats in the House of Representatives, leaving Spencer’s United Progressive Party (UPP) with just three seats.

Browne (pictured above) campaigned on turning around the country’s struggling economy, unemployment and high crime. At 47, he’ll become the country’s youngest prime minister. Almost immediately after taking office, Browne signed a memorandum of understanding with a Chinese investment firm for a $2 billion project to develop greater tourism infrastructure.

The ALP has long been the dominant party in the country’s political history, even before independence. Its founder, Vere Bird, served as chief minister, then premier, for all but five years between 1960 and 1981, then as Antigua and Barbuda’s first post-independence prime minister from 1981 to 1994. His son, Lester Bird, served as prime minister from 1994 to 2004, when Spencer led the first non-Labour government in nearly 30 years after rallying against corruption from the Bird/ALP era. Continue reading Antigua and Barbuda elects new government, PM →

South Korea

South Korean national assembly elections — final results

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In concert with earlier reports from Seoul, the Saenuri Party has won yesterday’s elections to fill the seats of the National Assembly.

According to the Republic of Korea’s National Election Commission, Saenuri will take 152 seats to just 127 seats for the Democratic United Party and 13 seats for the DUP’s ally, the Unified Progressive Party.  The conservative Liberal Forward Party has won five seats.

UPDATE (April 13): See after the jump an election map showing the regional results in the legislative elections.  As is the key to much of Korean politics — six of the country’s eight presidents have come from North Gyeongsang province in the southeast of the country; the two most recent, Roh Moo-hyun and Lee Myung-bak, hail from South Gyeongsang province.  During Park Chung-hee’s regime from 1961 to 1979, Gyeongsang — which was historically the strongest of South Korea’s historical kingdoms — reaped beneficial treatment from the national government, which only furthered social stigma against Koreans from Jeolla province, which today remains a DUP strongold.  The DUP also performed well in Seoul, another traditional DUP stronghold.

Continue reading South Korean national assembly elections — final results →