SLP wins but WIPM still the largest

The Daily Herald wites that the streets of Saba turned orange and blue on Wednesday as the elections for 2015 finally took place. The Windward Island People’s Movement (WIPM) defeated the Saba Labour Party (SLP) with a preliminary voting count of 545 votes against 407 votes for the SLP. This was announced at the Administration Building in The Bottom by Island Governor Jonathan Johnson on Wednesday around 11:00pm.

Although WIPM claimed victory, SLP won an additional seat, which pleased its supporters immensely. The voter’s turnout percentage was a staggering 91.3 per cent.

Johnson said, “Once again democracy has spoken, the people have spoken.” People could vote in The Bottom and in Windwardside. All the WIPM and SLP were seen walking and driving around trying to convince as many people as possible to vote in their favour.

As around 1,000 people are eligible to vote in Saba and there were a total of 18 candidates from whom to choose during this election, literally every vote counted and the candidates seemed know that very well. One person standing in line at the voting office said to “vote for blue” because she did not have any faith in Saba’s current progression. Another voter told The Daily Herald, “Only WIPM had the knowledge and experience to guide Saba through this difficult phase.”

Like the last campaign meetings at Topo Gigio’s, which had an even amount of attendees at each meeting, there was a noticeable even balance between the voters of orange and blue. Both parties had a successful campaign with professionally organised meetings. Previous meetings were held at Hell’s Gate and in Windwardside, each with a large number of attendees.

Voting offices closed at 9:00pm and when the votes were counted the candi-dates with their supporters moved to the Administration Building to hear the preliminary results from Governor Johnson. With the current figures at hand, WIPM will lose one seat and will stay in government with three seats the next four years. SLP will gain one seat and will remain the opposition party with two seats for the coming four years.

For WIPM party, Bruce Zagers was the big winner of this election with 187 votes, Christopher Johnson was proud to receive 145 votes.

On the SLP side, Monique Wilson received 121 votes, Ishmael Levenston received 89 votes, 10 votes were invalid and 4 people voted blank.

The five members elected to the Island Council are Rolando Wilson, Christopher Johnson and Bruce Zagers for WIPM, and Ishmael Levenston and Monique Wilson for SLP.

Monique Wilson was the first to give a speech after the official announcements. She said, “I’m proud of my team and we take our two seats with pride. We want equality and we want fairness and that’s what we’ll achieve in the next four years.”

Levenston was next to address to crowd, saying, “We only got two seats, but according to my politics we’ve won the election.”

Rolando Wilson was next. He said, “We lost one seat, but we continue to fight for Saba.”

Chris Johnson then spoke to the crowd. He said, “If two seats is a victory, then three seats is a landslide. There is no blue and orange in Saba, There is only one Saba and that’s for all of us.”

Zagers was the last to speak. He said, “We have four more years to improve Saba. This evaluation year we’ll bring the necessary changes to move forward.”

The official election results will be announced on Friday at 10:00am. A WIPM victory parade will be held Sunday at 3:00pm going from Fort Bay to Cove Bay.