General elections were held in

Saint Lucia Saint Lucia ( acf, Sent Lisi, french: Sainte-Lucie) is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean. The island was previously called Iouanalao and later Hewanorra, names given by the native Arawaks and Caribs, two Amerindi ...

on 11 December 2006. The elections were fought between the

Saint Lucia Labour Party The Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) is a social democratic political party in Saint Lucia. It currently holds 13 of the 17 seats in the House of Assembly. History The party was established in 1949, backed by the Saint Lucia Workers Cooperative U ...

(SLP) and the United Workers Party (UWP), which between them dominated politics in Saint Lucia. The results saw the governing Saint Lucia Labour Party lose the election to the United Workers Party led by

John Compton Sir John George Melvin Compton, (29 April 1925 – 7 September 2007) was a Saint Lucian politician who became the first Prime Minister upon independence in February 1979. Having led Saint Lucia under British rule from 1964 to 1979, Compton s ...

, which gained eight seats to hold an eleven to six majority.

Background

The last two elections in 1997 and 2001 had seen victories for the Saint Lucia Labour Party with the previous election in 2001 seeing them win 14 seats to only 3 for the United Workers Party. However in 2005 John Compton came out of retirement to become leader of the opposition United Workers Party again. Compton had led Saint Lucia to independence in 1979 and then been

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...

from 1982 until he resigned in 1996. Compton defeated

Vaughan Lewis Sir Vaughan Allen Lewis, KCSL CBE (born 17 May 1940), is a Saint Lucian politician and a former member of the United Workers' Party (UWP). He served for a brief period as the fifth Prime Minister of Saint Lucia following the resignation of Jo ...

in an election for the leadership of the United Workers Party with Lewis later

defecting In politics, a defector is a person who gives up allegiance to one state in exchange for allegiance to another, changing sides in a way which is considered illegitimate by the first state. More broadly, defection involves abandoning a person, ca ...

from the UWP to fight the 2006 election for the Saint Lucia labour Party. A by-election in

Castries Castries is the capital and largest city of Saint Lucia, an island country in the Caribbean. The urban area has a population of approximately 20,000, while the eponymous district has a population of 70,000, as at May 2013. The city stretches o ...

Central in March 2006 was seen as starting a long campaign for the election due in December. The by-election was won by an

Independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independe ...

candidate Richard Frederick in a seat which the Saint Lucia Labour Party had won in the last two elections. Frederick would later join the United Workers Party and stood for the party in the general election.

Campaign

In the campaign the United Workers Party focused on crime, which they saw as increasing, and promised to make it a priority if they were elected. Their leader Compton pledged to tackle

unemployment Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the refer ...

, which they said was to blame for much of the crime in Saint Lucia. They also promised to revive the banana industry in Saint Lucia and accused the Saint Lucia Labour Party of corruption and

nepotism Nepotism is an advantage, privilege, or position that is granted to relatives and friends in an occupation or field. These fields may include but are not limited to, business, politics, academia, entertainment, sports, fitness, religion, and ...

. However the age of the United Workers Party leader John Compton, at 81, became an issue with the Saint Lucia Labour Party calling on voters to not entrust the country to him. The governing Saint Lucia Labour Party defended their record in office and put the strong economic growth over the last few years at the centre of their campaign. They also pledged to continue tackling crime in Saint Lucia and to bring in a mandatory capital punishment for anyone convicted of murder. The Saint Lucia Labour Party received assistance in the campaign from the Prime Ministers of St Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominica who both spoke in favour of the party at rallies. The police commissioner in Saint Lucia described the election as the most peaceful yet in Saint Lucia with

election monitor Election monitoring involves the observation of an election by one or more independent parties, typically from another country or from a non-governmental organization (NGO). The monitoring parties aim primarily to assess the conduct of an elec ...

s from CARICOM and the Organisation of American States observing the election. Four

opinion poll An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a survey or a poll (although strictly a poll is an actual election) is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinion ...

s as the election neared showed differing results with each political party favoured by two of the polls. There was controversy over the release of a poll two days before the election which strongly favoured the Saint Lucia Labour Party, with the United Workers Party describing it as a "laughing stock" as it had been conducted back on the 25 and 26 November.

Results

The results saw the United Workers Party gain a majority in the election, winning 11 of the 17 seats. While the United Workers Party won a strong majority of the seats they were only around 2,000 votes, or 3%, ahead of the Saint Lucia Labour Party. The election resulted in John Compton succeeding

Kenny Anthony Kenny Davis Anthony (born 8 January 1951Government page on Anthony
.) is a

, and Compton became Prime Minister again at the age of 81.

By constituency

The seventeen constituency results in the election were as follows.

References

{{Saint Lucian elections

General election A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

Elections in Saint Lucia