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Prime Ministers of Antigua & Barbuda
1976 –
present
 Sir
Vere Cornwall Bird
(December
7,
1910,
St John's,
Antigua–June
28,
1999, St John's) was the first Prime Minister of
Antigua and Barbuda. His son,
Lester Bird, succeeded him as Prime Minister. In
1994 he was declared a national hero.
Bird was unique
from other West Indian politicians, lacking in any
formal education except primary schooling. He worked in
the
Salvation Army for 2 years interspersing his
interests in trade unionism and politics. In
1943, he became the president of the
Antigua Trades and Labour Union. He achieved
national acclaim politically for the first time when he
was elected to the colonial legislature in
1945. He formed the
Antigua Labour Party and became the first and only
chief minister, first and last premier, and first prime
minister from
1981 to
1994. His resignation was due to failing health and
internal issues within the government.
In
1985 Antigua's international airport was renamed
VC Bird International Airport in his honour.
The biggest
criticism from the public of Antigua is the corruption
and cronyism within the Labour Party and many claim the
government is essentially a "family business" with the
continuance of the Bird dynasty in control of political
power as unquestioned.[citation
needed] Bird's supporters reject these
accusations and say that his actions were justified in
order to throw off the institution of colonial sugar
planters and the British colonial overlords. The
Antiguan author
Jamaica Kincaid compared the Bird government to the
François Duvalier
dictatorship in
Haiti in her politically charged narrative A
Small Place.
 Lester Bryant Bird
(born
February 21,
1938,
New York City) was
Prime Minister of
Antigua and Barbuda from 1994 to 2004 and a
well-known athlete. He was chairman of the
Antigua Labour Party (ALP) from 1971 to 1993, then
became Prime Minister when his father,
Vere Bird, the previous Prime Minister, resigned.
His government won
re-election in 1994 and 1999. In 2003 he temporarily
became a leader of a minority administration. At the
March 2004 elections the ALP was defeated by the
United Progressive Party (UPP) led by
Baldwin Spencer. Bird's party lost eight seats, and
he himself was defeated by
Errol Cort, who
became finance minister in the new UPP government.
Bird has remained
the ALP's political leader following the party's 2004
defeat.[1]
Lester B. Bird is
an Honorary Member of
The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation
Like his father,
many criticize Lester Bird for being corrupt. An independent observer,
Timothy Goddard,
wrote this in his blog: "...The Birds, though, were
as corrupt as they get, and their government was
considered the most corrupt in the Caribbean, possibly
the world. From serving as a tax haven, to drug
smuggling, to embezzling, to arms smuggling, to vote
fraud, to media control, to land-grabbing and even to
domestic terrorism when they fell out of power from
1971-76, the Birds and their cronies did it all."
 Winston Baldwin Spencer
(born
October 8,
1948) is the
prime minister of
Antigua and Barbuda. He has been prime minister
since March 24, 2004, when his party, the
United Progressive Party, which he had led as the
opposition party for several years, won
parliamentary elections. He has also been the
foreign minister of
Antigua and Barbuda since
January 6,
2005.
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