List of Prime Ministers of St. Lucia from 1979 – present: 

                   John Compton: 22 February - 2 July 1979

                   Allan Louisy: 2 July 1979 - 4 May 1981

                   Winston Cenac: 4 May 1981 - 17 January 1982

                   Michael Pilgrim (ad interim): 17 January - 3 May 1982

                   John Compton: 3 May 1982 - 2 April 1996

                   Dr Vaughan Lewis: 2 April 1996 - 24 May 1997

                   Dr Kenny Anthony: 24 May 1997 - 11 December 2006

                   Sir John Compton: 11 December 2006 - 7 September 2007

                   Stephenson King: 7 September 2007 -

Sir John George Melvin Compton, KBE (April 29, 1925 – September 7, 2007) was the Prime Minister of Saint Lucia in 1979, from 1982 to 1996, and from 2006 until his death. Compton, who previously led Saint Lucia under British rule from 1964 to 1979, was the country's first leader when it became independent in February 1979. He led the conservative United Workers Party (UWP) from 1964 until 1996, and again from 2005 to 2007.

Sir Allan Fitzgerald Laurent Louisy was the second Prime Minister of independent Saint Lucia. The first Prime Minister of St. Lucia was Sir John Compton. Sir Allan Louisy was born in Laborie on September 5th, 1916, and served as a judge before representing his district in Parliament. At the end of the 1970s, as leader of the Saint Lucia Labour Party, he supported the anti-independence movement promoted by the union leader George Odlum. In Saint Lucia's first parliamentary elections as an independent country, he won by a landslide, becoming the first elected head of government in the new state's history. He took office on July 2, 1979, but his government was short-lived: on May 4, 1981, after facing the rejection of his budgetary plan and the resignation of important members of his cabinet, he was obliged to resign. Winston Cenac, who had been attorney general, took his place.

                   Saint Lucia Labour Party

                   Politics of Saint Lucia

                   List of Prime Ministers of Saint Lucia

Francis Cenac, Q.C. (September 14, 1925 - September 22, 2004) was a Saint Lucian politician and former Prime Minister of Saint Lucia.

He served as General Procurator of Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada. In 1969 he gave up the public service and became a lawyer. When the Saint Lucia Labour Party gained power in 1979, Cenac became attorney general in the government of Allan Louisy. When Louisy resigned on May 4, 1981, Cenac became prime minister. He served for 8 months until he too was forced to resign due to political conflicts on January 17, 1982.

                   Saint Lucia Labour Party

                   List of Prime Ministers of Saint Lucia

                   Politics of Saint Lucia

Dr. Michael Pilgrim (born 1947) is a Saint Lucian politician. He served as acting Prime Minister after the resignation of Winston Cenac on January 17, 1982. After serving for less than four months, Pilgrim resigned on May 3, 1982 in favour of John Compton, leader of the United Workers' Party. Pilgrim was a member of the Labor Progressive Party, a short-lived pro-Cuban socialist party.

                   United Workers Party (Saint Lucia)

                   Politics of Saint Lucia

                   List of Prime Ministers of Saint Lucia

                   Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States

Dr. Vaughan Lewis (born 1940) is a Saint Lucian politician and a former member of the ruling United Workers' Party (UWP). He served for a brief period as Prime Minister of Saint Lucia following the resignation of John Compton. Lewis, a former director of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, assumed the office of Prime Minister on April 2, 1996. He also served as Minister of Finance, Planning and Development, and Minister of External Affairs. In elections that followed on May 23, 1997, Lewis and the UWP suffered a huge setback, losing all but one of their seats in Parliament, forcing him to resign in favor of the leader of the Saint Lucia Labour Party, Dr. Kenny Anthony.

Compton defeated Lewis for the UWP leadership in a party conference in Soufrière on March 13, 2005. Compton received 260 votes against 135 for Lewis.^[1]

Following this defeat, Lewis felt compelled to resign from the United Workers Party and joined the ruling Saint Lucia Labour Party. On 7 September 2006, the executive of the Saint Lucia Labour Party endorsed Dr. Vaughan Lewis as its candidate for the Castries Central constituency in the December 2006 general election.

Lewis' defection to Labour has been controversial. After losing two general elections in a row, Lewis had the opportunity to win the Castries Central seat in a February 2006 by-election. He then told UWP supporters first that he was the endorsed candidate. He then told them that he was taking time to make up his mind. Finally, he quit the UWP all together and said that he was no longer interested in electoral politics. However, Lewis had been in talks with high ranking members of the St Lucia Labour Party about his defection since he was defeated by Compton in the leadership contest.

More troubling to Labour's top strategists was the fact that Lewis had brought Desmond Brathwaite into the party with him. Brathwaite is best known as the Women's Affairs Minister who was charged with kicking his wife down a flight of stairs in 1994. He was terribly unpopular but became so close to Lewis in 1996 that when asked why he doesn't drop Brathwaite for political reasons, Lewis replied, "I'd rather lose with Brathwaite than win without him." It lead to the most crushing defeat in St Lucian political history.

On the face of it, Labour put up a good front, hailing Lewis, the same man they ridiculed as an uncontrollable drunk in 1997, as a great Caribbean citizen and intellectual who was betrayed by Sir John Compton.

Lewis failed in his bid to win the Castries Central parliamentary seat to the UWP candidate Richard Frederick in the 2006 general elections held on December 11. In his inaugural speech to the nation after he was sworn in as the island's Prime Minister, Sir John Compton promised that there would be no victimization from his new government.

                   List of Prime Ministers of Saint Lucia

                   United Workers' Party (Saint Lucia)

                   Politics of Saint Lucia

                   Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States

Dr.Kenny Davis Anthony (born January 8, 1951^[1]) was Prime Minister of Saint Lucia from 1997 to 2006. He is the leader of the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) and the Leader of the Opposition.

Anthony is a graduate of the University of the West Indies and the University of Birmingham. In the Labour government that led the country from 1979 to 1982, Anthony was Special Advisor to the Ministry of Education and Culture from August 1979 to December 1980, then Minister of Education from December 1980 to March 1981. He was a member of the secretariat of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) from March 1995^[1] until he was elected leader of the Labour Party. He became Prime Minister on May 24, 1997, a day after the SLP won parliamentary elections. While Prime Minister, he was also the Minister of Finance and Broadcasting.

Kenny D. Anthony is an Honorary Member of The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation

In the general elections held on 11 December 2006, the SLP suffered a surprise defeat by 11 seats to 6 at the hands of the John Compton-led UWP. While the SLP lost the election by 5 seats, the popular vote margin was in fact very slim, just over 2000 votes. Anthony himself won a handsome victory in his constituency, Vieux Fort South, winning by 627 votes, only a few less than in the SLP's landslide election victory, thus indicating that his popularity may not be as compromised as first supposed. No word has come from him regarding his next political move. Pundits are suggesting that his perceived arrogance was responsible for his party's performance at the said polls. Some speculate that Dr. Anthony will not be retained as the party's political leader at the party's next national convention.^{[citation needed]} Anthony said after the election that he intended to remain head of the party and that party delegates would decide at the next annual conference whether he would continue in that position.^[2]

During his leadership and his party's reign, Anthony led St. Lucia to record development in tourism, infrastructure and general economic development. However according to many, that economic development did not equally benefit many poorer St. Lucians, many of whom felt disenfranchised by the leader and party they once voted in. Another area of concern and perhaps a reason for the SLP loss was what many felt was a soft and helpless hand on crime. Together with much economic development came steady increases in violent crime at a rate higher than many neighbouring islands and that caused many to draw comparisons with Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.

Since the loss, Anthony (he holds a PHD in constitutional law) has vowed that he would continue to serve the country from the opposition being a strong voice together with the other 5 members of his party who were elected.

An interesting twist to the elections saga is that many feel that St. Lucians went to the polls not to elect a new government but to ensure that there would be a tougher opposition as against the 16-1 majority that the SLP had previously enjoyed. In a fate of irony, voters perhaps over-compensated for the frequent poll reports and political pundits' predictions that the SLP would again win a third term with a 14-3 majority. Many feel that, had Anthony himself not latched on to those poll results, he might have been better able to convince his own supporters that they were not yet in the clear and to turn out to vote in larger numbers. Further, the reaction of many voters to the crossing over of former UWP leader Vaughan Lewis to the SLP was not positive. Lewis was a staunch opponent of the Labour government and the former Prime Minister who had lost the elections to the SLP - albeit after being handed the post only one year before the fateful loss. Anthony and Lewis have both stated publicly that all the "bad blood" between them was now "water under the bridge".

In late July 2007, Anthony said that Compton's illness, caused by a series of strokes, and inability to perform his duties (Stephenson King is acting Prime Minister) meant that a new election should be held.^[3] Anthony was head of the Commonwealth of Nations observer mission in the August 2007 election in Sierra Leone. He gave the election a positive appraisal.^[4]

In March 2008, Anthony visited Cuba where he voiced his appreciation for its support of Saint Lucia. He toured Havana and Cienfuegos Province, and met with senior officials including First Vice President José Ramón Machado Ventura.^[5]

Stephenson King is a Saint Lucian politician who is currently the country's Prime Minister. He represents the constituency of Castries North for the United Workers Party (UWP) in the House of Assembly of Saint Lucia.^[1]

King served in the government under Prime Minister John Compton in the 1990s as Minister of Health and Local Government.^[2]

King, as the Chairman of the UWP,^[3] won the seat from Castries North in the general election held on 11 December 2006. The UWP won a majority of seats in this election, and a new government under Compton was sworn in on 19 December 2006, including King as Minister for Health and Labour Relations.^[4] After Compton fell ill in May 2007, King became Acting Prime Minister. In a cabinet reshuffle in early June 2007, he became Minister of Finance (including International Financial Services), External Affairs, Home Affairs, National Security, Labor, Information and Broadcasting.^[5]

Compton died on September 7, and King announced his death on September 8.^[6]

King was subsequently sworn in as Prime Minister by Governor-General Pearlette Louisy on September 9.^[7][8] All ten of the UWP's members of the House of Assembly agreed on King's designation as Prime Minister.^[8] King reshuffled the cabinet on September 12; in addition to being Prime Minister, he is Minister of Finance, International Financial Services, External Affairs, Home Affairs and National Security.^[9]