St. Paul (São Cristóvão e Névis), 1953

By Marcel Gomes

Denzil Douglas, Prime Minister of the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, a former British Caribbean colony, is trained as a medical doctor. From a young age, he has been active in the Saint Kitts and Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP), the oldest political party in the country, which originated from workers’ movements in the 1930s. His prestige is comparable to that of Robert Bradshaw, one of the nation’s greatest leaders, who led the SKNLP and the former colony for thirty years until his death shortly before independence. Thanks to Bradshaw, the Labour Party transformed local administration, even nationalizing part of the sugar production chain. The leadership void left by Bradshaw’s death shifted political dominance to a coalition between the People’s Action Movement (PAM) and the conservative Movement for Popular Action (MAP).

Denzil Douglas’s emergence on the national political scene allowed the reconstruction of the SKNLP during the 1980s and 1990s. He came to power in 1995 and was re-elected in 2004 for his third consecutive term.