Grenada Elects Newcomer In Politics As PM

Another Mitchell has been elected as Grenada’s new prime minister, and he’s new to politics.

Dickon Mitchell, who led the National Democratic Party Congress this year, won 52 percent of votes against the island’s longtime prime minister, Keith Mitchell of the New National Party, with 48 percent. This is according to preliminary results released late Thursday.

The incoming party won nine of 15 constituencies.

A newcomer to politics, Dickon is a 44-year-old attorney and has taught in schools before leading his party in October last year. Some of his platforms include improving health care, decreasing unemployment and poverty, boosting education, and building affordable housing.

Dickon is replacing Keith Mitchell, who has been serving Grenada’s prime minister since 2015 until 2008, and then coming back to office in 2018 in a landslide victory.

The outgoing prime minister is a 75-year-old statistician and a former professional cricketer who once served in the U.S. government but returned to Grenada after the 1983 U.S. invasion on the island.

Dickon announced that he would ask the governor-general to declare the 24th of June as a national public holiday or a bank holiday, so “citizens can celebrate the liberation day and the victory that they have created for Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique.”