Keith Mitchell
Keith Mitchell was prime minister of Grenada from 1995 to 2008 and from 2013 to 2022, twenty-two years, the longest of the island's history. He was the mathematics professor and cricketer who led the New National Party for thirty-three years and twice won every seat in the House, fifteen of fifteen, in 1999 and 2013, and again in 2018. For three of his six parliaments there was no opposition at all. The first period was the recovery from the invasion and the revolution. There were the tourism and the offshore banks, the airport finished, and the cricket stadium the Chinese built in 2007 after he switched recognition from Taipei in 2005. There was Hurricane Ivan in September 2004, which destroyed nine tenths of the island's houses and the nutmeg trees that were its export, and his own residence with them. He ran the reconstruction from a tent and won the election of 2008 nonetheless, by his own account. He lost it to Thomas by eleven seats to four. The second period was the IMF programme of 2014. The debt was restructured, the citizenship by investment passports sold from 2013 that paid for the rest. There were the growth of five per cent, and the referendums of 2016 and 2018 to replace the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice, which the island voted down both times. There was the election of June 2022, which he lost to Dickon Mitchell, no relation, by nine seats to six. He gave up the leadership at seventy-five. He was born in St George's, the son of a farmer. He played cricket for the Windward Islands, took his doctorate at the American University in Washington, and taught mathematics at Howard. He came home in 1984 after the invasion, entered parliament in the election that December. He took the party from Blaize in 1989 in a quarrel that split it and put him in opposition for six years. The offshore banks were the trouble. The First International Bank of Grenada collapsed in 2000 owing two hundred million dollars. A Chicago court in 2002 heard evidence that a fugitive financier had paid him five hundred thousand dollars in cash. An inquiry cleared him of it and the island argued about it for a decade.
- Lived: 1946 CE – ?
- Nationality: Grenadian
- Roles: prime minister, mathematician, politician
