How Dickon Mitchell turned that opening into a historic second term.

By Rawle Titus

ST. GEORGE’S, GRENADA, NOVEMBER 10TH- Keith Mitchell’s New National Party held every seat in Grenada’s Parliament when his government docked teachers’ pay in November 2018. Eight years later, the NNP held just one. The teachers’ dispute was an early turning point, and what Dickon Mitchell did about it once in office helps explain how the NDC built on that opening.

The NNP’s March 2018 sweep was its second in succession and its third overall, following clean sweeps in 1999 and 2013. From that position of strength, Keith Mitchell’s government docked the pay of teachers who took industrial action over pensions and gratuities. The teachers were now fighting to recover lost wages and secure retirement benefits.

For years, the Chester Humphrey-led Technical and Allied Workers’ Union, associated with the Grenlec and brewery strikes, had set the pace for militant trade unionism in Grenada. In 2018, teachers became a focal point for organized resistance. Their fight gave the NDC an opening. The party was still recovering from the 2012 rupture that saw Peter David and others expelled, followed by two elections in which it won no seats.

With support from sections of the diaspora and a growing middle class, Dickon Mitchell led the NDC back into office in 2022. His government paid outstanding pensions and gratuities to eligible retired public officers, including teachers. It also reached salary agreements that delivered pay increases for teachers and other public-sector workers. By the time Mitchell sought a second term, he could point to benefits paid to retirees and raises secured for people still on the job. Those were concrete answers to grievances that had helped give his party momentum in opposition.

The results gave the NDC 14 of 15 seats and 61 percent of the valid vote, up from nine seats and 51.8 percent in 2022. That increase gives the landslide its weight. In St. John, Kerryne James turned a single-digit victory into a 573-vote margin.

In St. Mark and St. Andrew North East, the NDC ended decades of NNP representation. Dickon Mitchell had taken the party from outside Parliament to government, then broadened its support enough to deliver its first back-to-back election victories.

Meanwhile, the NNP went through a rupture of its own. Peter David wanted to contest the leadership. Emmalin Pierre took over in 2024, and David left the party in 2025. In my view, Keith Mitchell’s handling of the succession helped drive David out and left Pierre with too little room to reach an accommodation with him. The NNP was repeating a mistake the NDC had made in 2012, losing an experienced organizer and the supporters who went with him.

The Town of St. George shows what was at stake. Claudette Joseph won with 1,269 votes. David and the NNP’s Troy Noel drew 1,266 between them. Add the fourth candidate’s five votes and the combined opposition total was two ahead. An agreement could have changed the race, though voters would still have made up their own minds. In St. Andrew South East, a Telescope-based group loyal to David shifted its support to the NDC’s David Andrew, who defeated Pierre by 162 votes. The opposition’s inability to cooperate mattered in both constituencies.

Keith Mitchell deserves credit for his economic record. His early years in office coincided with strong growth and construction. After returning to power in 2013, his government undertook debt restructuring and a three-year adjustment program that put fiscal responsibility at the center of Grenada’s recovery.

His political legacy is more complicated. Docking teachers’ pay gave a struggling opposition an opening. The succession he presided over weakened his own party just when it needed allies. Dickon Mitchell took that opening, rebuilt the NDC and gave voters a record to judge. The clearest example runs from the pay packets docked in 2018 to the pensions paid and salary increases negotiated after 2022. By 2026, the NDC had a record it could campaign on, and it won a wider mandate than it had the first time.