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Born: 13 November 1958
Prime Minister of Saint Lucia: 9 September 2007 - 30 November 2011
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Stephenson King (born November 13, 1958 in Castries, Saint Lucia) is a Saint Lucian politician and former Prime Minister. He represents the constituency of Castries North for the United Workers Party (UWP) in the House of Assembly of Saint Lucia.
He won the elections in 2006 polling 2934 and unseating the incumbent Minister of Agriculture, Ignatius Jean who polled 2047 votes. King entered active politics in 1987 after leading the youth arm of the United Workers Party and then as President of the Caribbean Federation of Youth, a US funded organisation set up with assistance from Washington as a counterweight to lingering Marxist views even after the fall of the revolutionary government in Grenada. King served in government, under Prime Ministers (John Compton) and then Vaughan Lewis, between 1987 and 1997 first as Minister of Community Development and Sport and then as Minister of Health and Local Government.
When the UWP was in the throes of its leadership contest between its two former leaders, Vaughan Lewis and Sir John Compton, King, the party's Chairman, was seen as Lewis' last big supporter in the party. However he did not follow Lewis into the St Lucia Labour Party on Lewis' loss of the party leadership. When the UWP won a majority of seats in this election, and a new government under Compton was sworn in on 19 December 2006, King became Minister for Health and Labour Relations.
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. It was an ironic twist that King would assume the mantle when the Deputy of the party was overlooked as just a few months before King had been seen as a Lewis loyalist in the party's leadership race. Compton died on 7 September 2007, and King was subsequently sworn in as Prime Minister by Governor-General Pearlette Louisy on 9 September 2007.
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