Party Leader Perry Christie | Deputy Leader Philip Davis | |
Founded 1953; 64 years ago (1953) Headquarters Farrington Road, N. 547
P.O. Box, Nassau Youth wing Progressive Young Liberals Ideology Social liberalism
Progressivism
Left-wing nationalism | ||
The Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) is a populist and social liberal party in the Bahamas. The PLP lies on the left of the political spectrum. Perry Christie is the leader of the party and has been Prime Minister of the Bahamas since the 7 May 2012 general elections.
History
The PLP was founded in 1953 by William Cartwright, Cyril Stevenson, and Henry Milton Taylor. The PLP was the first national political party in the Bahamas.
The party governed for 30 years, from 1967 to 1992 and again from 2002 to 2007. Leading the party to its first victory in 1967 was Lynden Pindling, the country's first Prime Minister. The party nationalized some private businesses due to socialist tendencies.
Perry Christie was Prime Minister of the Bahamas between May 2, 2002 and the 2007 general elections when the party was defeated by the rival Free National Movement (FNM) which won 23 seats. The FNM installed leader Hubert Ingraham as the Prime Minister. After defeat and one of its MPs leaving the party since, the PLP held 17 of the 41 seats in the Bahamas National Assembly.
In the 2012 general election on 7 2012, the Progressive Liberals won a solid majority in a landslide election victory, taking 29 of the 38 seats in parliament. Christie was sworn into office on 8 May 2012.
Hubert Ingraham announced his retirement from politics following the defeat of his party. This was the first general election in which the Democratic National Alliance, a third party offered a full slate of candidates along with the two major parties; however, the DNA lost the only seat it held in the prior parliament (that of Branville McCartney, its founder and only MP) and elected no candidates. Elections in the Bahamas take place in the framework of a parliamentary democracy, which relies on the first-past-the-post system of voting.