P. J. Patterson

The Right Honourable Percival Noel James Patterson (born April 10, 1935) is the current Prime Minister of Jamaica (since 1992) and is the leader of the Jamaican People's National Party.

Patterson is Jamaica's longest-serving Prime Minister. He first entered politics in 1969, winning a by-election to a seat in western Jamaica, campaigning with the slogan "Young, gifted, and black."

Patterson served in a variety of cabinet posts under Prime Minister Michael Manley, both in the 1970s, and during Manley's second prime ministership at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s. He became Prime Minister and leader of the People's National Party himself when Manley resigned in 1992. He has since been re-elected three times.

Patterson is said to be Jamaica's first black Prime Minister, and campaigned on a message of returning the country to the hands of its racial majority. Most of Jamaica's past Prime Ministers have been from mixed racial backgrounds, and one, Edward Seaga was Caucasian.

He made headlines in 2004 when it was announced that Jamaica (as well as Saint Kitts and Nevis and Venezuela) would not recognize the internationally-installed government of Gérard Latortue in Haiti following the alleged resignation of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Patterson was instrumental in arranging for Aristide to take up temporary residence in Jamaica during Aristide's lawsuit against the United States and France accusing the countries of kidnapping him. He is a graduate of the University of the West Indies Mona Campus.