CASTRIES, St Lucia (AP) – A former six-term prime minister who had retired from politics and St Lucia’s current premier headed into the final stretch of their campaigning yesterday for the island’s general elections with rising crime topping voter concerns.

Prime Minister Kenny Anthony was hosting an evening concert in his constituency in Vieux Fort in southern St Lucia, while Sir John Compton’s United Workers Party has organised an islandwide motorcade ending with a rally in Dennery, a village on the east coast.

People in the southern Caribbean island of 165,000 will vote tomorrow. Nearly 900 police officers and firefighters cast their customary first ballots on Friday so they can man the polling stations on election day.

Compton, premier from 1964 to 1979 – the year St Lucia gained independence from Britain – and 1982 to 1996, returned to politics last year when he was elected to lead his party. Regarded as the father of the nation, he says mounting debt and crime were forcing residents to leave the island once known as “sweet St Lucia”.

“We are asking you to return to the days when you felt secure in your own home and in your streets and your prime minister was not afraid to walk among his own people and could go anywhere without bulletproof cars and bodyguards,” Compton said at a recent rally in the capital, Castries.

Seeking a third straight five-year term in the 17-member House of Assembly, Anthony has touted the island’s economic success under his watch – a 5.4 per cent growth rate in 2005, the highest in 12 years – and has pledged to crack down on rising crime. His St Lucia Labour Party has promised to make executions mandatory for those convicted of murder.

Yearly killings have increased nearly fourfold in the 10 years since Anthony’s party unseated the United Workers Party in 1997. The slaying of a French chef in early December raised this year’s number of homicides to 34 – just shy of the record 37 killings logged in 2004 and 2005.

Anthony’s party has attempted to make Compton’s age – 81 – a factor in the campaign, referring to him as “yesterday’s man”.

“Our nation has witnessed a decade of transformation in which every sector and every community has benefited from the positive economic growth, social and human resource development programmes of our government,” Anthony said Wednesday at a rally in Castries.

Compton’s party currently holds three seats to the Labour Party’s 13 in the assembly, with one being held by an independent.

There are 135,958 people eligible to vote. Four independents and 17 candidates from each of the two parties are running for election.