Three po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts be­lieve that new­ly mint­ed Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s swift an­nounce­ment of the gen­er­al elec­tion date—less than 24 hours af­ter tak­ing the oath of of­fice—sug­gests in­ter­nal tur­moil with­in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj likened the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion to a po­lit­i­cal sprint, short­er than a 60-me­tre dash.

He ques­tioned why Prime Min­is­ter Young had con­duct­ed a cab­i­net reshuf­fle just a day be­fore trig­ger­ing the elec­tion.

“To what end was the po­lit­i­cal reshuf­fle if you were go­ing to call an elec­tion with­in 48 hours or less? Is there a po­lit­i­cal cri­sis that we are not yet aware of when it comes to the fi­nan­cial man­age­ment of the econ­o­my?”

He pre­dict­ed a dra­mat­ic and chaot­ic cam­paign sea­son, fu­elled by so­cial me­dia and pub­lic sen­ti­ment. He said press­ing na­tion­al con­cerns, in­clud­ing the state of the econ­o­my, crime, and the sta­bil­i­ty of the en­er­gy sec­tor, would weigh heav­i­ly on vot­ers’ minds.

“We are go­ing to have po­lit­i­cal dra­ma every three hours, es­pe­cial­ly with an ac­tive so­cial me­dia. So, there are go­ing to be con­flicts, Trinidad bac­cha­nal, con­fu­sion, and it’s go­ing to be dif­fi­cult to iden­ti­fy the truth and re­al­i­ty in an emo­tion­al­ly charged en­vi­ron­ment,” he said.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Shane Mo­hammed agreed, ar­gu­ing that Young’s de­ci­sion to form what he called a “care­tak­er cab­i­net” rather than take time to es­tab­lish him­self as leader re­flect­ed deep­er in­sta­bil­i­ty with­in the PNM.

“It says to me that the Gov­ern­ment has be­come un­sus­tain­able. It could very well be that the rum­blings with­in the par­ty were nev­er set­tled. It was al­ways there, no mat­ter how hard they tried to close ranks and show good stand­ing and show face—that un­der the sur­face there have been deep-root­ed di­vi­sions.”

Mo­hammed be­lieves Young missed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to es­tab­lish him­self as a fresh face and ap­peal to the elec­torate. In­stead, he sug­gest­ed Young may have called the elec­tion ear­ly to catch the Op­po­si­tion off guard. How­ev­er, he dis­missed this as fu­tile, not­ing that all po­lit­i­cal par­ties had an­tic­i­pat­ed an elec­tion this year, as it was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due by Au­gust 27.

He al­so raised con­cerns over Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s con­tin­ued lead­er­ship of the PNM de­spite the elec­tion be­ing called, sug­gest­ing that Young may not be ful­ly in con­trol.

“This can very much be viewed as Dr Row­ley be­ing the pup­pet mas­ter and Stu­art Young be­ing the pup­pet,” he said.

Econ­o­mist and for­mer PNM fi­nance min­is­ter Mar­i­ano Browne dis­agreed, ar­gu­ing that Row­ley’s con­tin­ued lead­er­ship of the PNM was a strate­gic move to pre­vent Young from be­ing un­der­mined.

“By re­main­ing as po­lit­i­cal leader, what Row­ley is do­ing, in fact, is main­tain­ing par­ty dis­ci­pline and es­sen­tial­ly en­sur­ing that he has Stu­art’s back. In oth­er words, if there is any like­li­hood of any sort of coup that could take place be­fore, dur­ing, or af­ter the elec­tion, he’s in a po­si­tion to stop it. And I think that’s the rea­son why he hasn’t giv­en up his tenure as po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM.”

Browne be­lieves that who tru­ly led the charge to­wards the elec­tion—Young or Row­ley—would be telling. He al­so point­ed to the reshuf­fling of key min­is­ters as a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to defuse po­lit­i­cal ten­sion.

He not­ed that for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds and for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert were re­as­signed to less high-pro­file roles in what he saw as a cal­cu­lat­ed strat­e­gy.

He said the two men were “light­ning rods of crit­i­cism.”

Browne not­ed that the lat­est de­vel­op­ment sig­nalled a care­ful­ly or­ches­trat­ed in­ter­nal time­line, be­gin­ning with the Cab­i­net re­treat in Jan­u­ary, where Young was iden­ti­fied as Row­ley’s suc­ces­sor. This was fol­lowed by a Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing, Row­ley’s of­fi­cial res­ig­na­tion, and Young’s ap­point­ment as Prime Min­is­ter.

He sug­gest­ed that Young could have been ap­point­ed in­ter­im po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM, ar­gu­ing that this ap­proach might have strength­ened his po­si­tion.

“That was done be­fore. Cer­tain­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley was ap­point­ed po­lit­i­cal leader with­in three days of elec­tion de­feat in 2010 and then went on to lead the par­ty in a gen­er­al elec­tion. The time would have been short, but it would have been suf­fi­cient enough to al­low Stu­art Young, in a sense, to get his feet wet.”

Ac­cord­ing to Browne, the cur­rent arrange­ment is un­usu­al, as it places Young in a po­si­tion where he is, in ef­fect, sub­or­di­nate to Row­ley with­in the par­ty struc­ture.

He added that the as­sump­tion is Row­ley will step down if Young wins the elec­tion.

On Sun­day, af­ter the PNM un­veiled its 41 can­di­dates at Wood­ford Square in Port of Spain, Dr Row­ley took to so­cial me­dia to an­nounce his in­ten­tion to re­sign as po­lit­i­cal leader be­fore his tenure legal­ly ends in 2026.

“If he los­es, it’s not clear to me that Stu­art Young has the full back­ing of the par­ty. And if he los­es, I doubt he could sur­vive it. He’ll re­main in of­fice if he has a seat, but whether he’ll stay on as po­lit­i­cal leader? I doubt it,” Browne said.

Nev­er­the­less, chair of the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour, Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath, is call­ing on all po­lit­i­cal par­ties—whether sig­na­to­ries or not—to up­hold the code of con­duct es­tab­lished in 2014 and en­sure a clean, fair elec­tion cam­paign.

With po­lit­i­cal ten­sions high and the elec­tion just weeks away, the coun­try now braces for what is ex­pect­ed to be an in­tense and un­pre­dictable race to the polls.