GAIL ALEXAN­DER

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) lead­er­ship race has been set­tled in favour of Stu­art Young, with all 21 MPs sup­port­ing him.

It’s of­fi­cial that En­er­gy Min­is­ter Young will suc­ceed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, and he will al­so be the par­ty’s can­di­date for po­lit­i­cal leader ahead. The nine MPs who ini­tial­ly baulked at sign­ing an en­dorse­ment let­ter for Young will sign the doc­u­ment.

“Look for­ward to team PNM!” Young alert­ed T&T at a me­dia brief­ing af­ter yes­ter­day’s PNM Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing, where he clasped hands with PNM Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings, who an­nounced the de­vel­op­ments. 

Young spoke of his plan for uni­ty and uni­fi­ca­tion af­ter yes­ter­day’s three-hour gen­er­al coun­cil at PNM’s Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain. The meet­ing was at­tend­ed by al­most 200 peo­ple with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from all 41 con­stituen­cies, youth and women’s leagues, the leg­isla­tive branch, and To­ba­go.

The set­tle­ment of the PNM’s in­ter­nal is­sues fol­lowed the an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Jan­u­ary 3 that he would be re­tir­ing.

A sub­se­quent two-day To­ba­go meet­ing of PNM’s par­lia­men­tary cau­cus where the lead­er­ship is­sue was dis­cussed, pro­duced a vote last Mon­day of 11 MPs sup­port­ing Young to suc­ceed Row­ley. Nine sup­port­ed Plan­ning Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son. Row­ley did not vote.

Al­though MPs in To­ba­go ini­tial­ly agreed to sup­port Young, con­cerns arose from some on Wednes­day when it came time to sign the en­dorse­ment let­ter for him to be­come Prime Min­is­ter.

Is­sues con­tin­ued sim­mer­ing at Thurs­day’s meet­ing of the par­lia­men­tary (leg­isla­tive) cau­cus of MPs, which dis­cussed the let­ter. Moves were al­so on from cer­tain area of­fi­cials to present a mo­tion at yes­ter­day’s coun­cil seek­ing Row­ley’s res­ig­na­tion ear­li­er and an elec­tion con­ven­tion by March 31 rather than Sep­tem­ber.

Sources said ad­dress­es were made at yes­ter­day’s coun­cil on pro­tect­ing the par­ty, the lead­er­ship, and the process. These came from Op­er­a­tions Of­fi­cer Irene Hinds, MP Faris Al-Rawi, and Youth Of­fi­cer Je­niece Scott, while Labour Of­fi­cer Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus main­tained that a con­ven­tion to rat­i­fy de­ci­sions should be held in March.

At the sub­se­quent brief­ing, Cum­mings said the coun­cil had a quite or­der­ly meet­ing.

“Per­sons par­tic­i­pat­ed and raised is­sues they would have had dur­ing ‘Gen­er­al Busi­ness’. At the con­clu­sion, no mo­tion from the floor was put by any mem­ber deal­ing with any mat­ter what­so­ev­er.

“Per­sons did raise many con­cerns or dif­fer­ent is­sues that would be a nor­mal thing at a gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing. At the end of the day, we con­tin­ue to be a strong, unit­ed par­ty ready to rep­re­sent the peo­ple.

“All 21 mem­bers of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the PNM have signed on to agree and ap­prove Min­is­ter Young to take over the of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter up­on the re­tire­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley,” Cum­mings added.

Cum­mings said the PNM was a very dis­ci­plined, ex­pe­ri­enced par­ty, and it was unit­ed and strong. “Every MP is unit­ed be­hind Min­is­ter Young in this new re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that he’s to take on.”

Cum­mings: No va­can­cy for po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship at this time

Cum­mings ad­mit­ted mem­bers’ con­cerns in­clud­ed the ques­tion of PNM’s po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship. “Every­thing was ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed,” he said, de­clin­ing to pro­vide de­tails of the con­cerns. Young said Row­ley ad­dressed mem­bers, “He said what he had to say and re­it­er­at­ed mat­ters ... and com­ing out of that, every­body un­der­stood, and there was con­sen­sus there al­so.”

Cum­mings said there was no va­can­cy for po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship at this time; it doesn’t arise, and “when it’s be­fore us, we’ll ad­dress it.”

He added, “Dr Row­ley con­tin­ues to be the PNM’s po­lit­i­cal leader. He’s in­di­cat­ed he’ll re­sign as Prime Min­is­ter. When that time comes, our can­di­date is Min­is­ter Young, of course. We’re 100 per cent be­hind Min­is­ter Young in that re­gard.”

Young said the Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed he was go­ing to re­sign, and the next stage is that the Pres­i­dent has to make a de­ci­sion based on the Con­sti­tu­tion’s pro­vi­sions. He said all 21 PNM MPs are stand­ing be­hind the out­come of their re­cent vote. “And that’s what’s go­ing to go for­ward ... We’ll take this step by step. There’s no va­can­cy, no res­ig­na­tion of ei­ther a PM or po­lit­i­cal leader.”

Young could not give spe­cif­ic time­lines of when the res­ig­na­tion might oc­cur. “That’s ab­solute­ly up to Dr Row­ley. What the PNM is pre­sent­ing to­day is a seam­less tran­si­tion for the post of Prime Min­is­ter. That’s signed, sealed, de­liv­ered—and that’s the end of that.”

Young said the T&T con­sti­tu­tion­al as­pect for the de­ter­mi­na­tion of a PM was ad­dressed, and on the PNM’s con­sti­tu­tion to de­ter­mine a po­lit­i­cal leader, he said, “I have no fear—that too will be ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed at the ap­pro­pri­ate time.”

Young said it was “ex­plained to the gen­er­al coun­cil” that it is not an un­usu­al/ab­nor­mal sit­u­a­tion since in To­ba­go, the mi­nor­i­ty leader is Kelvon Mor­ris, but the leader of PNM’s To­ba­go Coun­cil is Sen­a­tor An­cil Den­nis.

Young’s uni­ty mes­sage

Young, who is Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and Port-of-Spain North MP, said, “My mes­sage is to first of all thank the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter and leader of the PNM, Dr Row­ley for con­tin­u­ing his lead­er­ship of this great par­ty. Im­por­tant­ly, my mes­sage is one of uni­ty and uni­fi­ca­tion.

“I’ve been in very good di­a­logue, in par­tic­u­lar with my col­leagues and many of my oth­er col­leagues, and what you’re see­ing here is what you’d ex­pect to see from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment. What you’re see­ing here is his­toric. We’re pleased to tell T&T that what you’re go­ing to be see­ing is the roll-out of Team PNM,” Young added.

“You’re go­ing to be see­ing Team PNM go­ing to the pop­u­la­tion as a uni­fied, strength­ened par­ty—a par­ty that has a lot to of­fer the pop­u­la­tion, and I look for­ward to work­ing with my col­leagues in a man­ner that will present to this pop­u­la­tion some­thing that maybe you’ll be un­pre­pared for in the most pos­i­tive of man­ners. We’re go­ing to be see­ing uni­ty and his­tor­i­cal things hap­pen­ing that will on­ly up­lift T&T.”

Young said the en­dorse­ment doc­u­ment was not a let­ter. “It was a sig­na­ture of con­fir­ma­tion of what oc­curred in To­ba­go and the agree­ment among all of us to stand as a unit­ed front as we go for­ward up­on Dr Row­ley’s res­ig­na­tion.”

On how the nine MPs who sup­port­ed Beck­les were con­vinced to sup­port him, Young said, “I don’t re­al­ly think it was a mat­ter of ‘con­vinc­ing’, we had cer­tain dis­cus­sions, and we al­ways knew, I be­lieve, that we’d end up at this point, and it re­al­ly wasn’t a mat­ter of con­vinc­ing—this is ex­act­ly where I ex­pect­ed us as the PNM to end up.”

Cum­mings added, “It was a mat­ter of con­sen­sus build­ing. At the end of the day, we’re all PNM mem­bers; we all have the par­ty’s best in­ter­ests at heart, and we’re just very hap­py we’ve reached this point to­day where we can move for­ward,” Cum­mings con­firmed that mat­ters were set­tled at Thurs­day’s meet­ing at Bal­isi­er House.

Con­cerns raised by PN­Mites

PNM Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings al­so ad­dressed con­cerns by PN­Mites who want­ed an elec­tion con­ven­tion.

PNM’s Coun­cil day be­gan around 8.07 am yes­ter­day when a post from Cum­mings was cir­cu­lat­ed in PNM groups. It stat­ed, “We are the PNM, the strongest and most re­silient po­lit­i­cal par­ty in the re­gion. It is on­ly as a unit­ed team that we will con­tin­ue to be great. We are in an elec­tion year and as such we need all hands on deck, work­ing to­geth­er as a unit­ed force. As gen­er­al sec­re­tary, I urge all par­ty mem­bers to work with us as we con­tin­ue to bring good gov­er­nance to Trinidad and To­ba­go,”

“We have se­lect­ed the par­ty chair­man and MP for PoS North as the mem­ber to suc­ceed Dr Row­ley as Prime Min­is­ter and he has my full sup­port. Great is the PNM and we shall pre­vail. Let’s do this.”

For­mer PNM Ari­ma chair­man Cagney Cas­simire said their unit was aware of the post but a maxi taxi full of Ari­ma MP Pen­ny Beck­les’ sup­port­ers from Ari­ma came to Bal­isi­er House. He said Ari­ma’s three rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the gen­er­al coun­cil were to present a mo­tion seek­ing a lead­er­ship elec­tion con­ven­tion.

Cum­mings said, “We’ve set­tled on the mat­ter of who will be the per­son re­plac­ing Dr Row­ley as Prime Min­is­ter. When the mat­ter of po­lit­i­cal leader is be­fore us, we’ll treat with that. As it is now we’re unit­ed be­hind Mr Stu­art Young and we’ll con­tin­ue to give him that sup­port to en­sure he can get in­to this role and con­tin­ue serv­ing T&T.”

Cum­mings as­sured that at the ap­pro­pri­ate time, all mat­ters will be ad­dressed ad­e­quate­ly.

Young said Beck­les-Robin­son was in the coun­cil meet­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the dis­cus­sion with Young and oth­ers on Thurs­day.

Young thanked Cum­mings for “work­ing as close­ly as he did with me over the last few days to en­sure that we’re pre­sent­ing to­day, Team PNM to the pop­u­la­tion and we thank all of my (MP) col­leagues. I look for­ward to how we con­tin­ue to un­fold this chap­ter in T&T’s his­to­ry.”