The fallout one year later

2026-03-22 - 00:25

Last Tuesday, former prime minister, Dr Keith Rowley, held a press conference at his home to reflect on his departure from office one year before. It was a highly controversial and bitter news conference. The (in)famous parrot kept disturbing the proceedings, and Rowley spent an hour talking before he took questions. The reporters who questioned him showed a level of deference, polite engagement and courtesy that is the opposite of how the current Prime Minister is questioned by reporters nowadays. There is fallout from the press conference, as Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, apart from the crudity of the event, was handed an unusual gift of the People’s National Movement and Dr Rowley publicly squabbling with each other over whether or not he was invited to the party’s 70th anniversary celebrations on January 26th instant. The General Secretary of the PNM, Foster Cummings, says that Rowley was invited, and Rowley says that he did not receive any invitation. The situation escalated on Thursday with the General Secretary talking about the party having to do better with its internal processes. The CNC3 News on Thursday night also played a clip of Foster Cummings calling out to the absent Dr Rowley at the actual celebration event. For a seasoned politician like Rowley, this kind of public disagreement does not happen by guesswork. The fact that he chose to reveal it, rather than address it internally and away from the public glare, is an omen of something far more significant going on. Additionally, the silence of Political Leader Pennelope Beckles(at the time of writing this column) is also significant. Whatever is going on with this PNM vs PNM situation may reveal itself in the fullness of time. The genie is out of the bottle and, unless resolved, will remain a matter of political fodder in the political domain. Last year, Rowley had a succession plan and convinced the General Council of the party that he could stay as political leader, and Stuart Young could be appointed prime minister. President Christine Kangaloo was ultimately convinced that the PNM did not need to have a new political leader to appoint Stuart Young under section 76(1)(a) of the Constitution instead of section 76(1)(b). The latter catered for the party not having an undisputed Leader, as Dr Rowley was still the political leader of the PNM. Instead, the presidential plan was implemented. However, something happened on the day after Young was sworn in as prime minister. His inaugural speech spoke to work that had to be done, and suggested that he was going to embark on some policy changes to mark out a new pathway for himself and his new government. The ink was barely dry on his prime ministerial appointment before he advised the President to dissolve the Parliament the next day and called a general election for April 28. No media house has ever conducted any investigative journalistic piece to understand why he called the snap general election after his inauguration and Cabinet reshuffle. That might have exposed the deep divisions that emerged inside the party after the Cabinet reshuffle. There was obvious disquiet inside the PNM, either over the appointment of Young or over the Cabinet reshuffle or both. This succession plan, despite being unpopular inside the PNM, was very popular in Caracas. No other Cabinet Minister would have been more suitable for the Maduro regime than Stuart Young. This plan was in the works for quite some time, as Dr Rowley gave an interview to former Express political reporter, Ria Taitt, in early November 2024, in which he flagged the possibility of one person being political leader and another person being prime minister. The decision to cancel the party’s annual convention in November 2024 started the political death spiral for the party when coupled with their unpopularity. Rowley presided over the 11-9 party caucus vote in Tobago, which clearly demonstrated that the PNM caucus was deeply divided. With no test by way of a party election because Rowley was staying on as party leader, he had calculated that he could swing the PNM MPs to support Young. He used his prime ministerial authority to get his way with the PNM General Council to anoint Young as prime minister. The party walked into a colossal electoral defeat with eyes wide open. This decision was founded on the flawed belief that Kamla Persad-Bissessar was unelectable, and this was an experiment that the PNM could take a chance with, notwithstanding their extreme unpopularity as shown in the 2023 Local Government elections in Trinidad. In those elections, the United National Congress contested only 110 seats and earned 173,961 votes, while the PNM contested all 141 seats and only earned 130,868 votes. The die had been cast since 2023. Professor Hamid Ghany is Professor of Constitutional Affairs and Parliamentary Studies at The University of the West Indies (UWI). He was also appointed an Honorary Professor of The UWI upon his retirement in October 2021. He continues his research and publications and also does some teaching at The UWI.