To have done oth­er­wise than hold to­geth­er on Stu­art Young as the prime min­is­ter-to-be when in­cum­bent Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley leaves of­fice, could have re­sult­ed in the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment fac­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing re­moved from of­fice. How? With­out to­tal sup­port from all the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MPs in the House, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo would be re­quired to call for a vote on which in­di­vid­ual had the ma­jor­i­ty of sup­port in the House.

In such an in­stance, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar could have emerged as prime min­is­ter.

The oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty was for Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley to have ini­ti­at­ed a snap elec­tion be­fore the Pres­i­dent got around to call­ing for the par­lia­men­tary vote.

Ob­vi­ous­ly, nei­ther one of those pos­si­ble out­comes would favour the PNM. So, the log­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal­ly con­sis­tent po­si­tion at the PNM gen­er­al coun­cil lev­el would have been to unite around Mr Young. Dr Row­ley, be­ing an ex­pe­ri­enced politi­cian and tac­ti­cian, must have worked out the pos­si­ble per­am­bu­la­tions.

The chal­lenge for Mr Young when he gets in­to the prime min­is­te­r­i­al chair, will be to per­form in a man­ner that will be pleas­ing to the par­ty and the na­tion, to the point that both par­ty and the elec­torate will be en­cour­aged to give him a full five-year term of of­fice.

If all goes well with the plans of Dr Row­ley and his par­ty, this will not be the first time the PNM will have a short-term prime min­is­ter. George Cham­bers, when se­lect­ed by then-pres­i­dent El­lis Clarke to re­place the de­ceased then-prime min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams, served out the rest of the Williams term from March be­fore be­ing elect­ed on his own steam as prime min­is­ter in No­vem­ber of 1981. There is quite an un­can­ny re­sem­blance of the time­frame be­tween Mr Cham­bers’ short term as the prime min­is­ter from March to his elec­tion in No­vem­ber of the same year.

How­ev­er, the road to be­ing elect­ed as prime min­is­ter is go­ing to be a dif­fi­cult one for Mr Young. First­ly, he has to show an im­age and at­ti­tude as prime min­is­ter very dif­fer­ent from the one cut by Dr Row­ley. The in­cum­bent has con­sis­tent­ly por­trayed him­self as be­ing dom­i­neer­ing and un­will­ing to lis­ten to any oth­er voice but his own. Mr Young must sure­ly be aware of pub­lic opin­ion around such mat­ters and know that he is not start­ing off with the sup­port base in­side and out­side of the PNM as Dr Row­ley had.

Sec­ond­ly, Dr Row­ley’s elec­tion in 2015 al­so came against the to­tal fail­ure of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship to gov­ern with peace and sta­bil­i­ty.

The two main chal­lenges up ahead for Mr Young, when he is ap­point­ed, will be to have the po­lice, the courts and the en­tire crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem make a no­table show­ing against or­gan­ised and very vi­o­lent crime.

The oth­er ma­jor chal­lenge will be for Mr Young to at least out­line a re­al­is­tic eco­nom­ic pro­gramme to be­gin the trans­for­ma­tion of the econ­o­my from one com­plete­ly de­pen­dent on the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The PNM gen­er­al coun­cil must al­so be cred­it­ed for be­ing bold enough to elect a non-Tri­ni-African to lead this his­tor­i­cal­ly ma­jor­i­ty “Afro-Tri­ni par­ty.” The ques­tion now is whether such courage can lead to a trans­for­ma­tion of the race-based pol­i­tics of T&T?