Based on all that our sources have been telling us over the past few weeks, we were not in the least sur­prised yes­ter­day by Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s an­nounce­ment of an April 28 elec­tion date.

In fact, our Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter Gail Alexan­der would have re­port­ed as much a week ago when she quot­ed of­fi­cial sources as say­ing that the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) was mo­bil­is­ing its re­sources to seek a new man­date from the peo­ple.

With that said, Mon­day’s elab­o­rate un­veil­ing of a full 28-mem­ber Cab­i­net, with key port­fo­lio changes, in­clud­ing Fi­nance and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, would have served to fu­el spec­u­la­tion that Mr Young was plan­ning to ride out the time cur­rent­ly avail­able to him in gov­ern­ment as a means of prov­ing him­self and his re­pur­posed team—fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Dr Kei­th Row­ley—fit to lead the coun­try.

In­stead, mem­bers of the elec­torate now have a mat­ter of weeks to get ac­cus­tomed to his lead­er­ship style and to de­ter­mine whether it aligns with their col­lec­tive view of the fu­ture.

In ei­ther case, there are po­lit­i­cal risks to con­tem­plate:

Push­ing the elec­tion date lat­er in­to the year would have giv­en the pub­lic more time to scru­ti­nise the ex­ist­ing min­is­ters and po­ten­tial­ly ex­pose per­for­mance gaps that could have turned away vot­ers.

On the oth­er hand, a short­er cam­paign pe­ri­od, of just 40 days from to­day, means less ex­po­sure to the pub­lic’s glare and scruti­ny in an en­vi­ron­ment in which the Op­po­si­tion is al­ready smelling blood in the wa­ter.

Lead­ing the charge against Mr Young is the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar which con­tin­ues to de­scribe his ap­point­ment as prime min­is­ter as un­law­ful and to threat­en to take the mat­ter to court, even af­ter Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, whose sole re­spon­si­bil­i­ty it is un­der the T&T Con­sti­tu­tion to ap­point the leader of the Gov­ern­ment, dis­missed its ar­gu­ments and sought to put the mat­ter to bed.

By an­nounc­ing the elec­tion date soon­er rather than lat­er, Mr Young has there­fore put paid to the UNC’s court threats.

And while the elec­torate will not ac­tu­al­ly vote for a prime min­is­ter on elec­tion day, he has ef­fec­tive­ly sig­nalled to them ex­act­ly who they will be vot­ing for as leader when they cast their bal­lots.

It will there­fore be left to vot­ers to de­ter­mine whether they want him to re­turn as prime min­is­ter at the helm of the PNM or whether they see it fit to choose one of the oth­er avail­able al­ter­na­tives.

With that said, the PNM is yet to de­ter­mine who will be its next po­lit­i­cal leader, even though Dr Row­ley has told the coun­try that he in­tends to step down from that po­si­tion "at the soon­est" op­por­tu­ni­ty. 

We note that the par­ty has nav­i­gat­ed its re­cent chal­lenges in a man­ner that has brought it to where it is able to present a unit­ed front to the pub­lic af­ter MPs open­ly re­belled over Young’s se­lec­tion as Dr Row­ley’s re­place­ment. 

And if Young, as prime min­is­ter, leads the par­ty to vic­to­ry, it is dif­fi­cult to en­vis­age a sce­nario in which the elect­ed MPs of the PNM would open­ly sup­port any­one else but him for the top job.

How­ev­er, for the sake of as­sur­ing that there are no lurk­ing sur­pris­es around the cor­ner, the par­ty would do well to set­tle its po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship soon­er rather than lat­er.