Whichev­er way Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo de­cides, Trinidad and To­ba­go will have a new prime min­is­ter to­day to re­place in­cum­bent Dr Kei­th Row­ley. The Pres­i­dent’s de­ci­sion will put to rest a lin­ger­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tion as to whether MP Stu­art Young can be ap­point­ed Prime Min­is­ter on the ba­sis of be­ing the choice of the MPs of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, which holds the ma­jor­i­ty in the House, al­though he is not the po­lit­i­cal leader of the rul­ing par­ty.

It’s cer­tain the de­ci­sion has al­ready been made, with the Pres­i­dent more than like­ly de­cid­ing on the ba­sis of the signed let­ters of sup­port by PNM MPs who hold the ma­jor­i­ty in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and who have giv­en their con­sent to MP Young.

The oth­er core in­ter­est point will be the demit­ting from of­fice of in­cum­bent Prime Min­is­ter Dr Row­ley af­ter ten years. Dr Row­ley has been a fix­ture in Par­lia­ment since 1986, when he was draft­ed in­to the Sen­ate by then-op­po­si­tion leader Patrick Man­ning. He be­gan his rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Diego Mar­tin West Con­stituen­cy in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives af­ter the 1991 gen­er­al elec­tion, which was won by the PNM.

Dr Row­ley is the first leader of the PNM to de­part from of­fice on his own steam. While par­ty founder and first prime min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams threat­ened to do so in 1973 at the PNM’s Con­ven­tion, he made a fa­mous “tack back” and caught the heir-ap­par­ent to the throne, Karl Hud­son-Phillip, re­port­ed­ly in mid-flight to as­cen­sion. Dr Williams even­tu­al­ly died in of­fice in 1981.

His suc­ces­sor, George Cham­bers, lost of­fice in the gen­er­al elec­tion of 1986, a de­feat de­scribed by poll­ster Dr Sel­wyn Ryan as a “po­lit­i­cal earth­quake,” the rum­blings of which were gen­er­at­ed by the coali­tion Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion’s (NAR) 33-3 vic­to­ry.

Mr Cham­bers’ suc­ces­sor, Patrick Man­ning, served three terms as prime min­is­ter. Even­tu­al­ly, he was all but chased out of the PNM Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters af­ter los­ing for the last time in the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tions.

Dr Row­ley rides off in­to the fa­bled “po­lit­i­cal sun­set,” hav­ing kept his word to de­part of­fice when he said he would. What is cer­tain is that Dr Row­ley leaves be­hind a poli­ty in deep con­tention over a de­fin­i­tive state­ment on his ca­reer achieve­ments as Prime Min­is­ter.

The op­por­tu­ni­ty is now open for analy­sis and com­men­tary on the tenure of the coun­try’s sev­enth prime min­is­ter. The pop­u­la­tion can­not re­main silent af­ter the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the na­tion ruled for ten years and spent an es­ti­mat­ed $550 bil­lion, if the na­tion­al bud­get is av­er­aged at $55 bil­lion per year.

Over the last week, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley has been busy open­ing two of his Gov­ern­ment’s ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture projects, the new block of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and a new air­port ter­mi­nal build­ing at Crown Point, To­ba­go.

For in­com­ing prime min­is­ter Young, he will first have to show he has the ca­pac­i­ty to counter crim­i­nal­i­ty and be­gin the out­lines of a vi­able plan for eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment in the short time be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion, if he is to steer the PNM to vic­to­ry and se­cure a fresh man­date from the pop­u­la­tion.