An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go's pre­mier busi­ness groups say they are ready to work with En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young af­ter MPs of the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chose him to be the next Prime Min­is­ter.

The PNM cau­cus made the de­ci­sion yes­ter­day to sup­port Stu­art Young's lead­er­ship of the par­ty, as they com­plet­ed a two-day re­treat at Plan­ta­tions in To­ba­go. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced on Fri­day that he would be re­tir­ing as the coun­try's po­lit­i­cal leader and as the leader of the PNM this year.

Af­ter learn­ing of the news of Young's se­lec­tion, the pres­i­dent of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Ki­ran Ma­haraj, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the body is ea­ger to con­tin­ue col­lab­o­rat­ing with Young and work­ing to­geth­er in the best in­ter­ests of T&T.

“While the na­tion faces sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges, we view this mo­ment as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to adopt a re­newed vi­sion and strate­gic ap­proach for the fu­ture.

“The T&T Cham­ber al­so un­der­scores the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of ad­dress­ing crime, cor­rup­tion, and eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, em­pha­sis­ing the need for strong col­lab­o­ra­tion with the pri­vate sec­tor to fos­ter growth, sta­bil­i­ty, and pros­per­i­ty for the coun­try. We look for­ward to en­gag­ing with all rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers to achieve these ob­jec­tives,” Ma­haraj de­tailed.

Com­ment­ing on the news, AM­CHAM T&T CEO Ni­rad Tewarie said while the cham­ber does not get in­volved in pol­i­tics with the in­di­vid­ual par­ties or pick sides, Young has had sev­er­al en­gage­ments with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.
“Min­is­ter Young has been one of the more ac­tive min­is­ters in terms of en­gage­ment with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and so large sec­tions of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty would have in­ter­act­ed with him and he has led sev­er­al of our in­ter­na­tion­al ef­forts to deep­en re­la­tions with our in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners on a va­ri­ety of is­sues,” Tewarie stat­ed.
Mean­while, Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA), Gre­go­ry Aboud said Young ap­proach­es his job with a mea­sure of pas­sion and that is what is need­ed for the job in this coun­try.
He said DO­MA is cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic that Young will ful­fill his role quite pos­i­tive­ly.
Aboud al­so ob­served that Young re­deemed him­self on many oc­ca­sions with the As­so­ci­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in his role as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.
“He has risen through the ranks. He has stayed the course and he has made his mark, ob­vi­ous­ly im­press­ing his col­leagues. We not on­ly would like to say that we have had good ex­pe­ri­ences with Min­is­ter Young but we would like to say that we cer­tain­ly wish him well and wish him great suc­cess in his role,” said the DO­MA head.
Asked if he be­lieves Young is ca­pa­ble of be­ing Prime Min­is­ter, Aboud said he has ex­pe­ri­ence in sev­er­al min­istries, has ne­go­ti­at­ed big in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments and has met with ma­jor cor­po­ra­tions all over the world. Young has al­so been in­volved in diplo­mat­ic in­ter­ac­tions in the Mid­dle East, Eu­rope, and South Amer­i­ca.
“I do not want to ap­pear to be too over­come with con­fi­dence, but we are prob­a­bly of the view that Young will take this ap­point­ment very se­ri­ous­ly, as he has done with all his oth­er tasks, and that would be the mea­sure of his suc­cess, as to how se­ri­ous­ly he takes the task,” Aboud added.