KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

While Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s de­ci­sion to re­sign as Prime Min­is­ter of T&T be­fore the le­gal end of his term is not a unique one, he is set­ting a prece­dent across the Caribbean by re­main­ing leader of the par­ty–the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)– post-res­ig­na­tion.

Over the years, re­gion­al heads of state like Per­ci­val James (PJ) Pat­ter­son and Bruce Gold­ing of Ja­maica and Eu­ge­nia Charles of Do­mini­ca opt­ed for ear­ly po­lit­i­cal ex­its, mak­ing room for their suc­ces­sors to take over as Prime Min­is­ter and par­ty lead­ers.

In T&T’s case, how­ev­er, Dr Row­ley will have the fi­nal say with­in the PNM but ul­ti­mate­ly, En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Stu­art Young will be the one to gov­ern the coun­try un­til the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

So, how does this im­pact the tran­si­tion of pow­er lo­cal­ly, and can it in­flu­ence re­gion­al pol­i­tics? Re­gion­al po­lit­i­cal ex­perts be­lieve the unique de­par­ture of the for­mer chair­man of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) may not lead to sig­nif­i­cant changes. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day, po­lit­i­cal con­sul­tant and prin­ci­pal di­rec­tor of Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Re­search Ser­vices (CADRES), Pe­ter Wick­ham, said he does not be­lieve Row­ley’s move will start a rev­o­lu­tion across the re­gion con­cern­ing term lim­its.

Wick­ham said, “As to whether I think Dr Kei­th Row­ley will start a rev­o­lu­tion where lead­ers will fi­nal­ly have an epiphany and say, ‘Look, maybe I should go af­ter two terms or three terms or be­cause I am old’, I doubt it ... The tech­ni­cal­i­ty in terms of Row­ley leav­ing and whether he’s lead­ing the PNM or not, I think is much ado about noth­ing, and I’ve lis­tened to aca­d­e­m­ic con­ver­sa­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go and else­where about the ex­tent to which he is con­strained by virtue of the fact that he is not giv­ing up the lead­er­ship of the par­ty.

“In­deed, sug­ges­tions have been made in some aca­d­e­m­ic quar­ters that the Pres­i­dent is in a co­nun­drum be­cause she has to iden­ti­fy an al­ter­na­tive Prime Min­is­ter that is not leader of the par­ty, and I think that ul­ti­mate­ly this is es­sen­tial­ly split­ting hairs. The re­al­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion is that we un­der­stand that the route to the Of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter is the lead­er­ship of the PNM or the UNC as the case may be.

“I think that Row­ley, how­ev­er, un­der­stands that the re­place­ment of his pre­ferred suc­ces­sor in that role presents some chal­lenges. I think what he’s es­sen­tial­ly try­ing to do is hand-pick his suc­ces­sor based on who he thinks will suc­ceed. I can’t see that to be a bad thing, and I think that the greater in­ter­est is in the fact that he’s tak­en a ma­ture de­ci­sion as a politi­cian who has spent his life in pol­i­tics to leave with his boots on, leave while he’s at the top; leave while the par­ty still has a lev­el of pop­u­lar­i­ty and in a sce­nario where the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go have been say­ing through pub­lic opin­ion polls, they’re not ex­cit­ed by ei­ther Row­ley or Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“He’s es­sen­tial­ly giv­ing the PNM an op­tion that the UNC doesn’t have so I sup­port it. I don’t see con­sti­tu­tion­al or le­gal hur­dles in the way.”

When asked if hav­ing two lead­ers – one for the Gov­ern­ment and one for the par­ty – would lead to po­lit­i­cal tur­moil, Wick­ham dis­agreed. He be­lieves that Dr Row­ley will adopt a more pas­sive role go­ing for­ward, which should pre­vent any sig­nif­i­cant is­sues.

Wick­ham added, “To be hon­est, I think if Row­ley could leave pol­i­tics to­mor­row, he would re­sign en­tire­ly. The chal­lenge that Row­ley has is he knows if he leaves pol­i­tics to­mor­row, the Par­lia­ment will have a chal­lenge in that you wouldn’t have a ma­jor­i­ty and there’s no pro­vi­sion that you can call a by-elec­tion so close to an elec­tion.

“The on­ly rea­son that he’s hang­ing on is be­cause he wants to keep the PNM in pow­er po­lit­i­cal­ly and par­lia­men­tary, and he un­der­stands the on­ly way to do that is to re­main, but I don’t get the im­pres­sion that he has an ap­petite for be­ing in­volved in the hurly-burly.

“My sense is that he will re­treat to the back­bench for as long as there is a Par­lia­ment. My ex­pec­ta­tion is that Stu­art Young will call an elec­tion prob­a­bly just af­ter Lent be­cause it will make a lot of sense for him to go to the polls as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.”

But Dr Row­ley is not the on­ly Kei­th step­ping away from his decades-long po­lit­i­cal ca­reer.

On Feb­ru­ary 21, Grena­da’s Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Mitchell re­lin­quished his role as leader of the New Na­tion­al Par­ty (NNP) and an­nounced his res­ig­na­tion.

2025 is al­so the year of gen­er­al elec­tions across the Caribbean, with sev­er­al coun­tries like Ja­maica, Guyana, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines set to join T&T by head­ing to the polls, leav­ing Caribbean na­tion­als from sev­er­al coun­tries to de­cide whether to re­tain their cur­rent gov­ern­ments or shift the po­lit­i­cal land­scape with a new gov­ern­ment.

And, while Dr Row­ley’s lead­er­ship has re­sult­ed in sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ments for the re­gion, it has al­so been met with crit­i­cisms, es­pe­cial­ly con­cern­ing do­mes­tic gov­er­nance and eco­nom­ic is­sues. Nonethe­less, his con­tri­bu­tions to Cari­com re­main sub­stan­tial.

Fact sheet on Dr Row­ley

* Born on Oc­to­ber 24, 1949 (age 75)

* 7th Prime Min­is­ter of T&T, sworn in on Sep­tem­ber 9, 2015

* A for­mer Cari­com chair­man–Dr Row­ley served as chair­man of Cari­com. Dur­ing his tenure, he played an im­por­tant part in guid­ing the Caribbean’s col­lec­tive re­sponse to sev­er­al re­gion­al chal­lenges. He un­der­scored the im­por­tance of uni­ty among mem­ber states to ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress glob­al chal­lenges and en­hance the re­gion’s diplo­mat­ic in­flu­ence. He fo­cused on is­sues like re­gion­al trade and ad­vo­ca­cy for cli­mate change fi­nanc­ing, em­pha­sis­ing the need for eco­nom­ic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in­dices that ac­count for cli­mate change, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, and glob­al pan­demics.

* He chaired Cari­com Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al Sub-Com­mit­tee on Crick­et–Dr Row­ley played a role in over­see­ing the de­vel­op­ment and gov­er­nance of crick­et through­out the Caribbean. This com­mit­tee was cre­at­ed to tack­le the chal­lenges faced by crick­et in the re­gion, with a fo­cus on im­prov­ing the sport’s gov­er­nance, ad­min­is­tra­tion, and over­all wel­fare.

* At the PNM con­ven­tion in Au­gust 2024, Dr Row­ley an­nounced his sup­port for the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice to re­place the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil as T&T’s fi­nal court of ap­peals.