It will come as a sur­prise to many that he grew up rid­ing a bike in the Debe road, catch­ing “wabeen”, once con­tem­plat­ed be­com­ing a priest and en­joys Bu­ju Ban­ton’s con­scious lyrics. But yes, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is a cu­ri­ous mix.

Young spoke about his life away from the Min­istry in an in­ter­view on the He­li­co­nia Foun­da­tion’s Young Pro­fes­sion­als se­ries re­cent­ly. It showed a dif­fer­ent side of the gov­ern­ment min­is­ter who has been the tar­get of heavy Op­po­si­tion fire, has faced se­vere flack for the ex­emp­tion process and has trav­elled wide­ly with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­vis­ing him on var­i­ous mat­ters.

He ac­knowl­edged that his min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio is dif­fi­cult and re­vealed that “some of the things you hear as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter you wish you’d nev­er knew or were ex­posed to.” He is al­so cog­nisant of and grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ties from his time in pol­i­tics.

Young, an ad­vo­cate of gen­der equal­i­ty, said he sees men’s role as be­ing there to sup­port women.

“A lot of progress has been made on gen­der equal­i­ty, women are lead­ing from in front. We are here to sup­port our women. I say to them keep striv­ing, and achiev­ing . . . the glass ceil­ing has been bro­ken al­ready,” he said.

Young al­so be­lieves young peo­ple must step up to the plate and play more of a role in chart­ing T&T’s di­rec­tion and be part of the so­lu­tion.

He said: “If we don’t chan­nel the en­er­gy in­to that I don’t know what will hap­pen.”

Look­ing ahead, Young said the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry would place more fo­cus on cadets and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies.

He said gen­der-based vi­o­lence both­ered him tremen­dous­ly. He said he some­times felt ham­strung by the leg­is­la­tion, but ac­knowl­edges leg­is­la­tion was on­ly one part of the mea­sures.

“The elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem is ready to go once the court makes the or­der and that will af­ford some el­e­ment of help to our women and oth­er vic­tims. We’ve in­sti­tut­ed more safe hous­es and are press­ing for more, TTPS’ Gen­der Unit is work­ing, plus we’re on the PH taxi is­sue.

“But we as a so­ci­ety have to step up to the plate and fo­cus more on our young men—get in­to their head­space, teach young ones it’s not okay to re­act when you’re in dif­fi­cul­ty or feel threat­ened. I’ve said men have to be more re­spon­sive and re­spon­si­ble.

“We saw the Bar­ber­shop Ini­tia­tive al­low­ing a safe space for men to speak about how they feel. This shouldn’t be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed, we need to have this from sec­ondary school,” Young added.

“If there are men out there be­ing vi­o­lent, call them out! Even ones who aren’t in­volved with women and are com­mit­ting acts of vi­o­lence against them, call them out. When you put pic­tures of these per­pe­tra­tors us­ing or hurt­ing women, chil­dren and oth­er peo­ple on the front page show­ing their face that can help change so­ci­ety.”

Pol­i­tics was nev­er on his radar

•YOUNG STU­ART: At 46 he is the el­dest among a younger broth­er and sis­ter. Heavy south­ern roots, grow­ing up Catholic but with close Mus­lim rel­a­tives

•SOUTH LIFE: Aloo pies and dou­bles days. “Every Sun­day we’d go to Debe and have fun with my cousins, play­ing crick­et in the road, swim­ming, rid­ing bike, pitch­ing mar­bles, build­ing and fly­ing kites, catch­ing wabeen . . . fish in the drains and go­ing down the ravines.”

•SCHOOL: From St Mon­i­ca’s Prep to St Mary’s he was al­ways in­volved in sports, com­pet­i­tive­ly swim­ming, play­ing foot­ball and ten­nis. He got a black belt in karate at 13 Nev­er a book­worm but aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly gift­ed, he was al­ways in the top tier. ”Let’s just put it this way—I had a lot of fun at school, I got in­to a lot of nor­mal boy trou­ble, fights, be­ing mis­chie­vous. I al­so got in­to trou­ble in sec­ondary school, some­times with chal­leng­ing teach­ers.”

•HEAD AL­TAR BOY: He con­sid­ered be­com­ing a priest or an ac­coun­tant like his fa­ther. The law won him with his de­bat­ing skills giv­ing him an edge in that di­rec­tion.

•LIFE IN POL­I­TICS: “That was nev­er ever, ever, ever on the radar.” In 2014 he met PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley, then the Op­po­si­tion Leader, to work with a le­gal team on a Par­lia­ment mat­ter. “He called one day and of­fered me a po­si­tion as a tem­po­rary sen­a­tor. I was think­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go was in such a state and with cor­rup­tion, I’m not one to sit on the so­fa and con­sid­er these things so, as I said pol­i­tics was nev­er part of it but God’s will be done . . . if this is what He wants me to do it, I’m do­ing it. It’s been very very hec­tic, I don’t have a lot of room but I know my friends are still there and they can call on me and vice ver­sa. Maybe it’s time for re­unions.”

•PRIME MIN­IS­TER KEI­TH ROW­LEY: “My favourite thing in work­ing with him is he’s an ex­treme­ly bright man, so knowl­edge­able in how he makes de­ci­sions, how he fights con­tin­u­ous­ly for Trinidad and To­ba­go. I’ve seen it in the board­room of oil com­pa­nies, he com­mands re­spect. He’s nev­er cut down my views, I just try to learn from him (laughs) but I see how ex­cit­ed he gets when they bring up rocks and seis­mic charts. He can tell you all about that, he’s like a kid in a can­dy store.”

•DIF­FI­CULT BAL­ANCE: Be­tween his per­son­al and po­lit­i­cal lives, Young is a bit em­bar­rassed his chil­dren haven’t had the sort of child­hood he had, “but I’ve been teach­ing them re­cent­ly to play crick­et.”

•UN­WIND­ING: “It’s been ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult. I carve out time to ex­er­cise and try to main­tain my san­i­ty with time with my kids al­so. Those are my two ground­ing fac­tors. I lis­ten to Bu­ju Ban­ton, the old­er mu­sic, very con­scious lyrics, ex­cel­lent mu­sic. Peo­ple are sur­prised but it’s very ground­ing. I play one al­bum over and over, it keeps you re­al. The oth­er day I bought his lat­est. It’s okay but he old school mu­sic is the best.”

•YOUNG’S FAVOURITES: Dou­bles (slight pep­per), chow, moth­er-in-law pep­per sauce, T-20 crick­et, Mara­cas, groovy so­ca, Base and An­chor­age, buss-up-shot, the Greens.

•HIS CON­STITUEN­CY: “ I met some char­ac­ters wor­thy of a book, like Don­ald “Popee” Sturge. He came to the first meet­ing where I spoke say­ing he want­ed to see who is the Jap they bring. He said, ‘You prove your­self.’ He sup­port­ed me every­where af­ter. In­ter­ac­tion with con­stituents has helped me be more in tune, my de­ci­sions are based on ‘how will this help the man in the street’ or have a voice at the ta­ble.”

•DOWN­SIDE: “Re­al­is­ing peo­ple would make up com­plete lies as they haven’t been able to find some­thing on me. This in­cludes at­tacks on my fam­i­ly. It’s dif­fi­cult be­ing in that sphere. Re­grets? There are some things I’d pre­fer I wasn’t ex­posed to but I have some great sto­ries I hope one day to tell and I’ve had some great op­por­tu­ni­ties. Maybe there are a cou­ple of things I’d try dif­fer­ent­ly but I’ve been giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty and I thank those who gave it to me.”

•AHEAD: “I put my head down and do my job be­cause at end of the day I want to leave this know­ing I want­ed to do my best for the coun­try. I like walk­ing Port-of-Spain North’s hills talk­ing to peo­ple, help­ing for­mu­late pol­i­cy. I’ll look back on this ex­pe­ri­ence and smile as it was God-giv­en. Pol­i­tics gave me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­flu­ence peo­ple, to help peo­ple and to meet peo­ple. My mantra is to leave it bet­ter than you found it, keep of­fice with dig­ni­ty. I’m on­ly here as a care­tak­er. Of­fice is on­ly a po­si­tion, you’re the care­tak­er. Be­fore the min­is­te­r­i­al of­fice, there was Stu­art Young and af­ter there will be Stu­art Young.”