En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant back­lash from the pub­lic fol­low­ing a con­tro­ver­sial “hot mic” in­ci­dent in which he was heard mak­ing sala­cious com­ments about the Op­po­si­tion in Par­lia­ment on Thurs­day.

The sit­u­a­tion un­fold­ed when Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert was recog­nised by Deputy House Speak­er Es­mond Forde to make fur­ther com­ments dur­ing the 2025 Bud­get de­bate.

As Forde pre­pared to tran­si­tion to House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George, Im­bert re­turned to his seat. At that mo­ment, sev­er­al UNC mem­bers, in­clud­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Cou­va South MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh, St Au­gus­tine MP Khadi­jah Ameen and Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath, stood up to leave the cham­ber, leav­ing on­ly a few Op­po­si­tion mem­bers be­hind.

Young then crit­i­cised the de­part­ing Op­po­si­tion mem­bers.

Fol­low­ing was the con­ver­sa­tion record­ed:

Stu­art Young: All al­lyuh go. He would run girls now for all ah al­lyuh in the back room. Can’t use the PTSC bus­es any­more. They go bring the girls for all of al­lyuh now, in­clud­ing Kam­la.

Colm Im­bert: You go­ing and use the bath­room? She go­ing and use the bath­room.

Stu­art Young: Yeah, she go­ing and za­m­my!

Colm Im­bert: Aye, what wrong with you boy?

(Laugh­ter)

Ter­rence Deyals­ingh: Oh God, Stu­art.

Stu­art Young: Don’t call my name!

Colm Im­bert: What wrong with you?

Stu­art Young: What the **** I (in­audi­ble)

Colm Im­bert: Aye, boy, boy, cool it. The mic on.”

For­mer PNM Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira was among those who con­demned Young’s in­ap­pro­pri­ate lan­guage, af­ter the video was cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia. She not­ed the be­hav­iour seemed to mir­ror that of his po­lit­i­cal leader.

“He is a pro­tégé. He has been men­tored by the Prime Min­is­ter. He dis­plays the same at­ti­tude, the crass­ness, if I may be so bold, and a cer­tain lev­el of vul­gar­i­ty that is un­be­com­ing of a leader but con­sis­tent with what the cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter has dis­played,” she stat­ed.

“His be­hav­iour and his con­duct, which re­al­ly does him no good and doesn’t re­flect well on him, is pleas­ing to his prime min­is­ter be­cause his prime min­is­ter has made very vul­gar com­ments and very un­be­com­ing com­ments in the past that Mr Stu­art Young seems to have de­cid­ed that that is go­ing to be his modus operan­di.”

Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance leader Gary Grif­fith, mean­while ar­gued that Young should not face dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion for his com­ments, as­sert­ing that if there was no in­tent for the re­marks to be pub­lic, it should be viewed as a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion.

“That usu­al­ly takes place, I have been there be­fore. I think there’s so much more go­ing on in this coun­try at this time for us to wor­ry about com­ments be­ing made not re­al­is­ing that the mic was on,” he said.

How­ev­er, scores of so­cial me­dia users re­act­ed neg­a­tive­ly to the in­ci­dent.

On the Face­book page Kick out the PNM, Fer­oza De­Coteau com­ment­ed, “This is where it start­ed—the BUL­LY­ING from the head. Sad.”

Ravi Sa­ha­too re­marked, “Par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege should be abol­ished ... If they are so ho­n­ourable, they all should be able to stand by their words and the con­se­quences that fol­low.”

Glo­ria Choudry added, “Why did they turn a blind eye on what he said, he should come out and apol­o­gise he is a dra­ma queen.”

Dee­nie Bal­ly ex­pressed con­cern about the be­hav­iour, say­ing, “Male chau­vin­ism on dis­play and so sad that peo­ple sup­port and laugh at com­ments like that in Par­lia­ment ... So so sad!!”

Lisa Ma­haraj lament­ed, “This is the type of peo­ple we have as lead­ers ... what a sad state we are in ... no deco­rum what­so­ev­er.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Young and oth­er Gov­ern­ment mem­bers re­gard­ing the vi­ral clip but there was no re­sponse up to press time. At­tempts to con­tact the Op­po­si­tion Leader for com­ment were al­so un­suc­cess­ful.