Fol­low­ing the PNM cau­cus' de­ci­sion to throw its sup­port be­hind Stu­art Young to lead the par­ty, the Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries thanked his par­lia­men­tary col­leagues for the con­fi­dence they ex­pressed in him.

He al­so thanked Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley "for his con­tin­ued and ex­em­plary lead­er­ship in guid­ing us through a his­toric process."

Young post­ed a state­ment to his Face­book page short­ly af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter made the an­nounce­ment, adding, "I am proud to be a mem­ber of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and look for­ward to work­ing tire­less­ly not on­ly with all of our mem­bers but al­so with ALL cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go as we con­tin­ue work­ing to­wards the build­ing of our coun­try and en­sur­ing its fu­ture suc­cess."

Young will re­place the Prime Min­is­ter as he tran­si­tions out of the role. Ear­li­er in the day, Dr Row­ley said, "My in­ten­tion be­ing firm the ques­tion now was the re­place­ment as Prime Min­is­ter. We dis­cussed at length and in the end, we came up with a sit­u­a­tion where the en­tire PNM cau­cus is in sup­port of the MP for Port-of -Spain North/St Ann’s West Stu­art Young. The promise of a smooth tran­si­tion is go­ing ac­cord­ing to plan."