Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.t

In the span of ten and a half years, Stu­art Young, SC, has moved from an es­tab­lished at­tor­ney lack­ing po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence, work­ing his way up the lad­der to tem­po­rary op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor in 2014, ju­nior min­is­ter in 2015, se­nior min­is­ter in 2018, and now the act­ing Prime Min­is­ter of T&T.

There is a be­lief in po­lit­i­cal cir­cles and pub­lic dis­cus­sions that Min­is­ter Young is favoured to even­tu­al­ly re­place Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley as the PNM po­lit­i­cal leader.

How­ev­er, there are mixed views from with­in the par­ty about that pos­si­bil­i­ty. Se­nior gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion sources, who spoke with Guardian Me­dia on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, agreed that Min­is­ter Young is a good or, at the least, a com­pe­tent min­is­ter.

The first gov­ern­ment source called Young, al­so the PNM chair­man, a use­ful as­set but felt he lacks the nec­es­sary em­pa­thet­ic con­nec­tion with ‘the ground’ at this time to make an ef­fec­tive po­lit­i­cal leader. The se­nior gov­ern­ment source al­so doubt­ed whether Young could in­spire the coun­try as a prime min­is­ter.

“Both the PNM and UNC are go­ing to come across a lead­er­ship is­sue, but the choice of the next po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM will be a larg­er con­ver­sa­tion than the choice of the next UNC leader,” as the PNM is cur­rent­ly in gov­ern­ment, the mem­ber added.

A sec­ond se­nior gov­ern­ment source spoke very high­ly of Young, de­scrib­ing him as in­tel­li­gent and full of in­tegri­ty. “Down the line, would he make a good leader? I think so be­cause he’s very dri­ven and, like Dr Row­ley, he cares a lot about this coun­try. He’s a pa­tri­ot,” the source said.

“The lead­er­ship po­si­tion is not be­ing dis­cussed now be­cause we have a leader. In the fu­ture, when there is a va­can­cy, I will not hes­i­tate to fol­low Stu­art,” the sec­ond PNM mem­ber said.

The first gov­ern­ment source ac­knowl­edged that Min­is­ter Young’s ap­point­ment as act­ing Prime Min­is­ter is the talk of the par­ty.

The source stat­ed that some par­ty in­sid­ers be­lieve the move is more of an at­tempt to re­tire Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who has act­ed as PM on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions in the past nine years, than to pro­mote Young. Im­bert was de­scribed to Guardian Me­dia as ‘unin­spir­ing’ by some par­ty mem­bers.

Ac­cord­ing to the first gov­ern­ment source, there is a view with­in the par­ty and in the pub­lic that Im­bert can be stand­off­ish and con­de­scend­ing. Im­bert’s treat­ment of jour­nal­ists was high­light­ed as an ex­am­ple, as was his pub­lic at­tack against in­di­vid­u­als or or­gan­i­sa­tions rais­ing con­cerns about the gov­er­nance of the coun­try.

Mean­while, Young’s re­sponse to crit­i­cism from for­mer Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed chair­man Ronald Har­ford raised eye­brows and was per­ceived by many as con­fronta­tion­al.

“We be­long in this damn coun­try, and the politi­cians are here to serve us … We must no longer be spec­ta­tors … It’s quite re­mark­able that this is an oil and gas coun­try and we have no plan for oil and gas pro­duc­tion,” Har­ford, a Cha­co­nia Gold Medal re­cip­i­ent, re­port­ed­ly said in a dai­ly news­pa­per.

In re­sponse, Young was quot­ed as say­ing that when­ev­er some­body be­comes a ‘for­mer,’ their ‘mouths get big.’

“As chair­man, you were re­moved; you were not elect­ed chair­man. And when it came to an elec­tion, you couldn’t get the sup­port to con­tin­ue,” Young re­buked Har­ford.

A se­nior op­po­si­tion mem­ber al­so ref­er­enced the in­ci­dent in which Har­ford was pub­licly be­rat­ed, la­belling Young as “dis­mis­sive and con­fronta­tion­al.” The ex­pe­ri­enced politi­cian de­scribed Young’s ac­tion as “a re­sponse learnt from Row­ley.”

A UNC mem­ber de­scribed Young as “a rea­son­ably de­cent and com­pe­tent pro­fes­sion­al.” How­ev­er, the in­di­vid­ual felt that he was con­sumed by the “hubris of pub­lic of­fice.”

“His rise to pow­er is per­ceived as more aligned with po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ty than ex­per­tise ... I do not be­lieve that the en­er­gy sec­tor pro­gressed un­der his lead­er­ship. The sec­tor’s struc­tur­al is­sues re­main, while crit­ics point to a lack of sig­nif­i­cant progress in long-term en­er­gy strat­e­gy,” the Op­po­si­tion mem­ber said. A PNM mem­ber, in Young’s de­fence, felt he is a re­spect­ful and ap­proach­able in­di­vid­ual.

“I’ve known him for quite some time, even when I didn’t hold a po­si­tion, and he didn’t have to be po­lite or kind. I have a friend, whom he rep­re­sent­ed free of charge over some­thing that was an un­fair sit­u­a­tion, and I ad­mire him since then,” the PNM mem­ber said.

Mov­ing Up the Bat­ting Or­der

Ahead of the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion, Young was se­lect­ed by the PNM to con­test the Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West seat.

When PNM re­turned to gov­ern­ment in 2015, he was ap­point­ed Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs and Min­is­ter of State in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM).

He al­so act­ed as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in the ab­sence of for­mer AG Faris Al-Rawi. In June 2018, Young re­ceived his first full-fledged min­is­te­r­i­al ap­point­ment as Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter.

Two months lat­er, in Au­gust, he re­placed Ed­mund Dil­lon as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter.

It now seemed Young was the Prime Min­is­ter’s right-hand man. “He is that good ... Re­mem­ber Gar­ry Sobers? Well, he is my Gar­ry Sobers. Sobers was the world’s best bats­man; he was the West In­dies’ best or­tho­dox left-hand bowler, he was a slow bowler, he was the West In­dies’ open­ing pace bowler, he was al­so the sharpest field­er on the West In­dies team,” the PM boast­ed at a 2019 Pt Fortin po­lit­i­cal meet­ing.

Test­ing Times

In May 2019, the Op­po­si­tion called for Young’s fir­ing, with 206 mur­ders re­port­ed in his first 147 days as min­is­ter. That month, the UNC al­so called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to NCB Glob­al Fi­nance’s re­la­tion­ship with the Gov­ern­ment. NCB Glob­al Fi­nance’s CEO was An­gus Young, Stu­art’ Young’s broth­er.

In June 2019, Young led a reg­is­tra­tion process for Venezue­lan mi­grants. 16,500 mi­grants took part. In March 2020, the coun­try re­port­ed its first case of COVID-19. Lat­er that month, the min­is­ter an­nounced a bor­der clo­sure to pre­vent the spread. But, in turn, thou­sands of na­tion­als were strand­ed abroad.

The Gov­ern­ment faced heavy crit­i­cism for the length of the bor­der clo­sure and its ex­emp­tion sys­tem. In April 2020, the Bar­ba­dos Gov­ern­ment com­plained of be­ing dis­turbed by a com­ment from Young.

33 T&T na­tion­als re­turn­ing home from a cruise to Dubai stopped in Bar­ba­dos to be quar­an­tined. Young com­plained that a Cari­com coun­try should not be used as a “jump­ing-off point” for T&T na­tion­als want­i­ng to re­turn home, com­pro­mis­ing the coun­try’s bor­der pol­i­cy.

In May 2020, he faced in­tense pres­sure from the Op­po­si­tion over his han­dling of the March vis­it of Venezuela’s Ex­ec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez in an air­craft sanc­tioned by the US Gov­ern­ment, while the bor­ders were closed. Ro­driguez’s flight was un­known un­til the Op­po­si­tion went pub­lic.

The UNC re­vealed that sev­er­al for­mer and present PDVSA (Venezue­lan state oil com­pa­ny) ex­ec­u­tives were present at the meet­ing. When pressed for more in­for­ma­tion, Young claimed the con­ver­sa­tion was about COVID-19 and the Venezue­lan pop­u­la­tion. Ro­driguez’s vis­it al­so at­tract­ed the at­ten­tion of the US Gov­ern­ment.

US Am­bas­sador Joseph Mon­del­lo con­firmed that he ex­pressed con­cern to Young about Ro­driguez’s vis­it in a meet­ing. A week ear­li­er, Young was quot­ed in the Sen­ate as say­ing that a po­ten­tial breach of the Rio Treaty was not raised. He lat­er com­plained that his words were mis­con­strued.

De­spite heavy pres­sure, Young re­fused to re­sign, and the Prime Min­is­ter stood by him.

Young and the Gov­ern­ment came un­der fire again in Feb­ru­ary 2022 for the re­sponse to the div­ing tragedy, where four men—Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Rishi Na­gas­sar, and Yusuf Herny—died in­side a Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny pipeline in Point-a-Pierre while con­duct­ing main­te­nance work. A com­mis­sion of en­quiry be­gan in No­vem­ber 2022.

Its re­port, laid in Jan­u­ary 2024, rec­om­mend­ed that the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions should con­sid­er charg­ing Paria with cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter.

Av­er­age num­ber of mur­ders per day as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter

(from first full year)

Gary Grif­fith - 1.12

Carl Al­fon­so - 1.03

Ed­mund Dil­lon - 1.33

Stu­art Young - 1.23

Fitzger­ald Hinds - 1.55

Av­er­age num­ber of to­tal se­ri­ous crimes per day as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter (from first full year)

Gary Grif­fith - 32.9

Carl Al­fon­so - 28.2

Ed­mund Dil­lon - 33

Stu­art Young - 27.1

Fitzger­ald Hinds - 31.5

Re­newed En­er­gy

In April 2021, Young be­came the new Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries. In May 2021, NGC signed a three-year con­tract with Trin­gen to en­sure that two am­mo­nia plants, part­ly owned by Yara In­ter­na­tion­al, con­tin­ued op­er­a­tions. In Oc­to­ber 2021, Young re­port­ed that the T&T Gov­ern­ment signed a Man­a­tee Project deal with Shell.

“In a few weeks, I’m hop­ing we’ll be able to sign that agree­ment that is go­ing to keep this sin­gle largest new gas pro­duc­tion con­tract and gas pro­duc­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go for decades,” the min­is­ter stat­ed.

In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Young joined the PM on a Eu­ro­pean trip to meet with ma­jor glob­al com­pa­nies to dis­cuss fu­ture in­vest­ments and rene­go­ti­ate con­tracts. In No­vem­ber 2022, Young was elect­ed as the PNM chair­man.

In De­cem­ber 2023, the Gov­ern­ment signed an agree­ment with Venezuela to joint­ly pro­duce and ex­port nat­ur­al gas from the Drag­on Gas field.

In June 2024, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo ap­point­ed him as a se­nior coun­sel on the ad­vice of the Cab­i­net.

In Ju­ly 2024, OW­TU Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get burnt pho­tographs of PM Row­ley and Young fol­low­ing news that Naveen Jin­dal, the chair­man of Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er Ltd, met with the PM to dis­cuss the Pointe-a-Pierre oil re­fin­ery.

On Ju­ly 28, Young was ap­point­ed as act­ing Prime Min­is­ter for the first time.

Re­cusals

One con­tin­u­ous op­po­si­tion crit­i­cism of Min­is­ter Young has been about Cab­i­net re­cusals. The Op­po­si­tion claimed that Young’s re­cusals are a re­flec­tion of, what they call, the Gov­ern­ment’s elit­ism.

Be­tween Sep­tem­ber 9, 2015, and April 24, 2023, ac­cord­ing to Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act Re­quest doc­u­ments ob­tained by Free­dom Law Cham­bers, head­ed by for­mer AG Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Min­is­ter Young ac­count­ed for 101 re­cusals, or 36 per cent of all Cab­i­net re­cusals.

Re­cusals by Num­bers (Sep­tem­ber 15, 2015, to April 24, 2023)

1) Stu­art Young - 101

2) Faris Al-Rawi - 60

3) Ro­han Sinanan - 23

4) Ter­rance Deyals­ingh - 19

5) Ran­dall Mitchell - 13

6) Kei­th Row­ley - 8

7) Colm Im­bert - 7

8) Daryl Smith - 6

9) Camille Reg­is Robin­son - 5

9) Allyson West - 5

9) Kaz­im Ho­sein - 5

10) Amery Browne - 4

11) Ed­mund Dil­lon - 3

11) An­tho­ny Gar­cia - 3

11) Franklyn Khan - 3

12) Paula Gopee-Scoon - 2

12) Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly - 2

12) Fos­ter Cum­mings - 2

12) Clarence Ramb­harat - 2

12) Regi­nald Ar­mour - 2

13) Fitzger­ald Hinds - 1

13) Symon De No­bri­ga - 1

13) Robert Le Hunte - 1 

Young: Re­cusal uni­ver­sal­ly ac­cept­ed and part of good gov­er­nance

Young, in a Guardian Me­dia in­ter­view in Au­gust 2023 not pub­lished be­fore, said re­cusal was a uni­ver­sal­ly ac­cept­ed and an en­cour­aged part of good and prop­er gov­er­nance. He added that he has faith­ful­ly up­held the laws of the coun­try.

“As a mem­ber of Cab­i­net, from day one, I have re­cused my­self be­yond what is legal­ly re­quired of me. I have re­cused my­self from Cab­i­net Notes once they mere­ly men­tioned the NCBJ group even on oc­ca­sions where they have not even sub­mit­ted a bid for fi­nanc­ing, which means that I have even re­cused my­self from Cab­i­net dis­cus­sions where the NCBJ group has not even par­tic­i­pat­ed in the com­pet­i­tive ten­der­ing process.

“This de­ci­sion of mine is re­spon­si­ble for al­most all of the re­cusals record­ed in my name and is based on the fact that my younger broth­er is an em­ploy­ee of the group. It should be not­ed that the record re­flects that the NCBJ group has been award­ed less than three per cent of all gov­ern­ment fi­nanc­ing.

“The con­tin­ued pro­mo­tion of a nar­ra­tive by the UNC Op­po­si­tion and its agents that there is some­thing wrong or il­le­gal with res­cu­ing one­self from de­lib­er­a­tions and de­ci­sion-mak­ing is sim­ply part of their des­per­a­tion and con­tin­ued dis­re­gard for what is right. I state with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion that my fam­i­ly and I have nev­er fi­nan­cial­ly ben­e­fit­ed from my hold­ing of of­fice. I as­sure the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go that I will con­tin­ue to give my best and will con­tin­ue to serve with­out fear, favour, mal­ice, or ill will.”

Yes­ter­day, he said he still stands by his com­ments.

‘I ad­vo­cate for the less for­tu­nate and fight for the un­der­dog’

Young, re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia on is­sues raised about his per­son­al­i­ty and abil­i­ty to lead the PNM, said, “I have been a mem­ber of the Cab­i­net of Trinidad and To­ba­go for nine years. Dur­ing that time I have held many port­fo­lios and been ex­posed to a very wide range of in­valu­able ex­pe­ri­ences for which I am eter­nal­ly grate­ful. I have al­ways giv­en my best and worked hon­est­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly in what­ev­er task I was giv­en.

“It is un­de­ni­able that some of the tasks were dif­fi­cult ones that would have at­tract­ed crit­i­cism, both war­rant­ed and un­war­rant­ed. I am al­ways will­ing to lis­ten and to im­prove. I am cer­tain that every­thing I have done was done with the high­est lev­el of in­tegri­ty and with an ac­knowl­edge­ment of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that I have to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“There are some in­stances where, in hind­sight, I could have han­dled them dif­fer­ent­ly, and I learn from those for the next oc­ca­sion.

“I am not sur­prised by some of the com­ments that you have in­di­cat­ed were made as in­di­vid­u­als have dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and even agen­das. In the field of pol­i­tics, you will nev­er please every­one, es­pe­cial­ly those who may have agen­das that are not in the pub­lic’s best in­ter­est, and es­pe­cial­ly when your po­si­tion doesn’t align with their par­tic­u­lar self-in­ter­est.

“I have heard the nar­ra­tive be­ing pushed by those who may be un­com­fort­able with my progress in pol­i­tics that I am not con­nect­ed to the ‘ground’, and I sim­ply smile at this com­men­tary. The truth is that I am one who con­stant­ly ad­vo­cates for those that may be less for­tu­nate, and I rel­ish the fight for the un­der­dog. My in­ter­ac­tions with the pub­lic, es­pe­cial­ly as I move around Trinidad and To­ba­go at the ground lev­el, are al­ways an en­er­gis­ing and re­ward­ing one.

“I nev­er con­cern my­self about not be­ing giv­en cred­it or ac­co­lades for what I have done whilst hold­ing pub­lic of­fice, as I am a strong be­liev­er in work­ing hard, with in­tegri­ty and let­ting the re­sults speak for them­selves.

“I will con­clude by say­ing that I am grate­ful for the many dif­fer­ent op­por­tu­ni­ties that I have been giv­en by the Prime Min­is­ter and po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM, Dr Row­ley, by the PNM par­ty, and by the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and I will con­tin­ue to serve with­out fear or favour, mal­ice, or ill will.”