DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

As prime min­is­ter-des­ig­nate Stu­art Young pre­pares to take of­fice next week, for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford be­lieves Young will first have to counter Op­po­si­tion mis­in­for­ma­tion while nav­i­gat­ing race re­la­tions be­fore ad­dress­ing the oth­er is­sues he will have on his plate.

“The first thing he has en­coun­tered is to deal with the mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion, mis­in­for­ma­tion com­ing from the op­po­si­tion. The oth­er thing about a black par­ty, I thought we had got rid of that long time. Be­cause while the base is from among the Afro-Trinida­di­ans, it is not a black par­ty. Be­cause Stu­art would have nev­er been chair­man of the par­ty and prime min­is­ter in wait­ing,” Ford told Guardian Me­dia.

“We had George Cham­bers, he’s not a black man, (Patrick) Man­ning and Er­ic Williams. And even when Row­ley be­came po­lit­i­cal leader, there were peo­ple say­ing he’s too black to be prime min­is­ter. So, I can’t take this kind of non­sense from peo­ple about black peo­ple.”

Ford be­lieves Young will have par­ty sup­port, cit­ing past lead­er­ship tran­si­tions, but warned against in­ter­nal dis­sent.

“If they on­ly play the fool, the par­ty mem­bers will deal with them. The par­ty mem­bers will not al­low it and will not tol­er­ate it. They are smart enough to know they have to work with the leader, oth­er­wise cra­paud smoke they pipe.”

Row­ley, ful­fill­ing his 2020 promise to step down, has an­nounced he will re­sign on Sun­day (March), when the PNM is al­so sched­uled to launch its full slate of gen­er­al can­di­dates at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain.

On Jan­u­ary 6, Row­ley re­vealed that Young had tri­umphed over Ari­ma MP Pen­ne­lope Beck­les as his re­place­ment in an 11-9 straw poll con­duct­ed dur­ing a Cab­i­net re­treat in To­ba­go.

The de­ci­sion sparked a back­lash from se­nior PNM mem­bers, in­clud­ing for­mer labour min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus, who in­sist­ed the par­ty’s gen­er­al coun­cil should rat­i­fy it. PNM stal­wart Fer­die Fer­reira al­so ques­tioned why Row­ley by­passed the gen­er­al coun­cil.

De­spite ru­mours that nine MPs re­fused to sign a doc­u­ment ad­dressed to the Pres­i­dent—in­tend­ed to sat­is­fy Sec­tion 76(1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which man­dates that “the Pres­i­dent must ap­point as Prime Min­is­ter a Mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives who is the leader in the House of the par­ty which com­mands the sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of mem­bers of that House”—the par­ty ul­ti­mate­ly closed ranks on Jan­u­ary 10, re­veal­ing Young had the par­ty’s back­ing to take over as PM when Row­ley de­parts.

But once he takes, over Young will not have an easy road ahead, al­though Row­ley will prob­a­bly of­fer him sup­port in his con­tin­u­ing role re­main as PNM leader.

Econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs warns that Young will in­her­it a tough eco­nom­ic land­scape, marked by a per­sis­tent forex cri­sis and pub­lic de­mand for ac­tion.

“We re­al­ly would be look­ing for­ward to how un­der his ad­min­is­tra­tion, are we go­ing to ad­dress some of the key eco­nom­ic is­sues—eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty in the coun­try, the en­er­gy sec­tor in the coun­try, what is the way mov­ing for­ward, giv­en the un­cer­tain­ties around the Drag­on gas deal, how is crime go­ing to be ad­dressed.

“Those pain points that have been af­fect­ing the pop­u­la­tion, cit­i­zens in gen­er­al, but al­so the busi­ness sec­tor in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Ul­ti­mate­ly, Dr Attzs said there were no easy fix­es, as many of T&T’s eco­nom­ic strug­gles stemmed from ex­ter­nal forces.

How­ev­er, she be­lieves Young will have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to prove him­self and, if suc­cess­ful, win the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in the months ahead.

Mean­while, crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad warned that crime would be one of Young’s biggest chal­lenges, adding he may be re­quired to take a more ag­gres­sive ap­proach to step out from Row­ley’s shad­ow.

“It’s cer­tain­ly not an in­dict­ment on Mr Young if he ends up hav­ing to put a cur­few in place. It could end up be­ing war­rant­ed, and it de­pends on the cir­cum­stances. But the bot­tom line for me is, what do you do be­yond that?”

Dr Seep­er­sad em­pha­sised that tra­di­tion­al crime-fight­ing ap­proach­es had failed, and a fresh, in­no­v­a­tive strat­e­gy was need­ed.

He sug­gest­ed deep­er en­gage­ment with lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nol­o­gy ex­perts, lever­ag­ing re­search-dri­ven so­lu­tions, and en­sur­ing crime was tack­led as a pub­lic health is­sue—an ap­proach dis­cussed at the last Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing but not yet im­ple­ment­ed.

He al­so called for a whole-of-gov­ern­ment ap­proach, point­ing out that var­i­ous min­istries, such as Ed­u­ca­tion, could play a piv­otal role in crime pre­ven­tion by fos­ter­ing civic-mind­ed­ness in schools.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he high­light­ed the need to op­ti­mise crime-fight­ing tech­nol­o­gy, im­prove the ju­di­cial and prison sys­tems, and strength­en in­tel­li­gence op­er­a­tions.

In re­cent days, Young has out­lined plans to over­haul the ed­u­ca­tion cur­ricu­lum, im­ple­ment stiffer penal­ties for do­mes­tic vi­o­lence of­fend­ers and re­form so­cial me­dia laws to pro­tect women.

How­ev­er, many feel this was mere elec­tion rhetoric and may be over­tak­en in the course of the PNM’s bat­tle to re­turn to pow­er.

The ex­act tim­ing of Young’s of­fi­cial ap­point­ment re­mains un­cer­tain, how­ev­er, as he side­stepped me­dia ques­tions on Mon­day about when his swear­ing-in will, urg­ing pa­tience as the process un­fold­ed.

How­ev­er, with Row­ley’s res­ig­na­tion mere days away, T&T will soon have its new leader.