Last Sun­day, the UNC de­clared Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re-elect­ed as Po­lit­i­cal Leader un­op­posed. She had con­test­ed the post in 2010, 2015, 2017, 2020, and 2022. This was her sixth suc­cess­ful elec­tion.

This has been the key to her suc­cess in re­main­ing the UNC Po­lit­i­cal Leader as she has reg­u­lar­ly sub­mit­ted her­self to the UNC elec­torate and won.

De­spite the par­ty go­ing in­to op­po­si­tion in 2015 and re­turn­ing to op­po­si­tion in 2020, re­ject­ing her nev­er suc­ceed­ed. The par­ty com­pre­hen­sive­ly won the 2023 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions by con­test­ing 110 out of 141 elec­toral dis­tricts and se­cur­ing 175,635 votes, while the PNM con­test­ed all 141 seats and se­cured 131,342 votes.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s crit­ics con­tin­ued to make the faulty judge­ment that the UNC did not win the 2023 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions be­cause the par­ty end­ed up shar­ing the 14 cor­po­ra­tions at stake on a 7-7 ba­sis with the PNM. Those faulty nar­ra­tives were used as a means to jus­ti­fy a well-fund­ed in­sur­gency led by Rush­ton Paray to try to take con­trol of the NA­TEX of the par­ty and to use that as a means of con­trol­ling Per­sad-Bisses­sar at least one year be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion. The in­sur­gency failed.

They nev­er mapped the 2023 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions re­sults on­to the polling di­vi­sions for the mar­gin­al seats to be con­test­ed in the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, which were known in the EBC bound­aries re­port since March 2024. If they had done so, they would have re­alised how much trou­ble the PNM was fac­ing as a con­se­quence of those re­sults.

The PNM made two sig­nif­i­cant tac­ti­cal blun­ders in their bat­tle to stay in pow­er. The first one was made on Fri­day June 7, 2024, in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives when then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley urged the UNC vot­ers to keep Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s slate in charge of the par­ty in their NA­TEX elec­tions.

Row­ley told the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives: “So the Op­po­si­tion Leader, fum­ing about every­thing and hop­ing for a knock­out punch, Madam Speak­er, on the 16th of June 1, those flim­sy arms ‘eh knock out no­body’, and I could say, as I sup­port her, leave her right there and do not move her. Leave her right there. Hon Mem­bers: [Desk thump­ing].” (Hansard, House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, June 7, 2024, pp 57-58).

This must stand out as one of the biggest blun­ders ever made by Kei­th Row­ley in his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, be­cause he felt that as long as she was lead­ing the UNC, the PNM would re­main in pow­er.

The sec­ond ma­jor blun­der made by Row­ley was his at­tempt to rail­road the ap­point­ment of Stu­art Young as Prime Min­is­ter of this coun­try with­out him be­ing elect­ed as Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the PNM. In this blun­der, he was joined by the Pres­i­dent whose dis­cre­tion was nec­es­sary for the ac­tu­al ap­point­ment to be made on March 17, 2025.

The Pres­i­dent en­gaged in a cre­ative in­ter­pre­ta­tion of sec­tion 76(1)(a) of the Con­sti­tu­tion and con­firmed her own er­ror in writ­ing as fol­lows: “By let­ters to me dat­ed March 12, 2025, 21 mem­bers of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, elect­ed to that House as can­di­dates of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, de­clared and con­firmed to me that, notwith­stand­ing that the ho­n­ourable Dr Kei­th Row­ley, mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Diego Mar­tin West is the po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty that com­mands the sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of mem­bers of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the mem­ber among those who com­mand their sup­port in the said House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, as their leader in that House, is the Ho­n­ourable Mr Stu­art Young, SC, MP, the Ho­n­ourable Dr Kei­th Row­ley hav­ing in­di­cat­ed that he has re­signed the of­fice of prime min­is­ter with ef­fect from March 16, 2025, at mid­night and is no longer will­ing to ac­cept that of­fice.”

The Pres­i­dent pro­ceed­ed to ap­point Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young un­der sec­tion 76(1)(a) of the Con­sti­tu­tion in­stead of sec­tion 76(1)(b) of the Con­sti­tu­tion. The lat­ter is re­served for sit­u­a­tions where a par­ty has no undis­put­ed leader (as was the case here with Row­ley as par­ty leader and Young as cau­cus leader), while the for­mer is re­served for the par­ty leader (which post she con­firmed Dr Row­ley was still hold­ing).

If on March 17 she had said that the PNM had no undis­put­ed leader, that would have wound­ed the PNM bad­ly in an elec­tion year.

She has set a dan­ger­ous prece­dent that is alien to our po­lit­i­cal cul­ture and our con­sti­tu­tion­al foun­da­tions. For­tu­nate­ly, the UNC has cho­sen to stay with our po­lit­i­cal cul­ture and our con­sti­tu­tion­al foun­da­tions by re-elect­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar as par­ty leader, which is the ba­sis for her con­tin­ued tenure as PM and not en­gag­ing in any “ex­per­i­ment” as was con­fessed by the PNM af­ter April 28 about the Stu­art Young PM ap­point­ment.

Prof Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.