In Amer­i­can foot­ball, play­ers hud­dle to hear the quar­ter­back call out the play. Hud­dles are now a thing in foot­ball and crick­et. Play­ers and coach­es dis­cussed tac­tics and sup­plied mo­ti­va­tion­al charges on­ly min­utes be­fore in the chang­ing room, but per­formed an on-field rit­u­al de­signed for TV.

There seemed to be some made-for-TV hug­ging out­side the build­ing by MPs and gen­er­al coun­cil mem­bers of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment af­ter tense meet­ings over the suc­ces­sion di­rec­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

At the cen­tre of the em­braces was Stu­art Young, the prime min­is­ter-des­ig­nate. In­side, ear­li­er, some of the hug­gers would have pre­ferred to as­sume the role of Bru­tus. That said, it had been an emo­tion-fu­elled pre­vi­ous few weeks. The trag­ic death of their col­league Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian lin­gered. Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son was again be­ing by­passed.

Let us be clear about what hap­pened. Row­ley, in an­nounc­ing an in­ten­tion to step aside as Prime Min­is­ter and po­lit­i­cal leader, seemed to time it to favour Young. It had the ef­fect of lim­it­ing the choice to the MPs’ cau­cus. The suc­ces­sion is con­se­quen­tial and gen­er­a­tional and should have in­volved the wider mem­ber­ship. We don’t have an opin­ion poll to guide us, but it seems clear that Beck­les-Robin­son would have de­feat­ed Young in a fuller con­test.

This isn’t a knock on Young. As I’ve said in this space be­fore, folks who don’t have a dog in T&T’s po­lit­i­cal fight have told me that he’s the most ef­fec­tive per­son in gov­ern­ment at get­ting things done. He works fe­ro­cious­ly hard. That would be at­trac­tive to a prime min­is­ter who can give the im­pres­sion of be­ing cut from a dif­fer­ent cloth. Young has been a safe pair of hands in a cri­sis. That’s not to say that no one else in the Cab­i­net has worked as hard or is ca­pa­ble of be­ing as re­li­able to the boss.

Young has had prox­im­i­ty—the clos­est work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the Prime Min­is­ter of any­one else in Gov­ern­ment. My crit­i­cism of Young is his ap­par­ent cred­u­lous­ness in deal­ing with the Gov­ern­ment of Nico­las Maduro in Venezuela, a dis­rep­utable bunch that would filch his lunch mon­ey when he wasn’t look­ing. He prob­a­bly has no choice, giv­en the im­por­tance of the agree­ment to T&T’s fu­ture rev­enue earn­ings and how hard the agree­ment was to reach. How­ev­er, he should di­al down the self-con­grat­u­la­tion. Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has cor­rect­ly held his feet to the fire to give a fuller ac­count­ing of his trips.

Young en­tered Par­lia­ment as MP for Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West in 2015, af­ter serv­ing as a tem­po­rary sen­a­tor the year be­fore. His as­cent has been rapid. Beck­les-Robin­son, the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, is in her 30th year of pub­lic life, hav­ing en­tered Par­lia­ment as an op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor in 1995. She was elect­ed MP for Ari­ma in 2000.

Beck­les-Robin­son is the first woman deputy speak­er. De­spite hav­ing a 20-year start on Young, who pre­vi­ous­ly com­pet­ed for the lead­er­ship and built up con­sid­er­able cred­it in the bank with the rank and file na­tion­al­ly, Beck­les-Robin­son has not had the vis­i­bil­i­ty that Young has en­joyed in Row­ley’s ad­min­is­tra­tion. Po­lit­i­cal choice is more a pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test than a board­room hire.

Pen­ny met the first stan­dard. Who’s to say that she was in­ca­pable of meet­ing the sec­ond? We shouldn’t dis­count the fact that her re­la­tion­ship with the PM over the years hasn’t been as har­mo­nious. She ran against him for the par­ty lead­er­ship in 2014.

Mario Cuo­mo, the late for­mer gov­er­nor of the state of New York, said, “You cam­paign in po­et­ry; you gov­ern in prose.” Who we love mat­ters less than who we think can do the job bet­ter.

Row­ley de­nies in­ter­fer­ing in the choice, but no one need­ed to be told which way he pre­ferred the wind to be blow­ing. It shouldn’t have mat­tered. There seems to be a fun­da­men­tal lack of democ­ra­cy in the process, and there’s con­sid­er­able dis­qui­et in PNM ranks. There has been much dis­grun­tled brief­ing about who promised what to whom to se­cure whose sup­port on the To­ba­go bal­lot, which Young won 11-9. There’s been more leak­ing than at an old house in Wood­brook.

How­ev­er, they’re pro­fes­sion­als. They knew they had to put this be­hind them and fall in line. Noth­ing unites fac­tions like let­ting in the big­ger en­e­my.

Orin Gor­don is a me­dia and com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant.

De­tails at oringor­don.com