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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

E-mailgate led Young to Rowley

...tem­po­rary PNM sen­a­tor now ap­plies to join par­ty

by

20140330

At just 39 years old, at­tor­ney Stu­art Young has tak­en on sev­er­al high pro­file court cas­es and has now an­swered the call to make a dif­fer­ence, by serv­ing the peo­ple in a dif­fer­ent fo­rum–in the po­lit­i­cal are­na.He said his ap­point­ment as a tem­po­rary sen­a­tor was at the com­plete dis­cre­tion of PNM Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, and he was grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve the coun­try.

Speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian at his Chancery Cham­bers of­fice on Duke Street, Port-of-Spain, on Thurs­day, Young said he had no po­lit­i­cal as­pi­ra­tions and Row­ley's call came as a bit of a sur­prise.He said, "I think it re­al­ly has its gen­e­sis in my pro­fes­sion­al re­la­tion­ship with Dr Row­ley, be­cause all of my in­ter­ac­tions with politi­cians has al­ways been a pro­fes­sion­al one where I've re­ceived briefs to do mat­ters for them.

"It was af­ter the 'E-mail­gate' de­ba­cle when he was brought be­fore the Par­lia­men­tary Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee and I was asked to be one of the at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing him, and I worked very close­ly with him."I at­tend­ed the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee sit­tings with Row­ley as his ad­vo­cate at­tor­ney, and I think com­ing out of that we de­vel­oped a mu­tu­al re­spect for each oth­er."

Dad's stel­lar­rep­u­ta­tion

Young grew up in a fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed en­vi­ron­ment. He said he nev­er made ca­reer de­ci­sions based on his fa­ther, Richard Young, the for­mer man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Sco­tia­bank, or his rep­u­ta­tion, as he cast a long shad­ow in the busi­ness and bank­ing world.The el­dest of three chil­dren, Stu­art said his fa­ther has a stel­lar rep­u­ta­tion as an ex­em­plar for them to fol­low.He said he had tak­en a con­scious de­ci­sion to try and main­tain a sep­a­rate, pri­vate life to what­ev­er his pub­lic life may have in store for him.

Young said he val­ued his pri­va­cy and fam­i­ly life very much; hav­ing a young fam­i­ly and very young chil­dren, he want­ed to keep and pro­tect them as much as pos­si­ble.Young said he loved sports, hav­ing com­pet­ed in triathlon events 20 years ago and re­cent­ly re­sumed train­ing.He was al­ways ac­tive­ly in­volved in sports such as karate, rug­by, crick­et and ten­nis.

'Crime out of con­trol'

Young has par­tic­i­pat­ed in sev­er­al pub­lic march­es, such as the Kei­th Noel Com­mit­tee protest march in Oc­to­ber 2005, as well as the "Sec­tion 34" and Fyz­abad labour march­es.He said crime was out of con­trol and march­ing was one way to show both the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion that cit­i­zens were tak­ing a stand.When asked about pub­lic per­cep­tion of the PNM com­pris­ing an "old guard" and if he could be viewed as "new blood" com­ing in­to the par­ty, Young said that need­ed to be di­rect­ed to the lead­er­ship of the par­ty.

On Row­ley's an­nounce­ment that the PNM was an all-in­clu­sive par­ty, Young said in his in­ter­ac­tion and re­la­tion­ship with the par­ty, he nev­er felt it to be a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry one. He felt it was high time the pub­lic moved away from these per­cep­tions that the par­ty was be­ing dri­ven by race.Young said he saw him­self as a young pro­fes­sion­al and felt that was the sig­nal Row­ley was send­ing out–that he was will­ing to give an op­por­tu­ni­ty to young pro­fes­sion­als who may have tal­ent but may not have been giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty in the past.

He said the PNM was wel­com­ing young peo­ple from all walks of life in­to its fold with open arms, and this was ev­i­dent dur­ing a vic­to­ry cel­e­bra­tion func­tion af­ter the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions when many young peo­ple from di­verse back­grounds and races were elect­ed as coun­cil­lors.

Not hap­py with how T&T is be­ing han­dled

Asked why he would take time away from his lu­cra­tive law prac­tice to en­ter in­to the cut and thrust world of pol­i­tics, and how will his le­gal acu­men trans­late to the po­lit­i­cal are­na, Young said it was a sac­ri­fice he was pre­pared to make as he was not hap­py or sat­is­fied with the state of the coun­try as it wasn't be­ing han­dled cor­rect­ly.He said he was dis­sat­is­fied with how politi­cians treat­ed with the pub­lic, not an­swer­ing se­ri­ous burn­ing ques­tions such as the "E-mail­gate" scan­dal.

Young said cer­tain al­le­ga­tions had been made about high of­fice hold­ers and the sim­plest course of ac­tion to take was to get the In­ter­net servers and ask to look in­to their e-mails and con­firm whether they ex­ist­ed or not.He said to date, mem­bers of the pub­lic haven't been giv­en a sat­is­fac­to­ry an­swer and the mat­ter hasn't been brought to clo­sure.

When asked if he would be on the side­lines or play­ing an ac­tive role when the two main po­lit­i­cal par­ties gear up for gen­er­al elec­tion in 2015, Young said he didn't know what his po­lit­i­cal fu­ture holds but was pre­pared to serve the peo­ple of T&T.He said he was aware of his oblig­a­tions un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act and in­tend­ed to ful­fil the let­ter of the law and file his de­c­la­ra­tions.Young said he has ap­plied to be­come a mem­ber of the PNM par­ty.

He has al­so ac­cept­ed an­oth­er tem­po­rary sen­a­to­r­i­al ap­point­ment to serve from March 29 to April 3, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly served on March 15 to 22.

Law ca­reer

Af­ter grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham where he ob­tained his bach­e­lor of laws (LLB), Young has been prac­tis­ing law in T&T since 1998 af­ter be­ing called to the bar of Eng­land and Wales at Grey's Inn in 1997.For­tu­nate to be giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ty to work on high-pro­file cas­es:

�2 Rep­re­sent­ed for­mer pres­i­dent ANR Robin­son twice in im­passe with for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day

�2 Pi­ar­co Com­mis­sion of en­quiry

�2 Cli­co/ HCU Com­mis­sion of en­quiry

�2 Ad­vised for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning dur­ing the at­tempt to im­peach for­mer CJ Sat Shar­ma

�2 Young was among the at­tor­neys for ex-Ude­cott head Calder Hart and Ude­cott in the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to Ude­cott

�2 Evolv­ing Tech­nolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny's (eTeck) claim against for­mer UTT chair­man Ken Julien and di­rec­tors

�2 Part of team re­peal­ing the smelter con­struc­tion

50 per cent­free le­gal work

Young said 50 per cent of his prac­tice was pro bono work, and he held the strong be­lief that some­one should use their tal­ent for the bet­ter­ment of so­ci­ety and help the less for­tu­nate.


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