The PNM cau­cus­es in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate aban­doned their for­mer par­ty chair­man and for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young, whom many of them sup­port­ed in their let­ter to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo on March 12, 2025, for him to be­come prime min­is­ter.

That sup­port was aban­doned last week by PNM MPs and sen­a­tors in both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment on the Prime Min­is­ter’s Pen­sion (Amend­ment) Bill 2025.

The on­ly oth­er time the PNM has turned its back on one of its own who has held the of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter was when the par­ty un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly evict­ed Patrick Man­ning from Bal­isi­er House in May 2010.

Stu­art Young and Kei­th Row­ley were not treat­ed that way on the night of April 28; how­ev­er, the pal­pa­ble anger re­sult­ed in their res­ig­na­tions two days lat­er.

I was one of those who ar­gued the con­sti­tu­tion­al point against Young’s ap­point­ment as PM by the Pres­i­dent, lead­ing up to March 17, on the ground of its con­sti­tu­tion­al un­cer­tain­ty.

As a re­sult, I hold no brief for Young in this mat­ter. How­ev­er, the PNM MPs who sup­port­ed him on Jan­u­ary 6 in To­ba­go when a straw poll was done and those oth­ers who sup­port­ed Pen­ny Beck­les (in­clud­ing Beck­les her­self) who changed their minds and gave their sup­port to him could not find it in their hearts to sup­port Young by vot­ing against the bill two Fri­days ago in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and last Mon­day in the Sen­ate.

Not a sin­gle par­lia­men­tar­i­an of any stripe vot­ed against this bill. In the House, when the vote was tak­en, af­ter the PNM MPs re­quest­ed a ten-minute time-out to have a fi­nal cau­cus meet­ing be­fore vot­ing, the fi­nal vote was 27 for and 11 ab­sten­tions. The bill re­quired a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty, which would have been 25 MPs, so they cov­ered the num­ber ad­e­quate­ly.

In the Sen­ate, the PNM cau­cus main­tained the same line of ab­stain­ing on the bill. The fo­cus of at­ten­tion was on those sen­a­tors ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent in her own dis­cre­tion (com­mon­ly de­scribed as in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors), who are free to vote as they see fit, as they are not in re­ceipt of a par­ty whip from ei­ther the Gov­ern­ment or Op­po­si­tion sides.

Ear­ly in the sit­ting, un­der the head­ing of “An­nounce­ments by the Pres­i­dent”, Sen­a­tor Wade Mark, pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate, gave an im­por­tant rul­ing on the right of every sen­a­tor to have free­dom of speech when they par­tic­i­pate in the pro­ceed­ings of the Sen­ate. This was ob­vi­ous­ly a re­sponse to ma­te­r­i­al that was aired in a UNC press brief­ing the day be­fore about these in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

No par­lia­men­tar­i­an in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed against this bill, and nei­ther did any sen­a­tor vote against this bill de­spite al­le­ga­tions that it would vi­o­late the rule of law. The on­ly reser­va­tions were ex­pressed in ab­sten­tions, with 20 sen­a­tors vot­ing for it and ten sen­a­tors ab­stain­ing. Tech­ni­cal­ly, the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors may have done the PNM a favour, as this bill is now off the na­tion­al agen­da, which means that the PNM do not have it hang­ing like an al­ba­tross around their necks in the af­ter­math of the de­feat of the Row­ley-Young “ex­per­i­ment.”

On Jan­u­ary 9, PNM Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, Fos­ter Cum­mings, sent out a mes­sage to all par­ty mem­bers af­ter a meet­ing of the PNM Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive, which said, in part, the fol­low­ing:

“As Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, I urge all par­ty mem­bers to work with us as we con­tin­ue to bring good gov­er­nance to Trinidad and To­ba­go. We have se­lect­ed the Par­ty Chair­man and MP for POS North as the mem­ber to suc­ceed Dr Row­ley as Prime Min­is­ter, and he has my full sup­port. Great is the PNM, and we shall pre­vail. Let’s do this.”

On Feb­ru­ary 27, PNM PRO, Faris Al-Rawi, was re­port­ed by Ria Taitt of the Ex­press to have said the fol­low­ing:

“We are 100 per cent in sup­port of Stu­art’s takeover as the prime min­is­ter, large­ly be­cause we en­gaged in a process to get there. And that process, in par­tic­u­lar, stop­ping at the Gen­er­al Coun­cil of the PNM, which is the sec­ond high­est body in the pol­i­tics of the PNM, took us to a place where we can con­fi­dent­ly state that the PNM as a move­ment is sat­is­fied with the next steps that we must take as a Gov­ern­ment.”

Af­ter all of this nice pub­lic re­la­tions talk, in which the par­ty took Young to hero sta­tus last week, they cast him aside and re­duced him to ze­ro sta­tus. It was one of the most bru­tal po­lit­i­cal cuts of all in the pol­i­tics of this coun­try. Not even Patrick Man­ning had ever been sub­ject­ed to such bru­tal­i­ty af­ter he was eject­ed from Bal­isi­er House in May 2010.

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.