It’s easy for the re­port­ing and opin­ion me­dia to get caught up in the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s elec­tion­eer­ing around a pos­si­ble ear­ly poll call by its po­lit­i­cal leader and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, and in­deed whether he in­tends to stay on or anoint a choice.

Or is all of the be­lieved-to-be sig­nals of PM Row­ley in the Par­lia­ment that he is leav­ing town to en­joy fam­i­ly life and farm­ing in To­ba­go “ah set ah ma­m­aguy,” set­ting “la­gley” to catch those with am­bi­tions to pow­er, and even to rat­tle the Op­po­si­tion Leader and her troops so that they waste their po­lit­i­cal pow­der on mak­ing prepa­ra­tions for an ear­ly elec­tion?

Such po­lit­i­cal game-play­ing was es­tab­lished as a rel­e­vant and le­git­i­mate tac­tic by PNM founder Dr Er­ic Williams, when he waved good­bye at a con­ven­tion in 1973 to in­duce none oth­er than one of his deputies, Karl Hud­son-Phillips, to show his hand pre­ma­ture­ly. That ef­fec­tive­ly was the start of the po­lit­i­cal demise of Hud­son-Phillips, as Dr Williams nev­er in­tend­ed to leave Bal­isi­er House.

Is it that Row­ley is now de­sirous of hav­ing MP Stu­art Young suc­ceed him but is get­ting re­sis­tance from with­in the par­ty and there­fore he is pro­vok­ing re­ac­tion as a sound­ing board over “who to put?”

Maybe he is even seek­ing, as sug­gest­ed above, to scare Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her hi­er­ar­chy in­to be­liev­ing the elec­tion is close and so get them all ag­i­tat­ed and, in the process, com­mit too ear­ly to an elec­tion strat­e­gy that will grow stale? Maybe it is a com­bi­na­tion of all pos­si­bil­i­ties.

As the re­port­ing sug­gests, MP Young, who has sur­vived his de­grad­ing mau­vais langue in par­lia­men­tary cross-talk, and the seem­ing­ly fast-ris­ing Fos­ter Cum­mings are the front run­ners. Po­lit­i­cal leader Row­ley has made it ob­vi­ous that Young is his choice. He has placed him in crit­i­cal min­istries in the Of­fice of the PM, gave him a stint in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, but quick­ly re­moved him from get­ting bad­ly dam­aged in that no-win sit­u­a­tion, and has ap­point­ed him En­er­gy Min­is­ter, the ac­tion point of the econ­o­my. Most re­cent­ly, PM Row­ley showed his hand by hav­ing Min­is­ter Young, the PNM’s chair­man, act as prime min­is­ter when he left the coun­try.

How­ev­er, the ques­tion has arisen as to whether Min­is­ter Young will be ac­cept­ed by the broad PNM mem­ber­ship, which is over­whelm­ing­ly Afro-based while Young is pre­dom­i­nant­ly of Chi­nese an­ces­try. That is a re­al­i­ty which can­not be wished away.

On the oth­er hand, while MP Cum­mings fits the bill of long mem­ber­ship with­in the PNM and is of the right eth­nic and so­cial group that is for the com­fort of the par­ty mem­ber­ship, he has not had any­thing like a dis­tin­guished ca­reer as min­is­ter; nor has he been out­stand­ing as a par­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tive in his crit­i­cal seat.

Does the above co­nun­drum leave the door open for one of such out­rid­ers as Plan­ning Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son or For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne to slip in­to po­si­tion amidst the wran­gle be­tween the two favourites?

The lit­tle fan­cied George Cham­bers was even­tu­al­ly giv­en lead­er­ship over deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers Ka­malud­din Mo­hammed and Er­rol Ma­habir at the pass­ing of PM Williams in 1981. On this oc­ca­sion, how­ev­er, it will not fall to the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic to make the call if there is in­de­ci­sion with­in the rul­ing par­ty, hi­er­ar­chy and gen­er­al mem­ber­ship.