At age 44, Grena­da’s new Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell is not the youngest to be elect­ed a head of gov­ern­ment in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. How­ev­er, he is a new­com­er to the po­lit­i­cal are­na who scored a re­sound­ing and his­toric vic­to­ry when he un­seat­ed one of the re­gion’s longest-serv­ing lead­ers on Thurs­day.

The young at­tor­ney achieved vic­to­ry in the first gen­er­al elec­tion he has ever con­test­ed, just eight months af­ter as­sum­ing the lead­er­ship of the left-wing Na­tion­al De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress (NDC).

What is re­mark­able about Mitchell’s tri­umph at the polls is that the par­ty he so re­cent­ly took over had been com­plete­ly wiped out in Grena­da’s two pre­vi­ous elec­tions by Dr Kei­th Mitchell’s New Na­tion­al Par­ty (NNP).

That he was able to turn the ta­bles so de­ci­sive­ly on one of the re­gion’s most ex­pe­ri­enced politi­cians is a re­minder of the un­cer­tain­ty of in­cum­ben­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly in these times of so­cial and eco­nom­ic volatil­i­ty around the world.

With a com­fort­able mar­gin of vic­to­ry–the NDC se­cured 52 per cent of the votes and nine of the 15 con­stituen­cies–Mitchell must quick­ly get on with the task of de­liv­er­ing on his elec­tion promis­es to trans­form Grena­da.

The younger Mitchell is be­ing seen as some­thing of a gi­ant killer, as his par­ty's vic­to­ry has rel­e­gat­ed 75-year-old Dr Kei­th Mitchell to the op­po­si­tion bench­es. Al­though Dr Mitchell has oc­cu­pied that po­si­tion be­fore, his has been a most­ly lus­trous po­lit­i­cal ca­reer.

He first be­came prime min­is­ter of Grena­da in 1995 and served un­til 2008 be­fore he was beat­en in that year’s polls. He re­gained the po­si­tion in a land­slide in 2013, fol­lowed by an­oth­er land­slide win in 2018.

This time around, Dr Mitchell took a po­lit­i­cal gam­ble by call­ing elec­tions well be­fore they were con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due, but vot­ers de­nied his re­quest for “one for the road.”

Some po­lit­i­cal ob­servers have been in­ter­pret­ing Dick­on Mitchell’s elec­tion win as part of a new trend of young lead­ers mak­ing in­roads in­to the re­gion­al po­lit­i­cal land­scape, but this is not a re­cent de­vel­op­ment.

The Caribbean has a his­to­ry of elect­ing young lead­ers. Do­mini­ca’s Roo­sevelt Sker­rit was just 31 years old when he took of­fice fol­low­ing the death of Pierre Charles in Jan­u­ary 2004. An­drew Hol­ness was 39 when he was sworn in as Ja­maica’s youngest Prime Min­is­ter in 2011 and Bhar­rat Jagdeo was 35 when he be­came Pres­i­dent of Guyana in 1999.

Here in T&T, the youngest per­son in a po­si­tion of po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship is To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, who as­sumed the po­si­tion last De­cem­ber 9 at age 35.

But the two main po­lit­i­cal po­si­tions in the coun­try are still held by peo­ple of ad­vanced age. Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who is to­day seek­ing to be re-elect­ed po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, cel­e­brat­ed her 70th birth­day in April. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is 73 years old.

While both have vast po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence, there are no in­di­ca­tors that ei­ther is prepar­ing to pass on the man­tle of lead­er­ship any­time soon.

How­ev­er, the out­come of Grena­da’s elec­tions shows the im­por­tance of suc­ces­sion plan­ning.

It is time to iden­ti­fy and start train­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of Caribbean lead­ers.