In her pub­lic state­ment af­ter she swore in Stu­art Young as Prime Min­is­ter last Mon­day, Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo said that she was is­su­ing the state­ment “in light of the present unique cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the tran­si­tion from one Prime Min­is­ter to an­oth­er.”

It was a wel­come de­vel­op­ment as the sit­u­a­tion was in­deed very “unique” where­by the out­go­ing PM, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, re­mains as po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM which was the par­ty that had a ma­jor­i­ty of seats in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. At the same time, the PNM cau­cus in the House which had a ma­jor­i­ty (21 of 41) chose Stu­art Young as the suc­ces­sor to Dr Row­ley as their “Leader in the House” to re­place him in the face of his res­ig­na­tion as prime min­is­ter.

It was ap­par­ent that the Pres­i­dent ac­cept­ed that she recog­nised Stu­art Young as the “Leader in the House” of the PNM MPs, whilst say­ing in her state­ment that this was so “notwith­stand­ing that the Ho­n­ourable Dr Kei­th Row­ley, MP for Diego Mar­tin West, is the Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the par­ty that com­mands the sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of mem­bers of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives …”

Hav­ing stat­ed that there were po­ten­tial­ly two mem­bers of the PNM whom she clear­ly recog­nised as lead­ers in the House among the PNM MPs (one be­ing the po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty and the oth­er be­ing the leader in the House), she ex­plained that she pro­ceed­ed to ap­point Young as PM un­der sec­tion 76(1)(a) of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

This is where her state­ment rais­es more ques­tions than an­swers. The un­der­ly­ing ad­mis­sion in the state­ment was that the PNM had two po­ten­tial lead­ers in the House. In such cir­cum­stances po­lit­i­cal­ly, there could be a de­bate about whether there was “no undis­put­ed leader” in the House among the PNM MPs and she could have made the ap­point­ment un­der sec­tion 76(1)(b), based on her recog­ni­tion of two lead­ers, in­stead of sec­tion 76(1)(a) of the Con­sti­tu­tion and that she had ev­i­dence of sup­port for one MP who could com­mand the sup­port of a ma­jor­i­ty of MPs.

Re­gard­less of the aca­d­e­m­ic dis­course on this sub­ject, the pres­i­den­tial ink had hard­ly dried on the sec­tion 76(1)(a) con­tro­ver­sial in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment be­fore the new Prime Min­is­ter di­rect­ed Her Ex­cel­len­cy, the next day, to sec­tion 68 of the con­sti­tu­tion to ad­vise her to is­sue a procla­ma­tion dis­solv­ing Par­lia­ment. Fur­ther pres­i­den­tial ink was re­quired to is­sue 41 writs of elec­tion in ac­cor­dance with sec­tion 33 of the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act.

Some have ar­gued that they were not sur­prised and that this was all or­ches­trat­ed be­fore­hand, oth­ers have ar­gued that they thought that the new PM would have faced Par­lia­ment in his new ca­pac­i­ty and have at least some leg­is­la­tion as well as the mid-year eco­nom­ic re­view laid out be­fore a dis­so­lu­tion in Ju­ly for an Au­gust elec­tion.

This sud­den dis­so­lu­tion was ei­ther or­ches­trat­ed and the pub­lic was played by the shenani­gans of politi­cians hold­ing pow­er or there was some­thing of mon­u­men­tal sig­nif­i­cance that hap­pened in­ter­nal­ly in the Gov­ern­ment that forced the hand of PM Young to pull the trig­ger on a rapid-fire dis­so­lu­tion. Take your pick.

Af­ter his in­au­gur­al speech at his swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny, one did not get the im­pres­sion that he was go­ing to dis­solve Par­lia­ment the next day when he said that the work “starts now.” Oth­er min­is­ters gave in­ter­views to the me­dia and gave the im­pres­sion that they were about to em­bark on sig­nif­i­cant pol­i­cy work as­so­ci­at­ed with their new port­fo­lios as op­posed to the con­fine­ment of the care­tak­er sta­tus that has been cast up­on them by the dis­so­lu­tion.

The PNM has com­plet­ed its screen­ing and is ready for a gen­er­al elec­tion in five weeks. Oth­er par­ties will an­nounce can­di­dates in the com­ing days and we should soon see the air­ing of po­lit­i­cal ad­ver­tise­ments which are a sta­ple around this time in any elec­tion sea­son.

The “present unique cir­cum­stances” are unique by virtue of the fact that the PNM is go­ing in­to this elec­tion with two lead­ers, one who is still the po­lit­i­cal leader (Dr Row­ley) and the oth­er who is the head of the gov­ern­ment (PM Young). How they will co­or­di­nate their re­spec­tive roles will pro­vide “unique cir­cum­stances” to analyse this elec­tion cam­paign.

All of the PNM can­di­dates were cho­sen as po­lit­i­cal leader un­der the stew­ard­ship of Dr Row­ley. The PNM has made five changes among its 22 in­cum­bents so there is not much change, es­pe­cial­ly since the re­place­ment can­di­date in La Brea (Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell) is al­ready in the Cab­i­net.

The mes­sag­ing chal­lenge for PM Young and the PNM can­di­dates is that they will be con­tin­u­ing the ex­ist­ing poli­cies of the PNM as op­posed to de­part­ing from the Row­ley lega­cy.

Prof Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies of 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.