By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 25, 2025

A United National Congress victory in the forthcoming election is the necessary antidote to heal the fissures that have erupted in the PNM’s political structure. Only a UNC victory can counteract the fiendish act of PNM’s hierarchy of selling the party to the highest financial bidders. This will necessitate that PNM takes a more careful look at itself, especially in the absence of the Leader of Our Grief and Sorrow.

The PNM has achieved many notable achievements in the past. It has even performed reasonably well economically during the present. However, the time has come for it to ask where it has gone wrong. The party must recognise that the Leader’s hegemony over the party has diminished its internal strength and external appeal, even preventing it from electing the political leader its members want.

Stuart Young is presumed to be the prime minister-in-waiting. In 2016 the Express stated that “Stuart Young appears to have taken over as the Government’s spokesperson at the weekly post-Cabinet news conference.” (June 1, 2016).

In June 2016 at the Mt D’Or Community Centre the Leader declared that every team needs a Gary Sobers and that Young was his Gary Sobers. In 2017 Young replaced Maxie Cuffie as the Minister of Communications. In 2019 the Leader elaborated on Young’s versatility: “So when yuh hear they refer to Minster Young, hoping for it to be a derogatory term, as ‘Minister of Everything,’ he must wear that title as a badge of honour.” (Express, June 29, 2019).

Sobers was a great West Indian all-rounder. However, his greatness didn’t just happen. He learned his cricketing skills from the three Ws (Frank Worrell, Everton Weekes, and Clyde Walcott), whom he observed carefully.

Sobers said: “I learnt from watching [them] because I used to look at how they played. I didn’t watch the sixes or fours they hit. I wasn’t interested in that. I used to watch their movements and watch the pitch of the ball and length to see what they do to that kind of ball, how they move. When I went to play, I used to practise with the boys and practise what I saw, because we didn’t have any coaches in those days. That is how I learnt.” (Vaneisa Baksh, Son of Grace).

Young learned his politricks from the Leader—who revels in the cussing style of Prospero, the coloniser—and Camille Robinson-Regis, “the mother of the movement,” as Young called her. He knew little about the grit of Florence Guy (Ma Guy), Isabel Teshea, Norma Lewis, or Muriel McDonawa-Davidson, the grand dames of the movement.

Sobers didn’t become great because the three Ws proclaimed him to be so. He became great because of what he accomplished. Young was vaulted into prominence because the Leader, who speaks ex-cathedra on all matters of doctrine and faith in the PNM, hand-picked him for the position.

Young produced nothing of substance before he arrived in government in 2015. Thereafter, his accomplishments were slim even though he has served his leader well. He was the minister of National Security without having any success; the Minister of Energy with nothing to show for it; and a junior minister in the AG’s Office responsible for anti-corruption efforts that produced no meaningful results.

Young has sat side-by-side with the Leader initiating energy deals, etc. All these activities accorded with his accounting and legal background. Although he became Senior Counsel, no one has documented his accomplishments in the legal field. He has not worked in the legal profession since he joined the Government.

The Leader outfoxed his colleagues politically. He made them focus on the shadows rather than the substance; on what they called “process” rather than Young’s suitability (substance) to run the country’s affairs. Avory Sinanan, a well-respected senior counsel, suggested that Young is not “the political knight in shining armour who will rescue the country from its calamitous journey as it careens inexorably to ‘failed nation’ status.” (Express, January 20). This was brave of him. He will never receive another state brief from this Government again.

William Shakespeare warned in Julius Caesar: “There is a tide in the affairs of men / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; / Omitted, all the voyage of their life / Is bound in shallows and in miseries.”

None of the PNM’s parliamentary members acted honourably in the PNM fiasco although they all possess the title “honourable.” I don’t know how they will recoup their losses, but their inability to act decisively leaves them in the “shallows and in misery.”

Only a UNC victory can save the PNM from its political misery and impotence.