By Raffique Shah
March 22, 2025

When the history of politics in Trinidad and Tobago is written, those who are shaping our future and those who are making our history will be alarmed at how easily an epoch was erased, how a new era almost slid past the hands of historians, with hardly a note written about it. Not even the men and women who were reshaping our history were aware of this momentous change, focused as they were on winning an election.

Dr Keith Rowley unknowingly sat like a master painter redrawing the lines with artistic confusion, much in the manner in which some of the past masters of art did many moons ago. Now, having crossed the rubicon of race with consummate ease, he is set in the afterlife of history to shatter the race ceiling that has kept us all in a kind of bondage that we never saw, even as we became victims of its chains.

Let’s face the facts: when Stuart Young was first brought on board the Rowley Government ten years or so ago, not even he could have plotted the complex chart that changed his life and the course of history the way it happened. The race problem not only kept us anchored in waters that took us from turbulence to periods of suspicious calm. We remained immersed in a chapter of our history that seemed to be written in predictable doom and gloom.

It was easy to stay afloat, weather storm after storm, and emerge from each cauldron as survivors of yet another race-storm. The few among us who had long crossed that watershed low-point, and who had long surrendered to the politics of race being our fate, never saw any significance in Young being trained by Dr Rowley for leadership of the People’s National Movement.

Its significance, as I take a retrospective look, appears to have been coincidental…and maybe it was. To have taken one of the foundational pillars of history and reshaped it to accommodate the requirements of a new dawn called for artistry that Dr Rowley, what with his rough edges, was capable of doing. I had given up hope for any change in race as a prime factor in our politics being tamed, maybe even purged from the equation. When the party’s faithful looked around them, they were jolted by the composition, the hues, and textures of hair they saw in the mirror. It was the PNM, the party people like me had long abandoned as being a huge part of the problem and challenges that race played in our politics, which now seems set to change in a most fundamental structural manner.

Last week I raised the question of the new face of the PNM. A number of important decisions are about to be taken, the toughest one being the old PNM accepting a leader who looks different from all previous leaders and who, for all intents and purposes, seems set to change the political landscape, hopefully for good.

There were many anxious moments during last Sunday’s marathon multi-meetings that the PNM held. Those who attended and who will have made the decision on whether or not they were accepting Young as their leader would have made the most important decision in their political lives. In fact, they may not be aware that they were carving out history in a way few other people ever did.

The mood for that Sunday seemed optimistic, celebratory and, most of all, welcoming to the introduction of the new Prime Minister. The stage was electric with riveting speeches by several senior members of the PNM. Interestingly, those who spoke reflected in very clear tones the new face of the party and the crowd was lapping it all up.

From my perspective, having monitored politics in this country for 50-odd years and coming from my vantage point as a former military man, I watched in amazement as Dr Rowley worked with incoming PM Young, using what we in the military call Blitzkrieg—a combined “arms” attack.

During the Second World War, Germany’s top generals, especially Field Marshall Ernest Rommel, introduced tactics in which his armoured air and infantry troops swooped down on allied forces with lethal speed and firepower, totally blindsiding them, conquering all of Europe. One had to admire those geniuses of war even as we stood against them and fought them and, in the end, conquered them.

The Dr Rowley/Young combination moved with lightning speed in the political arena, calling the general election in the minimum time available under our legislation. They had approved and presented a full slate of candidates. Their speed was such, they left the Opposition UNC scrambling to catch up. With a virtual sprint ahead to the finish line, clearly the PNM has several advantages they must now use to remain at the helm of government for yet another term.