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In October last year, almost immediately after a strong intimation in Parliament from then People’s National Movement (PNM) prime minister Dr Keith Rowley that he was having his swansong and would be leaving the Parliament, the PNM tersely announced that: “its 51st Annual Convention, as well as the internal election, originally scheduled for Sunday 17 November 2024 has been cancelled”.
The cancellation at once raised questions about whether the PNM leadership wished to avoid succession to the offices of prime minister and political leader of the PNM being determined by the membership of the PNM and to facilitate Rowley handpicking his successor.
Photo: PNM.
Rowley had long declared his belief that Stuart Young MP was the pick of his Cabinet ministers and plainly desired to have Young succeed him as prime minister.
On 20 October 2024, I declared my concern that “the PNM cancellation notice represents an impairment of our democracy of a stealthy kind”. I discerned “an obvious fear of top leadership of the PNM” that “a convention and internal elections at this time would permit party members to speak against the handpicking of candidates and successors to the current leadership”.
I wrote that “cancellation of an opportunity to influence different choices and to disrupt plans to promote hand-picked favourites of the parasitic oligarchy behind the scenes into high positions is anti-democratic”.
I then asked: “Is there now a significant split between the ‘social’ PNM and the ‘grassroots’ PNM within the ministerial and executive levels of the party over preferences for political foster children?”
(Copyright Trinidad Newsday.)
An intended fix for Young to succeed Rowley became crystal clear when the PNM scheduled a retreat in Tobago on 4 and 5 January 2025 and Rowley announced on January 3 that he would be resigning from the office of prime minister.
The PNM leadership intimated that Young was the unanimous choice to succeed Rowley but there was no such unanimity at the retreat.
There was reportedly “a straw poll” and the PNM Members of the House of Representatives (the House) were reportedly split 11 for Young and 9 for Pennelope Beckles (Beckles), MP for Arima.
On 7 January 2025, I commented on “the huge political vulnerability of Young” if he did not have the unanimous support of all the PNM members of the House unequivocally expressed in writing for the guidance of the President of the Republic, who would be asked to appoint Young as prime minister.
Photo: PNM.
Apparently there was subsequently a scramble to obtain such a document and this requirement was fulfilled by the time Rowley resigned.
On 26 February 2024, Rowley announced that he would officially resign from office on 16 March. He did and Young was sworn in as prime minister on 17 March 2025. The next day Young called the election and a date of 28 April 2025 (last Monday) was set.
As is now apparent, I had asked an on-point question about adverse grassroots reaction to the intended fix, which had as its beneficiary a person firmly identified with the so-called one per cent.
Photo: PNM.
The total vote for the PNM plummeted by 102,000 and it lost the election badly. Rowley’s intended fix failed disastrously and he has caused the PNM’s earth to be scorched.
We must recall that Beckles had previously, but unsuccessfully, competed against Rowley in 2014 for the leadership of the PNM.
Were animosity and spitefulness on the part of Rowley against Beckles other primary factors in the cancellation of the Convention and internal elections?
Photo: Penny Beckles page.
The cancellation deprived Beckles, as well as other aspirants, including Young, of an equal opportunity to compete to be endorsed by the membership of the party.
What a severe price the PNM has paid and how pointlessly Rowley has made them pay it.
Despite the PNM losses last Monday, Beckles successfully retained her Arima seat and will now be entering Parliament as newly appointed Opposition leader. Had Beckles or any other person properly elected by the PNM membership in internal elections faced the polls last Monday would the PNM earth have been so badly scorched?
Photo: PNM.
Meanwhile, welcome Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar on your return. Thank you for your emphasis on empathy in governance.
The Rowley PNM administration sorely lacked it.
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Martin G Daly SC is a prominent attorney-at-law. He is a former Independent Senator and past president of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago.
He is chairman of the Pat Bishop Foundation and a steelpan music enthusiast.
I challenge Martin Daly’s superficial commentary on the PNM’s electoral defeat, exposing its failure to grapple with the systemic governance collapse in Trinidad and Tobago.
I read Martin Daly’s commentary on the People’s National Movement’s (PNM) electoral wipe-out with growing disappointment. While narratively detailed, it offers little more than political gossip—handpicking, internal party elections, factional intrigues—without engaging the structural, institutional failures that produced the PNM’s catastrophic loss.
It is intellectually lazy to suggest that the cancellation of a party convention, or a contested leadership succession, explains a 102,000-vote swing against the PNM. This reductionism ignores the deeper, systemic causes of the electorate’s rejection: a decade of arrogance, hubris, and moral bankruptcy embedded in the leadership culture of the party.
Political legitimacy does not hinge solely on who crowns the successor; it is forged—and ultimately destroyed—by how citizens experience governance over time. Daly’s fixation on the “fix” of Stuart Young’s succession overlooks the obvious: that the PNM presided over a steady, visible collapse in governance, accountability, and integrity.
Where is the analysis of:
The institutional rot in key state agencies?
The sustained failure to reduce violent crime?
The decline in public service delivery and infrastructure?
The erosion of transparency in public procurement?
The absence of any coherent economic diversification strategy while debt mounted?
Nor does Daly interrogate the toxic leadership culture that flourished under Keith Rowley’s watch. This is a party whose ministers treated high office as personal entitlement, not public duty. Let us not forget the disgrace of Darryl Smith, whose sexually aggressive conduct towards a female employee was quietly buried until public outrage forced belated action. Or the moral bankruptcy of Colm Imbert, whose dismissive arrogance and contempt for public scrutiny typified a finance ministry that made decisions behind closed doors, sneered at accountability, and brushed off legitimate demands for transparency.
This was not a few “bad apples.” This was a systemic failure of leadership ethics, manifest in a culture that tolerated misconduct, shielded the powerful, and marginalised voices calling for reform. Every arrogance, every abuse of office, every evasion of accountability compounded into a public verdict delivered at the ballot box.
Daly’s article skirts these realities. He laments a “scorched earth” but refuses to map the fire’s origins. His account reduces a structural collapse to a factional squabble over succession, ignoring the institutional decay and ethical failures driving public anger. It mistakes proximate cause for root cause.
Trinidad and Tobago faces a governance crisis, not merely a political defeat. Any serious analysis must confront the interconnected failures across policing, the judiciary, public administration, education, healthcare, and economic policy. Reform cannot begin without acknowledging the entrenched hubris and impunity that became normalised under the PNM’s leadership.
It is not enough to chronicle personalities and political manoeuvres. We must grapple with the system that enabled them. We must identify leverage points for institutional reform: enforceable anti-corruption measures, merit-based appointments, depoliticisation of public institutions, real citizen oversight, and investment in long-neglected social infrastructure.
The PNM’s defeat was not caused by one “fix.” It was the inevitable consequence of years of failed leadership, tolerated misconduct, and contempt for accountability. To suggest otherwise is not analysis—it is evasion.
People did not vote FOR the UNC as much as they voted AGAINST the PNM.
Once again, Daly is shortsighted and focused on the surface issues. The demise and political decimation of the PNM did not start with Rowley’s handpicked succession strategy. It started long before with the creeping dictatorship, the blatant arrogance, and open corruption.
Do not focus solely on the headline to arrive at conclusions. Headlines are the domain of the editor and not the authors–and in this case the headline points to the fall-in public perception suffered by the PNM.
I did read the body of the article. I stand by my point that Daly has once again (a pattern I have noticed over his recent commentary) become lazy and failed to look at the issues in any meaningful way. It seems to me that he is merely coasting along at this point in his life, meeting deadlines without meaning.