PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) — President Christine Kangaloo has defended her decision to appoint Stuart Young as prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago following what she termed as “the present unique circumstances surrounding the transition from one prime minister to another”.

Young took the oath of office as the country’s eighth prime minister on Monday, replacing Keith Rowley, who stepped down after being in the position for the past nine and a half years. Young has since named a 24-member Cabinet.

In a three-page statement, President Kangaloo said that her statement was being made “in the interest of transparency and so as to assist the public in understanding why I have acted as I have”.

She said Section 75 of the Trinidad and Tobago Constitution provides for there to be a Cabinet “which shall consist of the prime minister and such number of other ministers (of whom one shall be the attorney general), appointed in accordance with the provisions of Section 76, as the prime minister may consider appropriate”.

She said Section 73 also provides that the ministers, other than the prime minister, “shall be such persons as the president, acting in accordance with the advice of the prime minister, shall appoint from the members of the House of Representatives and the senators”.

Kangaloo said that the “constitution clearly contemplates and requires that there must be a prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago” adding that it “does not contemplate that there shall be no prime minister”.

In her statement, the head of state, an attorney, said that the Trinidad and Tobago Constitution also provides for the prime minister to resign from that office by writing to the president.

She said that on March 12, she received a letter from Rowley indicating that he had resigned as prime minister with effect from midnight on March 16, 2025.

“Because the constitution contemplated and requires that there shall be a prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago and does not contemplate there shall be no prime minister, upon the Honourable Dr Keith Rowley MP’s (Member of Parliament) resignation from that office as aforesaid, there arose occasion for the appointment of a prime minister.”

Kangaloo said the party which commands the support of the majority in the House of Representatives is the People’s National Movement (PNM) and that “by letters to me dated March 12, 2025, 21 members of the House of Representatives, elected to that House as candidates of the People’s National Movement, declared and confirmed to me that, notwithstanding that the Honourable Dr Keith Rowley…is the political leader of the party that commands the support of the majority of members of the House of Representatives, the member among them who commands their support in the said House of Representatives, as their leader in that House, is the Honourable Mr Stuart Young, SC, MP”.

President Kangaloo said that Young also wrote to her on March 12 stating that he was willing to accept the position of prime minister.

“In my own deliberate judgment, including having regard to the letters to me from the 21 members of the House of Representatives dated March 12, 2025, as aforesaid, and to the letter to me dated March 12, 2025, from the Honourable Stuart Young, SC, MP, dated March 12, 2025, as aforesaid, the leader that House of the party which commands the support of the majority of members of that house, is the Honourable Stuart Young SC MP, and the Honourable Mr Stuart Young SC MP is willing to accept the office of prime minister”.

Kangaloo said that, by instrument dated March 17, 2025 and in the exercise of her powers under Section 76(1) (a) of the Constitution, as well as all other powers vested in the Constitution, she appointed Young as prime minister.

“I trust that it will therefore be understood that my task has been to appoint a prime minister as is required by the constitution, in the unique circumstances that presented themselves, and to do so in accordance with the provisions of the constitution, and that this is what I have done,” she said in the statement.

Meanwhile, the main opposition United National Congress (UNC) has maintained its position that the appointment is unconstitutional and will challenge the matter in the courts.

Speaking at a public meeting on Monday night, UNC leader and former prime minister, Kamla Persad Bissessar described Young’s elevation, without a general election, as a “bloodless coup d’etat”.

She also questioned the legitimacy of Camille Robinson Regis as the newly appointed attorney general (AG) amidst concerns that she does not have a practising legal certificate.

“Today you lost your democracy,” she told supporters, accused the other government legislators “of having sat and allowed this coup d’etat and, the incompetent and unelected Young to be placed as the prime minister”.

“They took away the right of PNM members to choose a leader. They took away the right of every citizen to select and elect a prime minister. This is what you call a bloodless coup. Coups without a drop of blood shed. This happened under Rowley anointing his ‘Gary Sobers.’ They have exercised a coup d’etat.

“Today the country has been sold, sealed and delivered by Rowley and Young to their friends and financiers, and they were aided and abetted by the 20 PNM MPs. Don’t let them get off the hook. If they cannot defend their own party members, would they be able to defend you — the people of Trinidad and Tobago,” Persad Bissessar added.

She insisted that the appointment of the 50-year-old senior counsel as prime minister was “a blatant disregard for the constitution”.

“The appointment of Stuart Young as prime minister, without the mandate of the people through a general election, is an unlawful act of desperation. It is a clear attempt to manufacture the illusion of change in the hope that citizens will forget the last ten years of pain, suffering, abuse, and nothingness that Young was a major part off, but the people of Trinidad and Tobago are not fooled.

“The PNM is merely reshuffling the same deck of failures, hoping to convince the electorate to ‘give them a chance’— a chance to continue their terror and destruction of our nation,” she added.

When he addressed the special PNM convention over the last weekend, Rowley brushed aside the position of the opposition party that it would challenge the matter in the courts.

“She said they carrying us to court on Monday. I want you to give her (Persad Bissessar) one message for me when you see her. Before you go to the courthouse on Monday with anymore of your adventures, make arrangements to pay the PNM for the millions (One TT dollar=US$01.6 cents) you owe us for the last time you carried us in the court in the 2015 election.

“Since 2016, they carry us to court for the election victory when we beat them and they did not want to accept the results. So I have no problem if she goes there again, but they don’t pay. They do not pay when they lose,” Rowley told supporters.