Young’s leadership, trauma, and the politics of bullying

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 05, 2025

When serving as prime minister, Patrick Manning rendered two insightful judgments on the former Leader of Our Grief and Sorrow. He said: “When he cannot have his way, Mr Speaker, his method is to bully you...We do not tolerate bullying in the secondary school system...The minute you oppose my good friend, he gets very, very angry. And if you oppose him strongly, he becomes a raging bull.”

Eventually the Leader became the prime minister. At the last PNM General Council meeting, when he passed the leadership baton to his protege, Stuart Young, he insulted his colleagues in a disgraceful manner. He called them out of their names and consigned them to perpetual ignominy.

Someone called Young a “Squatter Prime Minister” because of how he obtained his job. After being enthroned, the Government placed his portrait in the departure lounge at Piarco International Airport where the portraits of present and former prime ministers and presidents are displayed. This might be a sign that Young is about to take an early departure from office.

When Young assumed office, a relative of Imran Khan, who was Young’s classmate at St Mary’s College, accused the latter of bullying Khan for years. Young responded: “The issue of bullying in this country is unfortunately real and one that I take very seriously as a father and now as prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago.” (Guardian, March 20.)

He countered in a classic form of evasion: “It is deeply unfortunate [for whom?] that an incident that took place when I was a teenaged school boy has resurfaced in a way that does not allow for full and fair discussion [from whose point of view?]. This incident was tragic for everyone involved.”

He promised “to ensure that our schools are safe spaces where all children can feel protected and get the support that is needed. This is my commitment to Trinidad and Tobago.”

Orin Gordon understood the nature of Young’s evasive response. He wrote: “We need to know what happened before we consign the past to history, irrelevance or extend or withhold reconciliation. We need to be clear about what we’re supposed to be moving on from, before we move on.”(Guardian, March 23.)

I hope Young grasped the subtlety of Gordon’s analysis. Young continued: “The public interest is not served by politicising an issue as sensitive as bullying, which deserves thoughtful discussion and meaningful solutions.”

The question arises: What constitutes “politicising” of this issue and how does a Squatter PM address a problem that he says also traumatised him; how does he de-traumatise an incident that lies buried in his unconscious mind? Left unattended, it is likely to reappear in his adult behaviour, albeit in a different form.

It is also wise to remind Young that the etymology of the word politics has its roots in Aristotle’s classic work, Politics. It has to do with the “affairs of the state” or the polis. When the citizens talk/discuss an issue such as bullying, s/he is carrying out one of the most sacred duties—psychological cleansing—of the nation’s psyche.

Jacques Lacan, the French psychologist, told us “the unconscious is structured like a language”, which means it operates according to the rules of a language. We can only treat this deep psychological pain through discourse and discussion at the public and private levels.

We also know that traumatic incidents that are suppressed can reveal themselves through the gaps and lacunae of conscious discourse and even behaviours. There is no way in the world a traumatised subject like Young can circumscribe, control or shape a discussion of this horrible behaviour through authoritarian declarations.

It is this empathy gap that led Young to announce monetary awards to the victims of the Paria diving tragedy without informing their families prior to his announcement. It would have helped if he did.

Young cannot instruct a nation on how to respond to psychological trauma without attending to his own personal issues.

P.S. David King, who I referred to in my last article, was 95 years old when the First Citizens incident occurred.

—Prof Cudjoe's e-mail address is scudjoe@wellesley.edu. He can be reached @ProfessorCudjoe.

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