The eu­phor­ic scenes out­side Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, that fol­lowed Ka­reem Mar­celle's suc­cess­ful screen­ing for the Laven­tille West seat for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) on Mon­day night, is a type of en­er­gy not yet seen on the cam­paign trail in the lead-up to the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tions.

It would have been a wel­comed de­vel­op­ment for PNM of­fi­cials who spent the last week fac­ing crit­i­cism from many sec­tors of so­ci­ety, af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's de­ci­sion to ac­cept the pro­posed salary in­crease for top pub­lic of­fi­cials from the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion.

Giv­en the elec­tion his­to­ry of the PNM in Laven­tille West, Mar­celle will fan­cy his chances of be­com­ing the next rep­re­sen­ta­tive for that con­stituen­cy.

How­ev­er, as Mar­celle him­self knows, hav­ing emerged out of the very bo­som of that com­mu­ni­ty, there are deep un­der­ly­ing so­cioe­co­nom­ic is­sues to con­front should he be head­ing to Par­lia­ment to rep­re­sent the peo­ple of that area.

In the build-up to the screen­ing, Laven­tille West res­i­dents told Guardian Me­dia they were ready for a "fresh face." Not on­ly does Mar­celle bring a fresh face to the con­stituen­cy held by the out­go­ing Fitzger­ald Hinds, who has held the seat for the last nine years in an over­all 29-year po­lit­i­cal ca­reer for the par­ty, but he has in­ject­ed a great amount of en­er­gy in­to the PNM's cam­paign.

Nonethe­less, there are sev­er­al chal­lenges ahead for both him and the PNM at a con­stituen­cy and coun­try lev­el.

One such chal­lenge is whether the 29-year-old po­lit­i­cal neo­phyte can en­cour­age dis­pas­sion­ate and ap­a­thet­ic young vot­ers to not on­ly go to the polls, but al­so to ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pate in re­build­ing their com­mu­ni­ty. Young Mar­celle will have to use all the en­er­gy he can muster to trans­form a com­mu­ni­ty plagued by vi­o­lence and pover­ty. More than that, it is left to be seen whether the en­thu­si­asm from Mon­day night res­onates sig­nif­i­cant­ly enough with­in the PNM base to car­ry the par­ty through to the next poll.

This is no small task. Al­though Mr Hinds has faced in­tense crit­i­cism from those he rep­re­sents, it must be said that many of the prob­lems in east Port-of-Spain pre­ced­ed his ar­rival.

And it's more than just crime. The in­com­ing Mar­celle will have to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for a de­pressed com­mu­ni­ty to find av­enues that lead them to bet­ter lives. He will feel he is the best-suit­ed per­son to lead Laven­tille West in­to this new era should he be suc­cess­ful in the up­com­ing elec­tion. Not on­ly did he grow up in the com­mu­ni­ty and can un­der­stand both the peo­ple and their prob­lems, but his open­ness in speak­ing about his fa­ther's life­time prison sen­tence in the Unit­ed States and his call to the lo­cal bar two years ago un­der­scores his de­sire and dri­ve to rise above his per­son­al cir­cum­stances and for bet­ter for him­self and his com­mu­ni­ty.

How­ev­er, achiev­ing "peace and love" in Laven­tille West will re­quire much more than any per­son­al de­sire for change. There must be se­ri­ous so­cial and po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ven­tion to ar­rest the ob­vi­ous de­cay.

As a young politi­cian, Mar­celle will, there­fore, come to re­alise, if he has not al­ready done so, that in­ten­tions, as pure as they are, must be met with de­ci­sive na­tion­al ac­tion.