BAVI­TA GOPAULCHAN

bavi­ta.gopaulchan@guardian.co.tt

De­feat­ed Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment can­di­date for Buc­coo/Mt Pleas­ant, out­go­ing To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis, has ac­cept­ed the de­ci­sion by res­i­dents of the area for change.

He is adamant, how­ev­er, that his cam­paign was strong and that his track record speaks for it­self, af­firm­ing that there’s noth­ing dif­fer­ent he would have done.

While he be­lieves he has done his best to serve the peo­ple of Buc­coo/Mt Pleas­ant, Den­nis said yes­ter­day he will be do­ing a post-mortem on his per­for­mance and cam­paign.

Guardian Me­dia spoke to res­i­dents with­in the Buc­coo/Mt Pleas­ant dis­trict yes­ter­day on their views of Mon­day night’s THA elec­tion re­sults.

Some res­i­dents felt Den­nis was an un­for­tu­nate vic­tim to the cur­rent dis­plea­sure for the PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil lead­er­ship.

How­ev­er, Den­nis told Guardian Me­dia that while it is clear that To­bag­o­ni­ans vot­ed based on par­ty, po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM’s To­ba­go Coun­cil Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine was un­fair­ly tar­get­ed.

“To me, it is about in­cum­ben­cy. Af­ter be­ing there for over 20 years, it is not go­ing to be in the favour of any in­cum­bent par­ty,” Den­nis said.

He added, “Peo­ple are free to have their opin­ions. I think per­son­al­ly, a con job was done on Ms Ce­les­tine since last De­cem­ber be­fore the Jan­u­ary 2021 elec­tion. It is quite un­for­tu­nate that the zi­pline project was used in a way to de­stroy her rep­u­ta­tion and char­ac­ter. From my acute knowl­edge of the zi­pline project, Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine did noth­ing wrong, cor­rupt or any­thing that war­rants the kind of ridicule or at­tacks that tran­spired. That is just pol­i­tics and we all know per­cep­tion is re­al­i­ty.”

Al­though he did not go in­to de­tail, Den­nis said there is now work for the par­ty to do.

Some res­i­dents felt that Den­nis’ po­si­tion as Chief Sec­re­tary took away from his pres­ence in the com­mu­ni­ties.

Den­nis ad­mit­ted his plate was full gov­ern­ing the is­land but did not be­lieve it took away from his work on the ground.

“Man­ag­ing the is­land as Chief Sec­re­tary has been quite a chal­lenge. It is a tall or­der but I still feel notwith­stand­ing that, I man­aged to get time to ren­der as­sis­tance to my con­stituents in every in­stance. So yes, be­ing Chief Sec­re­tary was dif­fi­cult but I am not go­ing to use that as any ex­cuse. I think I was able to still de­liv­er,” he said.

How­ev­er, Den­nis said his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer is far from over and com­mit­ted to con­tin­ue build­ing with the PNM.