Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

Af­ter shock­ing the To­ba­go elec­torate with his sur­prise se­lec­tion as the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty’s (TPP) can­di­date for Buc­coo/Mt Pleas­ant, Keigon De­noon says his de­ci­sion to part ways with the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) stemmed from the calls of young peo­ple in his com­mu­ni­ty urg­ing him to chart a new path.

Mo­ments af­ter PNM To­ba­go leader An­cil Den­nis con­firmed De­noon’s res­ig­na­tion as chair­man of the To­ba­go West con­stituen­cy, he was seen em­brac­ing TPP sup­port­ers and par­ty leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine at a ral­ly in Scar­bor­ough on Mon­day night, where he was of­fi­cial­ly un­veiled as the TPP’s fi­nal can­di­date ahead of the Jan­u­ary 12 elec­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the 29-year-old ex­plained that he de­cid­ed to leave the PNM mo­ments af­ter a voice note in a PNM What­sApp group ac­cused him of cross­ing the floor to the TPP.

The voice note called De­noon out and said, “Your name is be­ing called, that you filed to go up against the PNM for TPP. If that is the case part­ner, just delete your­self from the PNM groups please, re­sign your po­si­tion and press.”

De­noon ex­plained that the voice note ex­cit­ed the young peo­ple in Buc­coo/Mt Pleas­ant.

“Right af­ter the voice note de­ba­cle, the af­ter­noon I came home, about thir­ty-some­thing of the young men in my com­mu­ni­ty came to my home ex­cit­ed. I had to ex­plain to them that no, I was not the can­di­date at the time. And the dis­ap­point­ment on their face was some­thing dif­fi­cult to bear.”

De­noon added, “And one of the young men said it re­al­ly doesn’t mat­ter which par­ty you rep­re­sent, once you are able to rep­re­sent us, be­cause we know that once you are there, we will get prop­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion.”

He said an­oth­er young per­son asked him a poignant ques­tion, “Which one is more im­por­tant, the peo­ple or the par­ty?”

De­noon said that ques­tion was the cat­a­lyst for deep in­tro­spec­tion.

“Recog­nis­ing that to be the voice of the peo­ple that I love, and the young peo­ple that look up to me for the mere rea­son of hav­ing trust in some­one that they know would rep­re­sent them well, be­cause they have seen that with­out the of­fice I have been rep­re­sent­ing them. So at that junc­ture, I made a de­ci­sion to put the peo­ple and the needs of the peo­ple in front of the par­ty as­pect of the pol­i­tics.”

De­noon said he did not of­fer him­self as a can­di­date for the PNM and there­fore, it was not a case of him choos­ing the TPP be­cause he did not se­cure a can­di­da­cy for the PNM.

He clar­i­fied, though, that the TPP reached out to him.

“In­di­cat­ing that there is what you would call an as­sess­ment of the elec­toral dis­trict. When they were walk­ing and so on, the peo­ple were ask­ing for me as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Af­ter I gave some con­sid­er­a­tion to that.”

How­ev­er, De­noon could not re­call, at the time of the in­ter­view, the ex­act or even ap­prox­i­mate point when the TPP first ap­proached him.

He al­so said he has not re­ceived any back­lash from his for­mer PNM par­ty but ac­knowl­edged some peo­ple will have their opin­ions about his move.

“But at the end of the day, I am what you would call a youth ad­vo­cate, an ad­vo­cate for youth de­vel­op­ment. And wher­ev­er the op­por­tu­ni­ty presents it­self to be a bet­ter ser­vice to the peo­ple of To­ba­go, that is the op­por­tu­ni­ty that any and every young per­son should grab and take hold of. Be­cause, at the end of the day, you have to put the peo­ple be­fore the par­ty in any as­pect of the world.”

De­noon, who will now be squar­ing off in Buc­coo/Mt Pleas­ant against his for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader, PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil head An­cil Den­nis, said he holds no an­i­mos­i­ty to­wards his for­mer par­ty.

“Most peo­ple have in­di­cat­ed that they un­der­stand. Most of the se­nior mem­bers of the or­gan­i­sa­tion have reached out, giv­ing me their sup­port and their wish­es and so forth. I’ve not got any threats or any kind of back­lash from the or­gan­i­sa­tion at all.”

In jus­ti­fy­ing his se­lec­tion on Mon­day night, Au­gus­tine said, “This par­ty, this po­lit­i­cal par­ty prides it­self in al­ways be­ing a coali­tion of the com­pe­tent and the will­ing.

“We have in our par­ty peo­ple who are TOP, peo­ple who are NAR, peo­ple who are To­ba­go For­wards, peo­ple who are UNC, peo­ple who are PNM, and we are all To­bag­o­ni­ans fight­ing for a bet­ter To­ba­go.”