Akash Sama­roo

Senior Reporter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

There has been an­oth­er sur­pris­ing po­lit­i­cal en­dorse­ment for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), this time from crick­eter and en­ter­tain­er Dwayne Bra­vo.

Two days af­ter so­ca artiste Neil “Iw­er” George ap­peared on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form and de­clared his sup­port for the UNC and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, two posts ap­peared on Bra­vo’s In­sta­gram page in sup­port of the op­po­si­tion par­ty.

One post had a yel­low back­ground with the hash­tag #code, an ap­par­ent ref­er­ence to the UNC’s cam­paign slo­gan. Bra­vo tagged fel­low crick­eters Dar­ren Bra­vo, Nicholas Pooran and Kieron Pol­lard in the post which was cap­tioned, “Al­lyuh big and have sense.” An­oth­er post fea­tured a video with UNC Deputy Leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, in­cum­bent Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin and some chil­dren singing the par­ty’s 2025 elec­tion an­them, “When UNC Wins, Every­body Wins.”

Bra­vo, who is re­port­ed to be in In­dia for the In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL), did not re­spond to calls for com­ment. But in this po­lit­i­cal sea­son, the ap­pear­ance of en­ter­tain­ers on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form does raise some ques­tions about what mo­ti­vates en­ter­tain­ers and oth­er pop­u­lar per­son­al­i­ties to align with a po­lit­i­cal par­ty. Gospel artiste Jaron “Un­com­mon” Nurse, who re­cent­ly sang at the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Diego Mar­tin, said for him it is def­i­nite­ly not about the mon­ey.

“It’s nev­er a job for me, I would sing for the PNM for free, not be­cause my par­ents are staunch PNM sup­port­ers, but the par­ty has been a bless­ing for me, and I have been a part of a lot of their pro­grammes,” he ex­plained.

Nurse said a few years ago the UNC of­fered him $50, 000 for a song but he de­clined. “For me it’s not about mon­ey, it’s about prin­ci­ple,” he said. Nurse said some artistes are afraid to fol­low that phi­los­o­phy in case the par­ty they sup­port does not win the elec­tion. “I tell peo­ple I deal with the gov­er­nor of all gov­er­nors which is God and no mat­ter who is in pow­er, he’s in charge but if it’s one thing it’s nev­er a job for me. Je­sus will al­so pro­vide and Je­sus is al­so in charge, so I don’t wor­ry a bit,” he said. Nurse said he was al­so drawn to the charis­ma and con­duct of PNM po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“He heard me sing at a wake and a sports day and he had just be­come the po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM, so he was still in Op­po­si­tion, and he asked for me to come and check him.

“He said he ob­served how it was when I dealt with the el­ders and youths and said he want­ed to be a bless­ing to me and he gave me some mon­ey to help out with my min­istry and for me, that was loud be­cause he wasn’t even in pow­er, so it was not a po­lit­i­cal move.” Chut­ney artiste Adesh Sama­roo, who ap­peared reg­u­lar­ly on the PNM plat­form dur­ing the Patrick Man­ning era, said it was sim­ply a job and not an en­dorse­ment of the par­ty.

Sama­roo said he ap­peared on var­i­ous plat­forms in the past be­cause they were pay­ing gigs. “I was not on­ly do­ing per­for­mances for the PNM. I would have al­so worked with Bas­deo Pan­day, and Win­ston Dook­er­an with the Con­gress of the Peo­ple. When Jack Warn­er came out with the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty, I did work with him al­so,” he said. “So I was nev­er tied down to one par­ty and I made it very clear to them that I am an artiste and I am work­ing.” Sama­roo said he al­ways stuck to his cat­a­logue of songs and did not remix any to en­cour­age par­ty sup­port. “I used to do neu­tral songs, not a po­lit­i­cal song, I will per­form my song ‘Ra­jin Jeem Jeem Joon.’ I nev­er looked at it as en­dors­ing the PNM but work­ing for friends.

“I’ve al­ways kept a close re­la­tion­ship with gov­ern­ment min­is­ters like Pene­lope Beck­les. They know me as an artiste. Mick­ela Pan­day is al­so my friend, so who­ev­er calls me to per­form, I will work,” he said. Sama­roo said when Dr Row­ley took con­trol of the PNM he was not called again for work.

He now ap­pears on UNC plat­forms and has sung songs en­dors­ing UNC Deputy Leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and Khadi­jah Ameen.

Sama­roo said his phi­los­o­phy has changed, and he is now a one-par­ty man.

“This year I am do­ing no oth­er work than for the UNC. Say what you want, I am sup­port­ing the UNC and go­ing all out with them. The code is yel­low.”

“I am await­ing the back­lash on how I am sup­port­ing the UNC but I don’t care, we need a change of gov­ern­ment,” he said.

So­ca artiste Akeem “Preedy” Chance who sang the PNM’s 2025 elec­tion song “Yuh Done Know” de­clined to com­ment but said he would speak more af­ter the elec­tion.