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Friday, June 20, 2025

Stacy Roopnarine ready to Lead

by

20100515

She may be the youngest can­di­date in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship coali­tion at 25 years old, but UNC mem­ber Sta­cy Roop­nar­ine is no po­lit­i­cal novice.

Ever since she was a girl she has been in­volved in the UNC with her fam­i­ly. When she turned 17 she be­came an of­fi­cial mem­ber of the par­ty and a cam­paign vol­un­teer. Out­side of pol­i­tics she served as Vice Chair of the first UWI Stu­dent Branch of the In­sti­tute of Elec­tri­cal and Elec­tron­ic En­gi­neers. She is al­so a mem­ber of the Param Dhaam Ashram in La­choos Road, Pe­nal. Now, Roop­nar­ine is ready to serve her coun­try. She wants to win the Oropouche West seat which her par­ty col­league Mikela Pan­day held for the last two years. Pan­day, as you may re­call, was re­ject­ed as a can­di­date to con­test the elec­tion by the UNC screen­ing com­mit­tee. "My mis­sion is to utilise my knowl­edge and skills to humbly serve the peo­ple of T&T and greater mankind," Roop­nar­ine told Wom­an­Wise. "Ser­vice to man is ser­vice to God."

With just a week be­fore cit­i­zens face the polls on May 24, Roop­nar­ine be­lieves that it is her age that would work to her ad­van­tage in win­ning the favour of her con­stituents. "Not on­ly would I be able to rep­re­sent the peo­ple but I will al­so bring the voice of the youth to par­lia­ment which con­sti­tutes a large num­ber of our pop­u­la­tion." An en­gi­neer at Dig­i­cel for the past five years, Roop­nar­ine's life has changed tremen­dous­ly since she threw her hat in­to the po­lit­i­cal ring. The cam­paign has not changed since Roop­nar­ine was a girl, but now she is get­ting to see a dif­fer­ent side of it as a can­di­date. Her sched­ule now in­cludes walk­a­bouts in the con­stituen­cy dur­ing the day and meet­ings at night. The time in be­tween, she said, is usu­al­ly spent strate­gis­ing, plan­ning and prepar­ing speech­es. "The feed­back (from her con­stituents) has so far been over­whelm­ing. The peo­ple have been very wel­com­ing to me."

Even those who had reser­va­tions about her re­plac­ing Pan­day have now warmed up to her, she said. "I think they have ac­cept­ed that at the end of the day we are one par­ty and they are see­ing the big­ger pic­ture of unit­ing for change.

"I am look­ing for­ward to work­ing with them and be­ing able to rep­re­sent them well." Some of the ma­jor prob­lems cur­rent­ly plagu­ing the con­stituen­cy, the res­i­dents have told her, in­clude lack of wa­ter, lack of prop­er drainage and im­pass­able roads. One of three daugh­ters born to Yohan and Suzette, (her sis­ters are Sasha and Di­ana), Roop­nar­ine has lived in Pe­nal all her life. A for­mer Iere High School stu­dent, she was the cap­tain of the school's first girls' foot­ball team and lat­er be­came a Grade C foot­ball ref­er­ee through train­ing from the TTFRA and SS­FL. She no longer plays with a team but when­ev­er she gets the time you can find Roop­nar­ine on the field drib­bling a ball with friends. Golf­ing, kayak­ing, read­ing and spend­ing time with fam­i­ly and friends al­so oc­cu­py her leisure time.

If elect­ed for the Oropouche West seat, Roop­nar­ine says she wants to be a vis­i­ble MP. "It is wide­ly per­ceived that politi­cians are on­ly present in their con­stituen­cies at elec­tion time. Whether this is true or not, I in­tend to en­sure that I meet reg­u­lar­ly with con­stituents of Oropouche West. "I be­lieve that in or­der to be an ef­fi­cient rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the peo­ple you need to lis­ten and con­sult with them on a reg­u­lar ba­sis." Roop­nar­ine spoke high­ly about her po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar call­ing her an icon­ic woman. "I have the ut­most re­spect for her," she said. The op­por­tu­ni­ty to be placed in a lead­er­ship po­si­tion of MP this ear­ly in her life is not some­thing that in­tim­i­dates Roop­nar­ine. In fact she read­i­ly em­braces the pos­si­bil­i­ty. "Lead­er­ship is not a role that is de­ter­mined by age. "My goal is to make a pos­i­tive im­pact in peo­ple's lives, and bring good rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the peo­ple."


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