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Friday, July 25, 2025

Dennis willing to serve if asked

by

Loyse Vincent
1641 days ago
20210126
Ancil Dennis speak to reporters after casting his vote at his electoral district of Buccoo / Mt Pleasant, Tobago yesterday.

Ancil Dennis speak to reporters after casting his vote at his electoral district of Buccoo / Mt Pleasant, Tobago yesterday.

At the stroke of mid­day yes­ter­day An­cil Den­nis, when asked if he was will­ing to serve as Chief Sec­re­tary af­ter the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions, said: “On­ly the po­lit­i­cal leader can serve as Chief Sec­re­tary.”

Den­nis spoke with re­porters af­ter vot­ing his elec­toral dis­trict of Buc­coo/Mt Pleas­ant. Com­ment­ing on dozens of so­cial me­dia posts from sup­port­ers who said he should re­main as Chief Sec­re­tary, Den­nis said he was heart­ened by the show of sup­port.

“It’s def­i­nite­ly heart­en­ing be­cause it means that I am do­ing some­thing right and peo­ple have a right to ex­press their opin­ions its part of the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process, but on­ly the po­lit­i­cal leader can serve as the Chief Sec­re­tary,” he said.

The Buc­coo/Mt Pleas­ant rep­re­sen­ta­tive made his­to­ry as the youngest per­son to serve as Chief Sec­re­tary when he was sworn in­to of­fice in May 2020. The post be­came va­cant af­ter for­mer Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles lost the elec­tion for po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil and re­signed on April 28. The new po­lit­i­cal leader, Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine, was ap­point­ed a THA coun­cil­lor.

Den­nis said he was the 136th per­son to vote at the Buc­coo Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School and de­scribed the process as smooth as there were no chal­lenges. He was in and out of the polling sta­tion with­in ten min­utes. Al­though the dis­trict gained the least num­ber of vot­ers through­out the is­land for the 2017 THA elec­tions, Den­nis said he was not con­cerned.

“Vot­er in the dis­trict tend to come in lat­er in the af­ter­noon but I an­tic­i­pate a turnout of more than 50 per cent,” he said

Re­flect­ing on the high­light of his tenure as Chief Sec­re­tary, he said: “I en­joyed meet­ing the peo­ple, be­ing ap­pre­ci­at­ed and cel­e­brat­ed by them, es­pe­cial­ly based on the con­tri­bu­tions over the last sev­en months.”

Den­nis said his great­est achieve­ments dur­ing his short stint was re­vi­tal­is­ing the is­land’s agri­cul­ture sec­tor,” the three-year con­tract agree­ment for pub­lic ser­vant (ex­tend­ed from two) and the Buc­coo Ma­rine Park Bil.”

Den­nis is seek­ing a third term as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Buc­coo/Mt Pleas­ant and gave him­self a pass­ing grade.

“I think a num­ber of de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties were cre­at­ed for the peo­ple and in terms of in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment and in terms of fa­cil­i­ties and the avail­abil­i­ty of com­mu­ni­ty fa­cil­i­ties this is one of the dis­tricts that presents it­self as a mod­el to the rest the is­land and by and large the qual­i­ty of life for the res­i­dents of this dis­trict has im­proved over the last years,” he said.

Asked if he would pre­fer to serve in the Di­vi­sion of Food Pro­duc­tion, Fish­eries and Forestry since one of his ma­jor achieve­ments were made in the food pro­duc­tion sec­tor, Den­nis said he is pre­pared to serve in “what­ev­er ca­pac­i­ty the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers see fit.”

He added: “It’s the sole pre­rog­a­tive of the of the Chief Sec­re­tary.”


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