Kezel forms own party...plans contesting 2025 general election

FORMER Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP) deputy political leader Kezel Jackson has announced that her new party, the All People’s Party (APP), will contest the 2025 general election.

She said her party, which was officially registered late last year, was created out of her ‘humanitarian need’ to provide systemic help for citizens on a legislative level.

She said the party placed value in competent leadership and addressed what was a ‘constant state of marginalisation’ that resulted in the neglect of the nation’s poor people. Though the party is registered, she said, it is still in the process of accepting members.

In February 2023, she resigned from the PDP after she was publicly embroiled in a feud with party leader Watson Duke and the revelation of an affair between the two. The feud between Jackson and Duke erupted following the defection of 16 of its members within the Tobago House of Assembly, including Chief Secretary Farley Augustine.

While the party had at that time found itself on precarious ground, Jackson stepped away from the PDP and details of the personal rift and their personal and professional relationship spilled into the public domain via social media, including the revelation of an extra-marital affair between her and Duke.

Yesterday the 42-year-old told the Express in a telephone interview that she makes no apologies for her ‘humanness’. Instead, she said, she hoped to be an example of perseverance despite the tumultuous origins of her political career. She added she was not ‘destroyed’ and had instead chosen to make something of the turmoil she had undergone.

‘With everything else I want them to see my humanness. I am not coming to present myself as some sort of perfect angel to them. For my personal life and my humanness, I make no apology for that. Mistakes will be made, and that may not be the only mistake I make…as we live, we make mistakes… The err of a man who has done wrong did not destroy me. So, all those that were sent out to destroy me I used it to build me. I built to show people that even through adversity you can find an opportunity,’ she said.

Sectors failing

Jackson, who has worked as a political adviser and writer for the past 18 years, said there is a distinct need for leadership and a move away from bipartisan politics between the two major political parties, the People’s National Movement (PNM) and the United National Congress (UNC).