But, as you heard earlier, even without the man she called her soul mate, Taegar-Panton is determined to continue on in the UDP - and will again try to become its leader.
But, like others we spoke to, she says before she does that, she would like to see a broadening and reform of the delegates pool and the process to select them.
Hon. Tracy Taegar-Panton, UDP Area Rep., Albert
"We need to execute some serious reforms in terms of how our central executive, committees are elected and not appointed with family members. These committees are stocked against you and so we must follow the party's constitution and we must be sure that the executive members of our constituency committees are properly elected. I think we need to widen that pool. 516 delegates are not representative of the 38% of the electorate that supports united democratic party. You can manipulate 516 people quite easily, you can't do so if you widen the pool and make it more inclusive and more representative of the reality on the ground."
"What we have now is really not the kind of democracy that this party was founded on and people say democracy is messy and perhaps it is, but we have to be fair and we have to move to a place where any person who wishes to offer him or herself for any executive position in the party have an opportunity to do so on their own merit."
Jules Vasquez
"Would you concede that the delegates of the UDP reflective perhaps of the leadership or of those in higher positions in the party are themselves corrupted by this process, because Tracy, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent February 2020 and March 2022 on these same persons on the delegates."
Hon. Tracy Taegar-Panton
"A lot of money has been spent. I am of the view that that money should have been spent in trying to improve the institutions of this party. Each convention gets more expensive that the one before and we have to look at that. We have to as a party, as individuals we have to look at that and say when is enough, enough and what are we really trying to achieve? Do we really want to hear the voices of the people? Do we really want to ensure that the best leader is selected? or is it that we are going to prepare to play this game that may not serve the party's best interest in the medium to long term."
Tracy Taegar Panton will be the guest on Sunup on 7 tomorrow.
