Krystal Tomlinson ready to act
New PNPYO president eager to strengthen team
Krystal Tomlinson, the People’s National Party Youth Organisation (PNPYO) president, is ready to engage and strengthen the team she now leads.
Tomlinson, who was speaking with our news team just a day into her new capacity as president of the political youth organisation, said she will be addressing emotional and regulation management because the political space requires a lot of preparation.
“It can be taken for granted that everybody who has a post is prepared for leadership. The first thing I want to do is to help to strengthen the team that I am now dealing with, including myself,” she said.
“A lot of people wouldn’t have known of me doing any work in the political space, and so I am taking the time to get familiar with the work that has been done so far by the past president Connoly Black, and to make sure that I am able to maintain the good that has been done and very quickly identify where needs institutional strengthening.”
REVOLUTIONARY THINKERS
Although seemingly new to the political space, Tomlinson said she has been involved in the space for about five years.
“I have been part of the PNPYO since my days on the university campus — I think 2013/2014. And I started out working with the Kingston team. I was parish secretary and helped to organise outreach activities, but school prevented me from being more robust in participating,” she said.
And now that she has stepped forward, she credits this move to her admiration and respect for Damion Crawford.
“My introduction to the party and its philosophy started on campus. I sat at the feet of revolutionary thinkers, I believe, including a Damion Crawford. I have the greatest respect for him from his days as guild member [at the University of the West Indies],” she said.
“And, so, for a lot of guild councillors in my time, Damion Crawford was really the standard bearer for student leadership, and then to watch him transfer that energy from the campus into Parliament motivated quite a bit of us.”
According to Tomlinson, being a democratic socialist, she had to select a political party that represented much of those ideals, that you work and earn for the good of many.
While the role will be new and possibly hectic, she does not believe it will deter her from continuing the work she has already been doing with Jamaican youth.
“I am very passionate and will always be passionate in equipping young people to take hold of the power that they have and the place that they have in nation building. That is not going to change, and this particular role facilitates the very same ethics, in a more structured way that has national and regional significance, so it is a complement to what I have already been doing,” Tomlinson told THE STAR.