In cam­paign­ing for the vote to se­cure lead­er­ship of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, the in­cum­bent To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) has gone out on a limb close to seek­ing a com­plete­ly in­de­pen­dent is­land-gov­ern­ment al­lied on the fringes through po­lit­i­cal as­so­ci­a­tion with Trinidad.

Op­po­site to such a de­sire, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has placed its fo­cus on job cre­ation and eco­nom­ic growth, but with­in the es­tab­lished con­sti­tu­tion­al re­la­tion­ship – To­ba­go with Trinidad.

Far less am­bi­tious, the small In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA) of Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus does not go be­yond ex­pect­ing a more peo­ple-in­volved gov­er­nance sys­tem.

Based on the as­sess­ments of po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts and oth­ers, the 14-1 gap of the last THA elec­tion four years ago, is pre­dict­ed to close. Even PNM’s To­ba­go Coun­cil leader An­cil Den­nis be­lieves his par­ty will win a ma­jor­i­ty of eight seats to take the As­sem­bly away from the in­cum­bents.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has gone fur­ther than any oth­er To­ba­go leader con­test­ing for au­ton­o­my and in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment, as it has been phrased in the past by lead­ers from A.N.R. Robin­son to the present. He is call­ing for the re­place­ment of the THA with a To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment and leg­is­la­ture with law-mak­ing pow­ers.

To achieve such an ob­jec­tive, the rul­ing par­ty wants fis­cal au­ton­o­my, tax au­thor­i­ty and, im­por­tant­ly, a share of the rev­enues col­lect­ed by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment based on the ex­ploita­tion of en­er­gy re­sources. The lat­ter is a po­si­tion adopt­ed pre­vi­ous­ly by To­ba­go-based par­ties.

Al­ter­na­tive­ly, an ef­fi­cient ap­proach in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of To­ba­go’s af­fairs with­in the frame­work of a na­tion­al gov­ern­ment has been the PNM’s ma­jor over­all po­si­tion dur­ing its cam­paign.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts have found quite a mea­sure of sup­port for the PNM, which was all but van­quished four years ago in the THA polls. In last year’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion, the now Op­po­si­tion par­ty lost its two Par­lia­men­tary seats to the TPP.

If the votes are cast in the man­ner of the pre­vi­ous THA poll, 14-1 to the TPP, as pre­dict­ed by the par­ty’s lead­er­ship, it will be a state­ment of sat­is­fac­tion with the gov­er­nance and faith in the As­sem­bly’s lead­er­ship. Con­trar­i­ly, if there is a sig­nif­i­cant de­par­ture from the vote of the Par­lia­men­tary and THA elec­tions, the PNM will feel em­pow­ered and rein­vig­o­rat­ed in To­ba­go.

One way or the oth­er, when the elec­tion re­sults are known, the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty may want to see the out­come as some­thing of a de­fin­i­tive an­swer to seek­ing au­ton­o­my of the kind ar­tic­u­lat­ed on the TPP plat­form, or the de­sire of the elec­torate to stay with­in the ex­ist­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al frame of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The ex­pec­ta­tion is that the work of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion, in mak­ing clear the con­stituen­cies and how the elec­tion is to be fa­cil­i­tat­ed, has laid the ground­work for a clear path to gen­er­al ac­cep­tance of the re­sults of the poll.

The se­cu­ri­ty of the vot­ing, the count­ing of votes and the de­c­la­ra­tion are all prac­ticed out­comes which have be­come the norm of T&T elec­tions. There have been no se­ri­ous ques­tions and con­cerns about the prepa­ra­tions and the process by the EBC for full par­tic­i­pa­tion. The de­ter­mined call of this news­pa­per then, is for elec­tors to make full use of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to say how they want to be gov­erned and by which par­ty.