Camille McEach­nie & Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) and One To­ba­go Voice are ready to con­test the gen­er­al elec­tions on Au­gust 10.

Mo­ments af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the date, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s To­ba­go coun­cil chair­man Stan­ford Cal­len­der, Peo­ple’s De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty deputy Far­ley Au­gus­tine and the One To­ba­go Voice said they will all field can­di­dates for the two To­ba­go seats.

Cal­len­der told Guardian Me­dia the par­ty “aims to win the two seats again,” adding they had al­ready kicked off the cam­paign on the is­land. Both in­cum­bents Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy (To­ba­go East) and Sham­fa Cud­joe (To­ba­go West) have been cam­paign­ing on the ground with mem­bers of their con­stituen­cy since be­ing re­tained for an­oth­er run at of­fice, he said.

“We have been do­ing many things all along and are ready for the elec­tion. We passed one of our ma­jor hur­dles of se­lect­ing can­di­dates and have been on the ground,” Cal­len­der said.

Asked whether the PDP or One To­ba­go Voice posed a chal­lenge to the PNM re­tain­ing the two seats, Cal­len­der said the par­ty “will not be side­tracked. It’s a democ­ra­cy and we aim to win. We wel­come who­ev­er wants to en­ter the race.”

While the PNM will con­test the elec­tion un­der the gen­er­al theme “PNM is the choice,” he said he To­ba­go Coun­cil has cre­at­ed a sub­theme— “Unit­ing to win.”

PDP deputy leader Far­ley said his par­ty was al­so con­fi­dent of suc­cess.

“It’s time to change To­ba­go’s mem­bers of Par­lia­ment,” Far­ley told Guardian Me­dia, adding the par­ty “wasn’t sur­prised” by the elec­tion date and was “ready and wait­ing all along.”

The PDP be­gan cam­paign­ing in No­vem­ber 2019 when it launched its na­tion­al and To­ba­go Ho­sue of As­sem­bly cam­paign at the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort. With­in re­cent weeks they upped their cam­paign and be­gan re­pair­ing house roofs across the is­land. Leader Wat­son Duke will rep­re­sent To­ba­go East and Tashia Grace-Bur­ris To­ba­go East.

One To­ba­go Voice, a coali­tion of three par­ties, is al­so ready, ac­cord­ing to Ho­choy Charles (Plat­form of the Truth).

The group con­sists of for­mer To­ba­go For­wards leader Christlyn Moore and To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple head Ash­worth Jacks.

Charles, chair­man of the One To­ba­go Voice’s steer­ing com­mit­tee, said, “We will field two can­di­dates to rep­re­sent the peo­ple of To­ba­go at the na­tion­al lev­el.”

Al­so com­ment­ing on the elec­tion date yes­ter­day, To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber head Mar­tin George said his or­gan­i­sa­tion sup­ports the short­er, less hec­tic sea­son.

“We think that the longer it drags on, the more dis­rup­tive it is for busi­ness and we are def­i­nite­ly hap­py that the time frame is short­ened in this way, so in that re­gard, we have no dif­fi­cul­ty in the date be­ing the 10th of Au­gust,” George said.

Send­ing a mes­sage to the po­lit­i­cal par­ties who may form the next gov­ern­ment, George re­it­er­at­ed some To­ba­go is­sues he would like to see ad­dressed, in­clud­ing the re­peal of the For­eign In­vest­ment Act, which, he said, will aid in stim­u­lat­ing the coun­try’s econ­o­my. “Once that is freed up you will see mas­sive in­flows of for­eign ex­change in­to To­ba­go and that will al­so help with the na­tion­al for­eign ex­change sce­nario. We will al­so en­sure that this must be done in a man­ner that there’s a knowl­edge trans­fer and an ex­change of labour, so there­fore you must al­ways in­sist that per­sons part­ner with lo­cal in­vestors for any for­eign­ers who are wish­ing to in­vest in To­ba­go.”

He al­so called for a greater re­liance on per­sons in To­ba­go who can pro­vide skills and ser­vices for de­vel­op­ment projects. George said the on­ly way to re­build the is­land’s econ­o­my was for the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure there is an ef­fec­tive in­cu­ba­tion sys­tem pro­mot­ing growth of the en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it of in­de­pen­dent busi­ness peo­ple in To­ba­go.