Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes & Loyse Vin­cent

A to­tal of eight can­di­dates sealed their bids to con­test the Au­gust 10 gen­er­al elec­tion af­ter they filed their nom­i­na­tion pa­pers on Fri­day. Three can­di­dates will con­test the To­ba­go East Con­stituen­cy, while five are eye­ing the To­ba­go West seat.

Flanked by her hus­band, three chil­dren and a hand­ful of sup­port­ers, the in­cum­bent and PNM To­ba­go East can­di­date Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy filed her nom­i­na­tion pa­pers at the John Di­al Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre. Speak­ing to the me­dia af­ter fil­ing her doc­u­ments, Web­ster-Roy said the process ran smooth­ly and she had no chal­lenges

"I am ex­treme­ly con­fi­dent. I have done the work, I have served the peo­ple of To­ba­go, qui­et strength, a sym­bol of sta­bil­i­ty and what they would have found in me is ser­vice to peo­ple, coun­try and con­stituen­cy, so I feel very con­fi­dent. I feel ex­cit­ed to con­tin­ue the work that I would have start­ed in 2015. All I do is humbly ask the peo­ple of To­ba­go East to help me to help them con­tin­ue build­ing and de­vel­op­ing To­ba­go East and I look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing that jour­ney af­ter Au­gust 10" she said.

Backed by African drums, PNM To­ba­go West Can­di­date Sham­fa Cud­joe filed her doc­u­ments at the Calder Hall Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre. Ex­press­ing con­fi­dence, Cud­joe said she rep­re­sent­ed her con­stituents to the best of her abil­i­ty.

"I think I would have done the best I could have with the re­sources at hand and due to the cir­cum­stances as it re­lates to fi­nanc­ing and so on. I would have been ac­ces­si­ble and avail­able, worked with Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to de­liv­er to the peo­ple of To­ba­go and To­ba­go West, so I feel con­fi­dent about get­ting the sup­port to con­tin­ue our de­vel­op­ment agen­da," Cud­joe said.

Ar­riv­ing con­voy style with scores of sup­port­ers and ac­com­pa­nied by a mu­sic truck, PDP can­di­date for To­ba­go East Wat­son Duke said that de­spite his court mat­ters be­ing used as a po­lit­i­cal tool against him, he is con­fi­dent that the PDP would be suc­cess­ful at the polls

"Well, I want to say, the PNM is not on­ly us­ing my court case, the PNM is al­so us­ing our style of pol­i­tick­ing, they are now of­fer­ing jack­ets for sale, they now have hard hats and men on roof and paint­ing. The PNM seem to be us­ing every­thing that we have done against us. But I say, if we are the in­ven­tors, then we are the own­ers and we will not be moved," he said.

To­ba­go West can­di­date Tashia Bur­ris filed her nom­i­na­tion pa­pers at the Calder Hall Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre. She said it was a mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion and an op­por­tu­ni­ty for To­ba­go to un­der­stand there are oth­er choic­es. Bur­ris said she plans to bring prop­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

"What we have been get­ting for a very long time is PR, what we have been get­ting for a very long time is promis­es, so what we have demon­strat­ed out­side of the of­fice is that we can and will per­form and that the peo­ple have been cry­ing out and that we know they de­serve per­for­mance, so we are go­ing to bring per­for­mance to the Par­lia­ment on be­half of the pop­u­la­tion of To­ba­go," Bur­ris said.

Ear­li­er in the day, Guardian Me­dia learnt that one of the found­ing mem­bers of the One To­ba­go Voice, Ho­choy Charles en­dorsed Bur­ris as a can­di­date for To­ba­go West. Ques­tioned on how she felt about the en­dorse­ment, she said, she felt ho­n­oured to re­ceive Charles’ sup­port.

“I have a great deal of re­spect for Mr Charles and what he has done for To­ba­go and I see his en­dorse­ment as him pass­ing the ba­ton in some ways. And I al­so see his en­dorse­ment as him throw­ing his sup­port be­hind Mr Duke and his choice and the par­ty," she said.

In­de­pen­dent Can­di­date Ri­car­do Phillip is at­tempt­ing to un­seat Sham­fa Cud­joe. He plans to bring in­de­pen­dent ideas to the ta­ble.

Ju­lian­na Hen­ry-King and Ho­choy Charles, who en­dorsed the PDP's Bur­ris, would be rep­re­sent­ing the One To­ba­go Voice in To­ba­go East and West re­spec­tive­ly, while Nick­o­cy Phillips of the new­ly formed po­lit­i­cal par­ty, Uni­ty of the Peo­ple, filed nom­i­na­tion pa­pers for To­ba­go West mere min­utes be­fore the 3 pm dead­line.

Phillips was al­so the on­ly can­di­date who spent more than one hour on the fil­ing process. He lat­er ex­plained that he “felt woozy and had to, there­fore, take a break dur­ing the process.” Phillips said he saw the process as ad­vance­ment.

“I feel very con­fi­dent be­cause I took a next step in life, I have a lot of work to do and al­though I may not meet all the peo­ple in the con­stituen­cy I plan to reach out to them be­fore and even af­ter the elec­tions.”

He said he will con­tin­ue to build on his lega­cy of as­sist­ing peo­ple in his com­mu­ni­ty in spite of the out­come of the elec­tion.