Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA) has been forced to can­cel the launch of its To­ba­go East and West can­di­dates yes­ter­day af­ter an elec­tric­i­ty dis­rup­tion af­fect­ed sev­er­al ar­eas in Scar­bor­ough, in­clud­ing the Tsoiafatt Build­ing–owned by IDA leader Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus, where the launch was set to take place.

The launch, which was sched­uled to be­gin at 1.30 pm, had to be post­poned af­ter T&TEC is­sued a re­vised ad­vi­so­ry list­ing planned main­te­nance works for the day from noon to 3 pm.

Among the af­fect­ed ar­eas was Wil­son Road, where the IDA’s venue is lo­cat­ed.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Tsoiafatt-An­gus, who was set to join her team vir­tu­al­ly as she is cur­rent­ly out of the coun­try, de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as a strange co­in­ci­dence. She ques­tioned the tim­ing of the out­age, say­ing that it was sched­uled specif­i­cal­ly for her build­ing— co­in­cid­ing with the ex­act time of the par­ty’s launch.

She said, “It was a bit strange that the Tsoiafatt Build­ing was sin­gled out with Roy­al Cas­tle in the whole of the town. My house, where I live, didn’t have elec­tric­i­ty for the whole day. A busi­ness where my folks held down close to Rovanel’s (Re­sort) – the elec­tric­i­ty was al­so out in the area there.

“I don’t know what to make of it. We are not go­ing to let that daunt us; the race is not for the swiftest.”

The IDA has since resched­uled the event for Fri­day. An­gus called on sup­port­ers to come out.

“I know that mem­bers, sup­port­ers and well-wish­ers were look­ing for­ward with ex­cite­ment to the of­fi­cial re­veal of our IDA can­di­dates. We in­vite all to come out and meet your can­di­dates, two voic­es, one mis­sion—a new kind of rep­re­sen­ta­tion for To­ba­go. We promise it will be well worth the wait and a mo­ment To­ba­go will re­mem­ber. This isn’t just a cam­paign; it’s a res­cue mis­sion.”

T&TEC yes­ter­day said it was un­clear of the ac­cu­sa­tions be­ing made by Tsoiafatt-An­gus and asked for clar­i­ty on the mat­ter.