Wat­son Duke, leader of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP), has con­firmed he will con­test a seat in the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion, set­ting the stage for a fierce bat­tle in To­ba­go. The April 28 date elec­tion date was an­nounced on Tues­day and both the PDP and the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) are prepar­ing for a heat­ed con­test in To­ba­go East and To­ba­go West.

Duke, who lost to Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy in To­ba­go East by 1,261 votes in 2020, has not yet re­vealed which seat he will con­test. How­ev­er, he hint­ed at his can­di­da­cy in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, say­ing, “Our can­di­dates are ready, my­self and the oth­er can­di­date. So I’ll let it be known by to­mor­row.”

He de­clared his con­fi­dence in the PDP’s chances, say­ing, “I am ready. It should have been to­mor­row. The peo­ple of To­ba­go are ready to choose the PDP.” He added, “I hit the ground months ago, and based on the feed­back I’ve got­ten from peo­ple, PDP is the pre­ferred choice.”

On the oth­er side, An­cil Den­nis, PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil po­lit­i­cal leader, said his par­ty is ful­ly pre­pared to de­fend both seats. “We are ready like Fred­dy. As we are aware, the PNM is the on­ly par­ty to have in­tro­duced all our can­di­dates to the pub­lic, so we are ready for this elec­tion,” Den­nis said.

He added that the PNM’s cam­paign will fo­cus on its track record. “In To­ba­go, our fo­cus is to en­sure we re­tain the two To­ba­go seats. We will be go­ing to the peo­ple of To­ba­go with a very po­tent cam­paign based on the PNM’s achieve­ments and very im­pres­sive track record on the is­land, even from a cen­tral gov­ern­ment per­spec­tive.”

In the 2020 elec­tion, the PNM se­cured both seats, with Sham­fa Cud­joe win­ning To­ba­go West by a mar­gin of 4,774 votes. With Duke con­firm­ing his can­di­da­cy and both par­ties ready to be­gin cam­paign­ing, the bat­tle for To­ba­go’s two par­lia­men­tary seats has of­fi­cial­ly be­gun.