Yvonne Webb

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple?(COP)?is look­ing to gain a po­lit­i­cal foothold in To­ba­go by con­test­ing seats in the up­com­ing To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions. That hint was giv­en by new­ly-elect­ed COP chair­man Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan. "We in­tend to dis­cuss with our part­ners the role of the COP in the THA," she said on Tues­day.

The THA elec­tions are due ear­ly next year and al­ready the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), the ma­jor par­ty in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP), Gov­ern­ment, has launched its cam­paign. The PP hopes to in­stall Ash­worth Jack, po­lit­i­cal leader of an­oth­er of its coali­tion part­ners, To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP), as the next Chief Sec­re­tary of the THA.

Speak­ing to mem­bers of the me­dia in San Fer­nan­do af­ter the open­ing of the on­col­o­gy unit at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Seep­er­sad-Bachan said the COP was al­ready on record as say­ing it would con­test the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due by Ju­ly next year.

She added: "We are ad­vo­cat­ing for more seats but I have on­ly been in of­fice for the past nine days. I am still to get an up­date on where we have reached with the plan­ning for the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion. I don't know if that dis­cus­sion took place with the pre­vi­ous chair­man and the var­i­ous par­ties."

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said the fo­cus now is on the THA elec­tions as the TOP al­ready had em­barked on its screen­ing process. Lon­don, in an ear­li­er in­ter­view, said the mo­men­tum in To­ba­go was with the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). He said To­bag­o­ni­ans were con­cerned and even a lit­tle afraid of the ef­fect a TOP vic­to­ry and PP-con­trolled THA could have.

"The ma­jor is­sue is one of pro­tec­tion of the To­ba­go her­itage and the threat to that her­itage and way of life if the TOP was to be giv­en pow­er in To­ba­go," he said. Lon­don said To­bag­o­ni­ans al­so were wary of the re­view of the THA Act and the de­ci­sion to give peo­ple the right to vote af­ter liv­ing on the is­land for just three months. "Peo­ple want longer res­i­den­tal qual­i­fi­ca­tion," he added.

Lon­don said the PNM al­so had start­ed its cam­paign, hold­ing cot­tage meet­ings and walk­a­bouts. He said the par­ty was al­so con­duct­ing a ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise to give it an idea of the lev­el of reg­is­tra­tion and look at sus­pi­cious cas­es to re­port to the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion.