Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj says yes­ter­day's To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion was a ref­er­en­dum on the lead­er­ship of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and not the Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don. Ram­samooj was a pan­el­list on a post-elec­tion pan­el dis­cus­sion on tele­vi­sion.

He said the mo­ment Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­cid­ed to cam­paign in sup­port of the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple–the main chal­lenger to the in­cum­bent Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment–she shift­ed the elec­tion fo­cus from the 12-year lead­er­ship of Lon­don to her lead­er­ship of the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

Ram­samooj said the TOP, led by Ash­worth Jack, failed to ad­dress Lon­don's lead­er­ship in the cam­paign and was ex­pect­ed to suf­fer from many mis­takes the TOP made dur­ing the cam­paign. And To­ba­go re­searcher and po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Dr Vanus James, an­oth­er pan­el­list, said the is­sue of the Prime Min­is­ter hav­ing snif­fer dogs in a church on the is­land was not seen in a favourable light by the To­ba­go pop­u­lace.

Short­ly be­fore 9 pm yes­ter­day a clear trend was ev­i­dent as the PNM was in the lead in as many as nine of the 12 elec­toral dis­tricts. James said the ex­pect­ed swing of vot­ers from the PNM to the TOP did not take place, and it was clear that the TOP's pub­lic-re­la­tions cam­paign "re­al­ly did not fo­cus ef­fec­tive­ly enough in po­si­tion­ing Mr Jack as that in­tel­lec­tu­al that To­bag­o­ni­ans would have been com­fort­able with."

James said Jack's use of notes dur­ing the tele­vised de­bate among the lead­ers two weeks ago worked against the TOP. "You know how many peo­ple tell me that was a mea­sure that seemed to dog him? So I think he did not stamp him­self, stamp the elec­tion, with his ca­pac­i­ty to lead To­ba­go," James com­ment­ed.

Ram­samooj said the TOP had be­come sym­bol­i­cal­ly ir­rel­e­vant. He said it used the same cam­paign used by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship in the May 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign "with­out hav­ing sub­stan­tial knowl­edge of the elec­torate which led to the (TOP's) down­fall." He said the de­feat would mean the end of Jack as leader of the par­ty.

James said To­ba­go "vot­ed in a con­sol­i­dat­ed way against the TOP," and the elec­tion de­feat al­so meant "the rel­e­vance (of the TOP) to the part­ner­ship has been great­ly di­min­ished." To­bag­o­ni­ans were called on to vote to re­move then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and they did, he said, but the THA elec­tion was an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent mat­ter.

"To­bag­o­ni­ans do not per­ceive their na­tion­al lead­er­ship in terms of the Prime Min­is­ter in Trinidad. It is the leader of the THA that is the To­ba­go leader," he stressed.