The In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance has called out the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, ac­cus­ing it of us­ing the now-con­clud­ed State of Emer­gency as a po­lit­i­cal tool for the De­cem­ber 6 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions.

IDA leader Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus, in a state­ment yes­ter­day, said, “Our par­ty is of the firm be­lief that the end­ing of the SoE was to ac­com­mo­date the PNM’s on-the-ground elec­toral ac­tiv­i­ties for the polls.

“The IDA is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment and specif­i­cal­ly the Prime Min­is­ter to come clean and let the truth be told.”

The SoE, which was in­sti­tut­ed in May dur­ing a spike in COVID 19 cas­es, was ex­tend­ed lat­er in May and al­so Au­gust. It was due to end No­vem­ber 29 but Gov­ern­ment end­ed it on Wednes­day, say­ing a new ap­proach was be­ing used to man­age COVID-19 in the coun­try.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had pre­vi­ous­ly dis­missed Op­po­si­tion UNC’s ques­tions on whether the SoE was be­ing re­moved to al­low THA cam­paign­ing. But he re­spond­ed by say­ing there is no can­vass­ing at night.

How­ev­er, Tsoiaf­fat-An­gus said, “While I un­der­stand the Gov­ern­ment was sail­ing un­chart­ed wa­ters with the on­go­ing pan­dem­ic, the coun­try is be­ing mis­led in­to be­liev­ing that the sud­den wrap­ping up of the SoE was due to the an­tic­i­pat­ed lack of con­sti­tu­tion­al ma­jor­i­ty for a fur­ther ex­ten­sion.

“I’m not amused or blind­ed by the fact that this is be­ing done so close to an elec­tion, where that par­ty will be hold­ing late-night cam­paign­ing. But I know this will be a failed at­tempt to hold on to pow­er. This ear­ly SoE wrap-up is just an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment mak­ing de­ci­sions for To­ba­go that it thinks will ben­e­fit the par­ty to keep it in pow­er. But I want to state - this is be­ing done at the ex­pense of the health of the To­ba­go peo­ple.”

She said the IDA will con­tin­ue to stay away from bac­cha­nal pol­i­tics and show “the peo­ple of To­ba­go that good gov­er­nance and not rhetoric is what will see us rise as the phoenix out of the ash­es in this pan­dem­ic.”