Shas­tri Boodan

To­bag­o­ni­ans will have to wait un­til April 17 to find out the name of the is­land's newest po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, in­ter­im leader of the par­ty, said sev­er­al names were sug­gest­ed, but they nar­rowed them down to five.

"The com­mit­tee that or­gan­ised brought the top five names based on on­line polling, but there were some ad­di­tion­al sug­ges­tions that came up this evening and peo­ple de­cid­ed what they want­ed to do, they want­ed a team that would in­clude some artists that would ac­tu­al­ly sketch for us what the sym­bol would look like be­fore they vote," Au­gus­tine told re­porters at the launch at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex last night.

He said this would al­low par­ty mem­bers to de­cide on a sym­bol as well. He said the group has asked him to hold on as in­ter­im leader.

"There will have to be an in­ter­nal elec­tion be­cause there will be the need for an ex­ec­u­tive, a draft con­sti­tu­tion was looked at and rat­i­fied es­sen­tial­ly and that con­sti­tu­tion will be made avail­able in the next two weeks," he said.

He said with the choice of a name the par­ty would be avoid­ing as much as pos­si­ble any­thing close to par­ties that al­ready ex­ist on the is­land.

"It will be an acronym for sure. To­ba­go will be well pleased," he said.

Au­gus­tine said the con­sti­tu­tion of the par­ty would en­sure that the name and sym­bol would be­long to the par­ty and not any one in­di­vid­ual who could take his par­ty and sym­bol and go. He said To­ba­go needs a par­ty in­dige­nous to the is­land that can fight for greater au­ton­o­my and equal­i­ty for To­bag­o­ni­ans.

Close to 300 par­ty sup­port­ers start­ed gath­er­ing for the launch an hour be­fore the sched­uled 4 pm start and were ush­ered in­to a closed room at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex. The meet­ing end­ed short­ly af­ter 9 pm.