Gail Alexan­der

The In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA), To­ba­go’s newest po­lit­i­cal par­ty, will con­test all 15 seats in the up­com­ing To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tion, claim­ing that both the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) have al­ready shown that they’ve failed To­ba­go.

IDA leader Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus con­firmed this yes­ter­day af­ter as­sum­ing lead­er­ship of the par­ty.

She said, “Both the PDP and the PNM failed To­ba­go and showed they can­not han­dle au­ton­o­my for the is­land when they were un­able to find a way for­ward af­ter the (tied) THA polls in Jan­u­ary. So they’ve both al­ready been test­ed and they’ve both been shown to be fail­ures and that they’ve failed to se­cure To­bag­o­ni­ans’ in­ter­est.”

The THA poll is ex­pect­ed be­fore year’s end, with some PNM sources spec­u­lat­ing it could be by ear­ly De­cem­ber. The State of Emer­gency (SoE) ends on No­vem­ber 30. But au­thor­i­ties have said an elec­tion can be held dur­ing the SoE. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who doesn’t be­lieve cur­rent COVID re­stric­tions can halt a poll, re­cent­ly not­ed the Au­gust 2020 gen­er­al elec­tions were held with re­stric­tions in place.

On the IDA’s emer­gence, Tsoiafatt-An­gus yes­ter­day said, “It’s quite dis­heart­en­ing the two par­ties (PNM/PDP) ac­tu­al­ly had their hands on the au­ton­o­my wait­ing to ac­ti­vate it on To­bag­o­ni­ans’ be­half but they both dropped the ball. The on­ly way we’ll ever achieve what we want is when the is­land unites around one vi­sion.”

She said she’d con­test a seat and the par­ty will have screen­ing when elec­tions are called. She said the IDA con­sid­ers it­self the voice of rep­re­sen­ta­tion for To­ba­go and all its res­i­dents and that’s shown in the com­po­si­tion of its ex­ec­u­tive body.

Asked about IDA’s plans, she replied, “Con­tin­u­ing along the road of ed­u­cat­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans to a mind­set of ad­vance­ment as we stat­ed ear­li­er. To get To­ba­go rolling again, we al­so have an eco­nom­ic path­way plan which we’ll be un­rolling ahead.

“But cur­rent­ly, we can­not turn a blind eye to the THA poll and plan be­ing ful­ly mo­bilised to con­test, pro­vid­ing To­ba­go with the on­ly op­tion for pru­dent man­age­ment of and eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of our re­sources.

“We in­tend be­ing in­no­v­a­tive and find­ing a way to get our mes­sage out with­in the SOE re­stric­tions.”

Does she feel IDA can dis­place PNM or PDP?

“The re­sponse to the IDA has been very good and very en­cour­ag­ing,” she added.

Tsoiafatt-An­gus laughed off the view by some that she might be a silent PNM agent and her par­ty might align with PNM af­ter polls. On whether she has PN­MItes among IDA mem­ber­ship, she added, “We have peo­ple who’ve nev­er been aligned to any par­ty and we have peo­ple - in­clud­ing at ex­ec­u­tive lev­el - who’ve be­longed to var­i­ous par­ties. But they all be­long to IDA now.”

While IDA’s ide­al fo­cus is on build­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans’ ca­pac­i­ty - and it’s pre­pared to unite them in terms of one vi­sion for the is­land - she said IDA would have to con­sult vot­ers on what they’d want if it holds the de­cid­ing num­ber in the elec­tion where 15 seats could go 5-5-5 and where there may be a lob­by for IDA to join one or the oth­er par­ty to form the gov­ern­ing body.

PDP’s Wat­son Duke didn’t an­swer calls yes­ter­day on a chal­lenge from IDA. Nor did PNM’s To­ba­go leader Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine. THA Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis was in a meet­ing.