Kay-Marie Fletch­er

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

With less than one week to go be­fore To­bag­o­ni­ans de­cide who will lead the is­land, all po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­test­ing the elec­tion have un­veiled their vi­sions through their man­i­festos.

On Jan­u­ary 1, the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) launched its 99-page man­i­festo, Blue­print for To­ba­go 2025–2045, which places au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go at the top of its agen­da.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), mean­while, has pre­sent­ed its man­i­festo ti­tled The Big, Bold Red Deal, built around 15 pil­lars of de­vel­op­ment and fea­tur­ing promis­es fo­cused on hous­ing, job cre­ation and ex­pand­ed tourism.

The In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA) has al­so en­tered the race with a more com­pact man­i­festo, Re­set­ting To­ba­go To­geth­er: The Blue­print, pledg­ing fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to com­mu­ni­ties and new strate­gies to di­ver­si­fy the is­land’s econ­o­my.

In its man­i­festo, the in­cum­bent TPP out­lines plans to pur­sue con­sti­tu­tion­al self-gov­ern­ment and es­tab­lish a new, ful­ly func­tion­al To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) be­tween 2026 and 2027. The par­ty said it would im­ple­ment a To­ba­go self-gov­ern­ment con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment pro­claimed by the Pres­i­dent be­fore De­cem­ber, along with a To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment Act to be passed by the To­ba­go Leg­is­la­ture by 2027.

The TPP al­so pro­pos­es an En­er­gy Tran­si­tion Pro­gramme aimed at shift­ing from fos­sil fu­els to so­lar and ocean en­er­gy, as well as a hous­ing dri­ve to de­liv­er 1,000 new homes, which it said would gen­er­ate 4,000 jobs in the con­struc­tion sec­tor. Oth­er tar­gets in­clude in­creas­ing To­ba­go’s pop­u­la­tion by 80,000 by 2044 and rais­ing the is­land’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) per capi­ta to at least US$10,000 by 2035 and US$18,000 by 2045.

Sup­port for lo­cal artists and cre­atives al­so fea­tures promi­nent­ly, with plans to es­tab­lish fund­ing pro­grammes and grants for artists, mu­si­cians and oth­er cre­atives.

At­tempts to con­tact TPP po­lit­i­cal leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine for com­ment on which man­i­festo promis­es from his cur­rent term were not achieved were un­suc­cess­ful.

The PNM’s man­i­festo, brand­ed with the slo­gan “Put To­ba­go First Again,” high­lights pri­or­i­ties such as trans­form­ing hous­ing and youth pro­grammes and cre­at­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7,000 new jobs through pri­vate-sec­tor growth. In tourism, the par­ty is promis­ing to de­vel­op To­ba­go in­to a ful­ly dig­i­tal tourism des­ti­na­tion and a lead­ing Caribbean des­ti­na­tion built by lo­cals.

The doc­u­ment al­so out­lines plans to strength­en the fish­ing in­dus­try and de­vel­op world-class sports in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing an in­door sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty. Un­der the PNM’s Open Mar­ket Land Ac­cess Pro­gramme, the THA would pro­vide a sub­sidy of up to 50 per cent to­ward the pur­chase of open-mar­ket land priced un­der $500,000.

The man­i­festo us­es pop­u­lar To­ba­go ex­pres­sions to frame its poli­cies, with pub­lic safe­ty un­der the theme “Safe like Se­lassie brief­case,” agri­cul­ture un­der “When yuh plant corn, yuh go reap corn,” and cli­mate re­silience un­der “Rough sea cyah drown tur­tle pick­ney.”

Speak­ing by tele­phone on Tues­day, PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil leader An­cil Den­nis said the man­i­festo stands apart be­cause of its peo­ple-cen­tred fo­cus.

“It’s not just about ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture projects,” Den­nis said. “It im­pacts peo­ple di­rect­ly through the trans­for­ma­tion of hous­ing pro­grammes, youth pro­grammes and the cre­ation of 7,000 new jobs, which are fo­cused on pri­vate-sec­tor stim­u­la­tion and de­vel­op­ment.”

Den­nis al­so said he be­lieves vot­ers will hold the cur­rent THA ad­min­is­tra­tion ac­count­able for un­ful­filled promis­es over the past four years.

“This elec­tion is re­al­ly about the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion be­ing held to ac­count for their stew­ard­ship,” he said. “We are mak­ing the case as to why they should be sent pack­ing, and based on our ex­pe­ri­ence on the cam­paign trail, even with very lim­it­ed re­sources, I feel con­fi­dent the peo­ple of To­ba­go will do the right thing.”

The IDA, mean­while, is promis­ing sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial in­vest­ment at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el. Po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus said the par­ty’s ap­proach dif­fers sharply from its ri­vals.

“Both oth­er par­ties prac­tise top-down gov­er­nance,” she said. “We are propos­ing bot­tom-up gov­er­nance, trans­fer­ring au­thor­i­ty and re­sources to the 40 com­mu­ni­ties across To­ba­go.”

Un­der the plan, each com­mu­ni­ty would re­ceive $25 mil­lion and be gov­erned by as­set-own­ing en­ter­prise coun­cils (ACE coun­cils), which would be re­spon­si­ble for iden­ti­fy­ing and de­vel­op­ing po­ten­tial in­dus­tries with­in their ar­eas.

The IDA is al­so pledg­ing that young peo­ple will have ac­cess to pri­vate-sec­tor jobs af­ter com­plet­ing school, and is propos­ing eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a weed in­sti­tute. Ac­cord­ing to the man­i­festo, the in­sti­tute would fo­cus on re­search to de­vel­op To­ba­go’s nat­ur­al as­sets in­to safe, ev­i­dence-based treat­ments and well­ness prod­ucts.

Speak­ing sep­a­rate­ly to Guardian Me­dia, Dr Tsoiafatt-An­gus said she be­lieves she is the most ex­pe­ri­enced po­lit­i­cal leader among the con­tenders and ex­pressed con­fi­dence that To­bag­o­ni­ans will vote for change.