The To­ba­go Coun­cil of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has ex­pressed ex­cite­ment at the prospect of an up­com­ing poll that is hoped will break the cur­rent dead­lock in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

In Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day Sep­tem­ber 15th, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley moved the mo­tion ask­ing the House to con­sid­er the Draft Re­port of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly) Or­der, 2021. 

The re­port rec­om­mends the cre­ation of three new elec­toral dis­tricts in To­ba­go—a mea­sure Gov­ern­ment says will break the cur­rent six-six dead­lock in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

By a mar­gin of 21 for, 18 against, the House ap­proved the mo­tion to con­sid­er the Draft Re­port of the EBC (Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly) Or­der, 2021.  The House then ad­journed to a date to be fixed.

The fol­low­ing is the full text of a state­ment is­sued by the PNM’s To­ba­go Coun­cil…

The PNM is ex­cit­ed that To­bag­o­ni­ans will fi­nal­ly get to make the big de­ci­sion and elect the team to lead this is­land over the next four years.  The pas­sage of amend­ments to the THA Act opens the gate for a re­turn to the polls with 15 seats.

The en­tire PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil’s re­lief, af­ter nine months of dead­lock, is ev­i­dent as it makes moves to win the hearts of To­bag­o­ni­ans in the next To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Elec­tions.  While some may see the 6–6 sit­u­a­tion as an un­for­tu­nate oc­cur­rence, this has pro­pelled all of us in­to new re­al­i­ties where we have had to treat with the flaws in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act.

This dead­lock has pushed many of us to the lim­it.  It is un­ac­cept­able that rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the oth­er po­lit­i­cal sides would ma­lign the rep­u­ta­tion of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) for cheap points.  Lead­ers should know bet­ter, and po­lit­i­cal agen­das re no ex­cuse for bad be­hav­iour.

The threat of le­gal ac­tion by the UNC is un­nec­es­sary and an­oth­er at­tempt to cre­ate dra­ma to at­tract the pub­lic and me­dia at­ten­tion.  Will the UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar tear up the amend­ment, like she did the Au­ton­o­my Bills?

The peo­ple of To­ba­go will not be kind to the UNC and the PDP if they stymie this process af­ter nine months.  Let us al­low the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process to take its course.  Our peo­ple are tired and stressed from deal­ing with the ef­fects of COVID and wish for a quick path to the polls.  It is un­for­tu­nate that we were not able to come to a res­o­lu­tion, be­fore the PDP walked out of ne­go­ti­a­tions.

In the face of the PDP, and their le­gal coun­sels in the UNC, calls for a coin toss and threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion for To­ba­go’s fu­ture, the ma­jor­i­ty of To­bag­o­ni­ans would agree that this is the on­ly le­gal and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic path to give the peo­ple pow­er to de­cide the fu­ture di­rec­tion of the is­land.

Nat­u­ral­ly, the bound­aries would be bro­ken up and re­align­ment of elec­toral dis­tricts are a part of the process.  An equal­ly im­por­tant is­sue is that the fi­nal out­come of 15 seats, which fea­tured promi­nent­ly in all con­sul­ta­tions and dis­cus­sions on au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go, will en­cour­age bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the dis­tricts.

The fo­cus now is on re­turn­ing to the polls and on en­sur­ing that our vi­sion of the new and im­proved To­ba­go will soon emerge from these chal­leng­ing times.  We are all ma­tur­ing as an elec­torate, and this is good for this is­land’s fu­ture ad­min­is­tra­tion.