To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) po­lit­i­cal leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine has asked mem­bers of his par­ty to get ready for the next THA elec­tion, even though no date has been an­nounced. He’s al­so ad­vised the TPP’s two MPs to stay on the ground and not get dis­tract­ed by pow­er in Port-of-Spain.

Speak­ing at a Thanks­giv­ing ser­vice at Rovenel’s Re­sort on Sat­ur­day night, Au­gus­tine told par­ty sup­port­ers and THA ex­ec­u­tives to be pre­pared when the call comes.

Us­ing a bib­li­cal anal­o­gy, he said, “So you bet­ter get your lamps trimmed and burn­ing. Those who are wise and have their lamps trimmed and burn­ing will be ready for when­ev­er that date will be. Those who are un­wise and who will be ill-pre­pared at that time, you will find your­self on the los­ing end of the stick.”

Au­gus­tine made the com­ments while cel­e­brat­ing the par­ty’s his­toric win in the gen­er­al elec­tion last month, where TPP can­di­dates Joel Samp­son and David Thomas de­feat­ed the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, end­ing a nine-year reign in the To­ba­go East and West seats.

But he re­mind­ed the crowd that cel­e­bra­tions must give way to re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

“Don’t let ar­ro­gance, don’t let hubris step in what­so­ev­er. Keep your feet on the ground. Area rep­re­sen­ta­tives, you should be walk­ing 10 times more. Go back to the ground, and do not take your feet off the ground. Come out of those Pra­dos and For­tuners and what­ev­er they have in the Di­vi­sion. Leave the air-con­di­tioned of­fice you have be­hind and go back in the hot sun and deal with your peo­ple.”

Au­gus­tine said that while the par­ty cel­e­brates its vic­to­ry, it can­not af­ford to be­come com­pla­cent. He’s call­ing on his team to stay hum­ble, re­main ground­ed, and be ready to lead.

He al­so hint­ed that the mo­men­tum must con­tin­ue, es­pe­cial­ly as the peo­ple of To­ba­go have giv­en the par­ty their con­fi­dence.

“This is not a par­ty that is too ar­ro­gant to hear from you and to lis­ten. And so we have heard your com­plaints, notwith­stand­ing your sup­port. And I can as­sure you that the gov­ern­ment I lead … we have lis­tened, and we are al­ter­ing things to re­flect what we heard from you.”

THE TPP was of­fi­cial­ly launched in Au­gust 2023, af­ter a bit­ter po­lit­i­cal split be­tween Au­gus­tine and Wat­son Duke, the founder of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots. It is re­port­ed that the TPP was born out of the need for a new po­lit­i­cal iden­ti­ty fol­low­ing the in­ter­nal break­down of the PDP, which had swept the THA elec­tion in 2021. Au­gus­tine, along with the ma­jor­i­ty of PDP As­sem­bly­men, even­tu­al­ly re­signed from the par­ty and con­tin­ued as in­de­pen­dents be­fore form­ing the TPP.

Dur­ing his speech, Au­gus­tine al­so re­mind­ed the new­ly elect­ed MPs that their jour­ney was just be­gin­ning.

“To Mr David and Mr Samp­son … you are our Joshua and Calebs in this mo­ment. You are go­ing in­to a strange land, in this mo­ment you are re­quired to slay some gi­ants in that land. If you think those that you al­ready slayed to get this po­si­tion were tall, you ain’t seen noth­ing yet.”

He warned them not to get dis­tract­ed by the trap­pings of pow­er in Port-of-Spain.

“Do not get dis­tract­ed in Port-of-Spain. Stay fo­cused. Keep your eyes on the ground. Keep look­ing at what the task is.”

Au­gus­tine called for uni­ty and re­mind­ed mem­bers that the vic­to­ry was not by ac­ci­dent but by di­vine de­sign.

“We take it as just that. We learn from our mis­takes. We ap­pre­ci­ate that, yes, we have flaws—even at the lead­er­ship lev­el, we have flaws. But we ap­pre­ci­ate that if we stick to God, that he will work it all out.”

The next con­sul­ta­tion with par­ty sup­port­ers is ex­pect­ed to fo­cus on the THA elec­tion cam­paign strat­e­gy.