Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

The To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced its can­di­dates at a spe­cial con­ven­tion.

While re­tired fire of­fi­cer David Thomas had al­ready been named the To­ba­go East can­di­date, the par­ty made a sur­prise rev­e­la­tion last night, se­lect­ing Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Sports Sec­re­tary Joel Samp­son to chal­lenge PNM in­cum­bent Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis for To­ba­go West. Both can­di­dates said they are con­fi­dent, say­ing they are com­mit­ted to be­ing with the peo­ple and are not in­tim­i­dat­ed by the PNM.

Samp­son, who de­feat­ed the PNM in the 2021 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions, be­lieves he can re­peat that suc­cess on a na­tion­al lev­el de­thron­ing Cud­joe-Lewis. Po­lit­i­cal leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine said that the par­ty’s fo­cus isn’t on be­com­ing king­mak­ers but on se­cur­ing ne­go­ti­at­ing pow­er.

By win­ning these two seats, the par­ty hopes to have the lever­age to ne­go­ti­ate for To­ba­go’s needs with both the op­po­si­tion and gov­ern­ment.