Al­though ab­sorbed over the last week with the Cari­com Sym­po­sium on Crime, this news­pa­per has not­ed with in­ter­est the launch of the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty led by Far­ley Au­gus­tine, the in­cum­bent To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary.

It must, how­ev­er, be not­ed that what­ev­er the process of form­ing the par­ty and ar­riv­ing at its name, it should not ob­scure all else, as there is noth­ing in­her­ent­ly ex­cep­tion­al about the par­ty’s name.

What the fo­cus does is to leave un­at­tend­ed the very se­ri­ous mat­ters af­fect­ing the needs of To­ba­go and most im­por­tant­ly, how this new par­ty will make a dif­fer­ence to the so­cial, po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of the is­land.

Mr Au­gus­tine, just in case you have not been pay­ing close at­ten­tion to the is­sues in To­ba­go, the very le­git­i­ma­cy of the As­sem­bly as now con­sti­tut­ed con­tin­ues to be cause for con­cern.

The ques­tion must al­so be asked about how the THA ad­min­is­tra­tion is go­ing about meet­ing the needs of To­ba­go and its res­i­dents for growth and de­vel­op­ment? What is be­ing done to see the emer­gence of young peo­ple suit­ably trained, ed­u­cat­ed and fo­cused on cre­at­ing in­dige­nous val­ue on the is­land?

What about, Mr Chief Sec­re­tary, new and vi­brant ini­tia­tives in tourism, now that some breath­ing space from the scourge of COVID-19 and its de­riv­a­tive virus­es has al­lowed room for at­ten­tion to oth­er mat­ters, and what are the plans and pro­grammes to meet the out­stand­ing quest of To­ba­go for self-suf­fi­cien­cy?

The en­cour­age­ment of pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment and man­age­ment in in­dige­nous pro­duc­tion al­so re­quires a boost, so too the re­vival of food pro­duc­tion and agro-in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment.

What is your As­sem­bly do­ing, Mr Chief Sec­re­tary, to have young To­bag­o­ni­ans fit­ted-out with the skills in mod­ern pro­duc­tion meth­ods, in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy and ad­vanced com­put­er lit­er­a­cy?

What are the en­cour­ag­ing ap­proach­es to fa­cil­i­tate the pro­duc­tion and ini­ti­a­tion of cul­tur­al arte­facts and oth­er ma­te­ri­als to in­ter­est per­sons in spend­ing their va­ca­tions on the is­land?

All of these and oth­er salient mat­ters are suf­fer­ing from non-ad­ven­ture and in in­stances when a de­vel­op­ment mat­ter has been put on the agen­da, it takes for­ev­er, and/or is nev­er brought to fruition.

In typ­i­cal op­po­si­tion fash­ion, Kelvon Mor­ris, the lone elect­ed Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the THA, is en­gaged in a sim­i­lar mis­placed fo­cus. In­stead of ar­tic­u­lat­ing mat­ters such as those list­ed above, he en­gages in an inane name call­ing game with Mr Au­gus­tine. What­ev­er the name of the par­ty, it will not pro­duce a pound of the fa­mous To­ba­go peas and in­crease the catch of To­ba­go fly­ing fish.

While all of these and far more de­vel­op­ment is­sues re­main un­at­tend­ed, a sig­nif­i­cant part of a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing and the nec­es­sary ac­tiv­i­ty of bring­ing peo­ple to­geth­er was spent on the name of the par­ty.

Pol­i­tics and politi­cians need to move to a high­er ground of achieve­ment.