This is an in­ter­est­ing ques­tion. Some time ago, judg­ing from re­ports in the me­dia, I had formed the im­pres­sion that Christlyn Moore, leader of the To­ba­go For­wards, fol­low­ing the mas­sive re­jec­tion of the TOP in the 2013 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions, seemed to have thought that The For­wards would have been the log­i­cal suc­ces­sor of the TOP as "part­ner" in To­ba­go in the UNC-led coali­tion.

In­deed, in sup­port, she even re­ferred to her per­son­al pro­fes­sion­al re­la­tion­ship with the Prime Min­is­ter. Mat­ters seem to have been com­pli­cat­ed by the "car­ry­ings-on" of Min­is­ter of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment, Dr Del­mond Bak­er, who saw him­self as nei­ther fish nor fowl, be­ing un­able to make up his mind as to whether he was TOP or For­wards.

How­ev­er, Dr Bak­er's prob­lem was solved for him by his ex­pul­sion from the TOP and the an­nounce­ment by Moore of her can­di­da­cy for Bak­er's To­ba­go West seat.

Now that Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin, whose po­lit­i­cal clout must have suf­fered tremen­dous­ly over the past few months, has been giv­en the boot as its can­di­date by the TOP, this ex­ac­er­bates even fur­ther the splin­ter­ing of the an­ti-PNM vote.

What seems clear is that un­less there be an un­char­ac­ter­is­tic shift in the pat­tern of vot­ing in To­ba­go, the PNM has had it made.

I no­ticed that one poll­ster has said that the two To­ba­go seats will be "crit­i­cal" in de­ter­min­ing which par­ty will be form­ing the next gov­ern­ment. Judg­ing from po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments in To­ba­go, he could very well place the two To­ba­go seats snug­gly in­to the slot of the PNM.

Is he there­fore im­ply­ing that the PNM will win the gen­er­al elec­tion?

Er­rol OC Cu­pid

Trinci­ty, Tacarigua