Yvonne Ba­boolal

When the Pres­i­dent yes­ter­day evening an­nounced the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA)?elec­tions are to be held on Jan­u­ary 21, 2013, THA Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don al­ready was locked in talks with par­ty mem­bers over cam­paign plans.

A re­lease from the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent stat­ed Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Lon­don, has fixed Jan­u­ary 21 as the date of the elec­tions. Lon­don, tak­ing a break from his dis­cus­sions, said the date did not come as any big sur­prise since when the THA was dis­solved he knew it would come around that time.

He said the PNM in To­ba­go had been prepar­ing for quite some time for the elec­tions through in­ter­fac­ing with the pub­lic. He was con­fi­dent the mes­sage they car­ried would res­onate with the pub­lic and the re­sults would be favourable for the PNM.

Lon­don said he was not too wor­ried about the re­cent al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion made against the THA by the Gov­ern­ment. The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the THA and the Mil­shirv Ltd deal for the con­struc­tion of an ad­min­is­tra­tive com­plex on land at the Shir­van Road/Claude Noel High­way in­ter­sec­tion.

Lon­don said the To­ba­go pub­lic was aware of the lev­el of in­tegri­ty the PNM?had brought to the THA and he be­lieved the truth would come out and would serve to strength­en its po­si­tion even fur­ther. "The To­ba­go pub­lic is be­com­ing quite aware of the strate­gies be­ing used by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment to bul­ly and de­hu­man­ise the ad­min­is­tra­tion," he added.

Lon­don said plans were now un­der­way to mo­bilise sup­port­ers, se­lect can­di­dates and hold pub­lic meet­ings but he de­clined to say how much the PNM in­tend­ed to spend on the elec­tion cam­paign. He said he had no idea of the cost but not­ed fund­ing would come from the na­tion­al par­ty, sup­port­ers and fund-rais­ing events.

PNM?PRO Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi said he was ex­pect­ing to see some wild al­le­ga­tions from the Gov­ern­ment in the com­ing months in re­la­tion to the THA. He be­lieved the peo­ple of To­ba­go would see that the THA?stood for in­tegri­ty, in­tel­li­gence and moral­i­ty.

Al-Rawi not­ed the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) had been silent on every na­tion­al is­sue, like the Sec­tion 34 mat­ter, and that did not auger well. TOP leader Ash­worth Jack, on the oth­er hand, said he was con­fi­dent his par­ty would win at the polls.

"We wel­come the an­nounce­ment of the elec­tion date," he added. Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan said he be­lieved the re­cent cor­rup­tion is­sues sur­round­ing the THA had cre­at­ed re­sent­ment from the To­ba­go pub­lic. He said he did not think Lon­don sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly re­spond­ed to those al­le­ga­tions.