Melis­sa Doughty

To­ba­go's eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment is set to be the main theme of the Jan­u­ary 10 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tion de­bate. The made-for-tele­vi­sion event is to be held at Mag­dale­na Grand Beach Re­sort. This was con­firmed to the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day by a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the T&T De­bates Com­mis­sion. She said rev­enue gen­er­a­tion, so­cial-sec­tor de­vel­op­ment and THA con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form would al­so emerge.

The rep­re­sen­ta­tive said the de­bate is be­ing fund­ed by the pri­vate sec­tor but she could not state who the com­pa­nies are nor how much was giv­en. The de­bate will be tele­vised on CNC3, GISL (Chan­nel 4), CN­MG, TV6, and To­ba­go Chan­nel 5 as well as on ra­dio sta­tions i95FM, Talk City 91.1FM and Her­itage Ra­dio among oth­ers. The spokesman said it will not be open to the pub­lic be­cause it is a made-for-tele­vi­sion event and the or­gan­is­ers would pre­fer if the gen­er­al pub­lic fol­lowed the event on tele­vi­sion or lis­tened to it on the ra­dio.

Stu­dio guests, she said, would be lim­it­ed to 30 peo­ple, who would com­prise the com­mis­sion­ers and par­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives. She could not say how many rep­re­sen­ta­tives each par­ty would be al­lowed. Al­though the com­mis­sion has a list of mod­er­a­tors to host the tele­vised pro­gramme, she said she could not give the list of names but said the name of the mod­er­a­tor should be an­nounced by Jan­u­ary 2.

The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) and The Plat­form of Truth (TPT) are ex­pect­ed to take part in the de­bate. The T&T De­bates Com­mis­sion Web site says arrange­ments for the de­bate will be made by an or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee com­pris­ing Car­los Dil­lon, chair­man of the lo­cal or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee and as­sis­tant hon­orary sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go Cham­ber; Ann Marie de Gazon, com­mu­ni­ty ac­tion of­fi­cer of the Cit­i­zen Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gramme, min­istry of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty; and George Lea­cock, own­er and talk-show host of Ra­dio Tam­brin.

The Web site says there will be two mod­er­a­tors, an "in­de­pen­dent" and a To­bag­on­ian. They will be ex­pect­ed to de­vel­op and pose ques­tions to the de­baters, main­tain ground rules, ad­here to time lim­its and fa­cil­i­tate fol­low-up ques­tions for clar­i­fi­ca­tion. The T&T De­bates Com­mis­sion was de­vel­oped by the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce.

The T&T De­bates Com­mis­sion Web site says:

The event is ex­pect­ed to be­gin at 8 pm

Be­fore the de­bate

• The com­mis­sion­ers and the LOC will have no in­put in the ques­tions.

• The pub­lic can send ques­tions via so­cial me­dia and oth­er fo­rums.

• UWI stu­dents are as­sist­ing the mod­er­a­tor by do­ing re­search for ques­tions.

De­bate for­mat

•Will com­mence at 8.15 pm

• 90 min­utes du­ra­tion

• One de­bate, by par­ty lead­ers

• Made-for-TV pro­duc­tion

• Max­i­mum of two min­utes per can­di­date to an­swer the ques­tion

• The mod­er­a­tor will have the lat­i­tude to raise fol­low-up ques­tions

• Thir­ty sec­onds to re­spond to a fol­low up-ques­tion

• Two min­utes per can­di­date for clos­ing re­marks