Be­yond Christ­mas colour­ing, more red jer­seys are be­ing seen around and it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly due on­ly to the fact that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s con­test­ing Mon­day’s To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment’s whirl­wind nine-month tenure, while seek­ing to re­order sys­tems, has done enough to re­duce the wave of yel­low sport­ed af­ter its April 2025 elec­tion vic­to­ry—lat­est, the traf­fic fines in­crease furore. The sub­se­quent an­nounce­ment of a grace pe­ri­od for mo­torists to rec­ti­fy is­sues not on­ly con­firmed the Prime Min­is­ter bow­ing to pub­lic pres­sure, but al­so that the mat­ter was poor­ly planned. It’s ahead how the ad­just­ments will help straight­en out the sit­u­a­tion. Or not.

Gov­ern­ment will un­der­stand that it will be treat­ed more se­vere­ly in fail­ing on is­sues af­fect­ing the pub­lic, since its Op­po­si­tion ral­ly­ing cry had al­ways pro­fessed love for the said pub­lic. With trust at risk—and cit­i­zens won­der­ing what un­wel­come an­nounce­ment the next pub­lic hol­i­day brings—Gov­ern­ment’s modus operan­di is pro­vid­ing the Op­po­si­tion PNM with for­ward mo­men­tum.

In­deed, Wednes­day’s PNM San­gre Grande meet­ing sig­nalled the launch of PNM’s prepa­ra­tion for the 2027 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions—and to win the San­gre Grande cor­po­ra­tion.

How­ev­er, the PNM’s road to­wards LG polls be­gins with Mon­day’s THA elec­tion.

To­ba­go’s 52,857 elec­torate size (3.2 per cent big­ger than the 2021 THA elec­torate) isn’t the on­ly dif­fer­ence in this elec­tion to the 2021 ex­er­cise when Wat­son Duke’s Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) swept the PNM away 14-1. For var­i­ous rea­sons, some change is ex­pect­ed.

For Mon­day’s elec­tion, the bound­aries of Ma­son Hall/Mo­ri­ah and Bagatelle/Ba­co­let have been al­tered and both ar­eas re­named.

In­cum­bent THA man­age­ment - for­mer PDP lieu­tenant Far­ley Au­gus­tine, now head­ing the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) af­ter split­ting with Duke—faces pres­sure, even with the re­cent rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with Duke. Au­gus­tine’s lead­er­ship is among the elec­tion is­sues.

Be­yond To­ba­go busi­ness lead­ers’ con­cerns about lack of progress un­der the TPP, tenure and par­ties’ cam­paign meet­ing en­thu­si­asm, To­ba­go “ground” has been keep­ing its own coun­sel, seen by some as con­cern­ing—and that any­thing could oc­cur.

In 2021, heat was high against the long­stand­ing PNM as Duke, with icon­ic sta­tus due to his lead­er­ship/labour back­ground, helmed PDP. Now, de­spite be­ing Au­gus­tine’s first con­test lead­ing TPP, the par­ty’s con­fi­dent, bank­ing on dis­en­chant­ment be­ing coun­tered on un­der­stand­ing that funds were short, since half his tenure was un­der the PNM.

Some To­ba­go youths last week­end seemed in­dif­fer­ent to vot­ing. Oth­er To­bag­o­ni­ans stressed their po­lit­i­cal cul­ture is dif­fer­ent to Trinidad’s. “Mon­day morn­ing peo­ple go de­cide. We vote on is­sues, we say we vex with our fin­ger,” said one.

It’s ahead how much of a change emerges: if the TPP’s cov­et­ed Blue Wave rolls or crash­es in­to end for­ma­tion in­volv­ing some PNM Red stripes. It will de­pend on how much To­bag­o­ni­ans hate the PNM, as op­posed to ac­cept­ing Au­gus­tine.

And that’s to be con­sid­ered based on To­ba­go’s cir­cum­stances: econ­o­my, au­ton­o­my, se­cu­ri­ty, trans­port, dis­re­spect, dis­loy­al­ty/“grasshop­per pol­i­tics,” bound­ary changes, pre­vi­ous mar­gin­als, fish­er­men’s oil spill com­pen­sa­tion, UNC ties with Au­gus­tine—and the US radar.

In­deed, the Chi­nese Year of the Fire Horse start­ed ear­li­er than the tra­di­tion­al Feb­ru­ary 17 launch, with the dead­ly Swiss bar fire and the Unit­ed States fire-pow­ered, clin­i­cal­ly ex­e­cut­ed la­paro­scop­ic ex­trac­tion of Venezue­lan leader Nico­las Maduro and his wife.

In hind­sight, the first clue of in­tend­ed moves on Venezuela would have been the US gov­ern­ment’s six-month OFAC li­cence to T&T and US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio’s sup­port to the Prime Min­is­ter for T&T’s Drag­on gas pro­pos­al and steps “to en­sure it will not pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit to the Maduro regime.”

Lessons from the US movie script “Snatch” serve the world. Warn­ing en­e­mies (and friends) with­in and with­out, of US Wild West su­per­pow­er styling, tram­pling prin­ci­ples, pro­to­cols and prac­tices. Warn­ing to en­e­mies of US-friend­ly coun­tries. A show of ex­treme US ca­pac­i­ty in be­ing able to turn off Cara­cas’ lights. Stock boost­er for US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. Pres­i­den­tial suc­ces­sion road for SoS Ru­bio. Hint of the pos­si­ble fate of Cu­ba, Colom­bia, Mex­i­co, and Green­land. Con­trol and com­man­deer­ing Venezue­lan as­sets for “years.” Fall­out pos­si­bil­i­ties for T&T’s cross-bor­der project or re­fin­ery. Re­gion­al/in­ter­na­tion­al fall­out from US ac­tions. In­clud­ing from ev­i­dence against Maduro at his tri­al.

But as the US/Venezuela sto­ry con­tin­ues, Mon­day’s spot­light will be on the lessons from the THA elec­tion for Au­gus­tine’s TPP, the PNM, UNC Gov­ern­ment and Duke.