With hours of cam­paign­ing still left, the 2013 THA elec­tion has al­ready gone down as the most con­test­ed, ex­pen­sive and di­vi­sive in the his­to­ry of the is­land, which had a rep­re­sen­ta­tive body named the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly be­tween 1768 and 1874. While the 2013 cam­paign gen­er­at­ed a great deal of heat, there was pre­cious lit­tle light em­a­nat­ing from any of the three par­ties seek­ing to win the favour of the To­ba­go elec­torate.

This lack of en­light­en­ment is es­pe­cial­ly sur­pris­ing giv­en that the elec­tion is be­ing held in the mid­dle of an on­go­ing de­bate in Par­lia­ment on leg­is­la­tion that would amend T&T's re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion to ad­vance the abil­i­ty of To­bag­o­ni­ans to chart their own fu­ture. The de­ci­sion by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ta­ble the leg­is­la­tion in Par­lia­ment just weeks be­fore the elec­tion has been round­ly crit­i­cised by two of the three par­ties con­test­ing the elec­tion.

And with some jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, as the key points of the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) (To­ba­go) Bill, 2013 are not suf­fi­cient­ly well known in To­ba­go for Mon­day's vote to be in­dica­tive of the elec­torate's feel­ings of this huge­ly sig­nif­i­cant leg­is­la­tion. Such im­por­tant change de­served greater ven­ti­la­tion in this elec­tion.

As it stands, not many of the con­tri­bu­tions by speak­ers on the cam­paign trail fo­cused on the im­por­tant medi­um to long-term is­sues spe­cif­ic to To­ba­go, such as: the need to re­sus­ci­tate the is­land's at­trac­tive­ness to for­eign tourists; whether the land li­cence regime that was in­tro­duced in 2007 to slow down the ac­qui­si­tion by for­eign­ers of To­ba­go land should be scrapped or amend­ed; the im­per­a­tive of di­ver­si­fy­ing the is­land's sources of em­ploy­ment and the need to in­crease the pro­duc­tion of food so that To­ba­go is more self-suf­fi­cient.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, much of the cam­paign rhetoric was tak­en up with claims of bribes to vot­ers, the hir­ing of Mus­limeen thugs to in­tim­i­date vot­ers, con­tin­u­ing slan­der of nom­i­nees on plat­forms, me­dia cam­paigns that al­so on­ly at­tack par­ties and can­di­dates and the dis­turb­ing but large­ly ir­rel­e­vant in­tro­duc­tion of an­oth­er eth­nic el­e­ment in an is­land in which 98 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion com­pris­es peo­ple of one eth­nic­i­ty.

Al­though the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple is the op­po­si­tion par­ty in To­ba­go, it is a con­stituent mem­ber of the rul­ing Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, which has caused the Prime Min­is­ter to put the weight of her of­fice at stake for the elec­tion.

Ms Per­sad-Bisses­sar has gone out of her way to ad­dress To­ba­go di­rect­ly, hold­ing cab­i­net meet­ings there, open­ing a ser­vice sta­tion in Rox­bor­ough and a gas fa­cil­i­ty at the Cove ear­li­er this week be­fore fly­ing back to To­ba­go yes­ter­day for the launch of the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T's Scar­bor­ough cam­pus and a PTSC trade school.

While both sides pumped huge amounts of mon­ey in­to cam­paign­ing for Mon­day's poll, it may be that the in­ter­est the Prime Min­is­ter has demon­strat­ed in the TOP is be­cause she feels a loss in To­ba­go could be per­ceived as an in­dict­ment against T&T's rul­ing coali­tion in gen­er­al and her stew­ard­ship in par­tic­u­lar.

Whichev­er of the two main con­tenders wins, the THA and cen­tral Gov­ern­ment will have to co-or­di­nate their ef­forts and strate­gies to en­sure that To­ba­go con­tin­ues to see an im­prove­ment in its stan­dard of liv­ing.