Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

The Move­ment for De­vel­op­ment and Democ­ra­cy (MDD) is the newest po­lit­i­cal par­ty in To­ba­go. CEO of the par­ty, pathol­o­gist Hughvon des Vi­gnes, said he and oth­er mem­bers of the par­ty came to­geth­er as a com­mit­tee to ad­dress prob­lems in To­ba­go and to find strate­gies to deal with those is­sues.

The oth­er com­mit­tee mem­bers are par­ty leader An­dre Phillips and Ken Lewis, the fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer. In an in­ter­view on a To­ba­go tele­vi­sion sta­tion, des Vi­gnes said the com­mit­tee was set up to draw plans for To­ba­go to spear­head a prop­er de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process.

He said the par­ty was formed to send a clar­i­on call to To­bag­o­ni­ans to wake up and re­alise the is­sues which might af­fect them in the fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. How­ev­er, with the THA elec­tions mere months away, the par­ty has not de­cid­ed whether it will con­test, since the ground­work of learn­ing how to lead must be com­plet­ed.

"Some mem­bers feel strong­ly that our first pur­pose of course is to plan fu­ture gov­er­nance for To­ba­go." He said this was be­cause in some ar­eas of the re­gion, gov­ern­ments had come to pow­er but then did not know what to do, he said. Des Vi­gnes said the MDD's pri­or­i­ty was the green pa­per on self-goven­ment for To­ba­go.

Up to two years ago, des Vi­gnes was a mi­nor­i­ty coun­cil­lor with the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP). How­ev­er, a rift with­in the par­ty led to his res­ig­na­tion.