Casan­dra Thomp­son�Forbes

To­ba­go has a new po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

Called To­ba­go For­wards, it was formed by a break­away fac­tion of the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) called The For­ward Move­ment Group of Con­cerned Mem­bers and Sup­port­ers of the Par­ty.

On Sun­day, dur­ing a gen­er­al meet­ing by the group at the Rovanel's Re­sort, the group vot­ed to form the new po­lit­i­cal par­ty to for­ward the TOP's cause.

The lat­est de­vel­op­ment comes sev­er­al months af­ter the TOP and its po­lit­i­cal leader Ash­worth Jack went dor­mant af­ter be­ing white­washed at the 2013 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) polls.

In June 2014, Jack had filed an in­junc­tion to stop the fac­tion us­ing TOP's name and sym­bol.

The new po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion will car­ry the conch shell as its sym­bol, pend­ing ap­proval from the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion.

Among To­ba­go For­wards' promi­nent mem­bers is To­ba­go West MP Dr Del­mon Bak­er, who dis­pelled re­ports he was the in­ter­im po­lit­i­cal leader. He said while he sup­port­ed the process on Sun­day, he re­mained a mem­ber of TOP.

"There is no in­ter­im leader at this time. The mem­bers agreed that the elect­ed in­ter­im body that was man­ag­ing the To­ba­go For­ward Move­ment with­in the TOP will con­tin­ue to man­age the af­fairs of the new move­ment un­til an elec­tion process is called," Bak­er said.

"That there­fore means that the cur­rent chair­man of that body, Mr Anslem Richards, will be the per­son who would shep­herd the group un­til such time as we have an elec­tion."

Bak­er said he re­mained a mem­ber of the TOP un­til fur­ther no­tice.

"I am a mem­ber of the TOP. I have not yet re­signed or of­fered my res­ig­na­tion," he added.

Oth­er To­ba­go For­wards mem­bers are Stan­ley Beard, Mer­ri­am Cae­sar-Moore and for­mer THA 2013 elec­tion can­di­dates Glad­stone Solomon and Anslem Richards, who is the par­ty's in­ter­im chair.

Richards said the new par­ty would give To­bag­o­ni­ans an al­ter­na­tive po­lit­i­cal choice and de­scribed its emer­gence as the dawn of a new era in the po­lit­i­cal land­scape of To­ba­go.