The In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA) is call­ing on To­bag­o­ni­ans not to heed a “No Vote” call that has been made re­gard­ing the up­com­ing To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions.

IDA leader Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day not­ing for­mer THA Chief Sec­re­tary Ho­choy Charles’ call for To­bag­o­ni­ans not to vote in the elec­tion.

One To­ba­go Voice leader Charles, at a re­cent me­dia con­fer­ence, said the elec­tion is one of “de­cep­tion and lies.”

He felt the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bill should have been passed be­fore To­bag­o­ni­ans re­turned to the polls to break the six-six tie be­tween the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots, which oc­curred in the Jan­u­ary THA elec­tion.

Charles, who had al­so called for a boy­cott of the Jan­u­ary poll, re­peat­ed his call for the De­cem­ber 6 elec­tion.

He said it did not make sense for To­bag­o­ni­ans to vote now, since they would have to re­turn to the polls when the au­ton­o­my bill is even­tu­al­ly passed. That bill is now stuck in the com­mit­tee stage in Par­lia­ment.

But ad­dress­ing the call by Charles, IDA leader Tsoifatt-An­gus stat­ed, “IDA has pre­sent­ed its po­si­tion that while Mr Charles should be ad­vo­cat­ing for the pas­sage of the To­ba­go Au­ton­o­my Bill, now is not the time for a call for a no-vote cam­paign.

“Mr Charles is an as­tute enough politi­cian to know that a no-vote cam­paign at this time will on­ly favour the in­cum­bent and not be in the best in­ter­est of To­ba­go.”

She added, “This elec­tion is an elec­tion where every To­bag­on­ian who can vote, must vote. This is an elec­tion where a cred­i­ble leader must be cho­sen to lead this is­land out of the eco­nom­ic dev­as­ta­tion now fac­ing us. We need a leader who can unite the peo­ple at the end of this war of ha­tred and fear.”

She said an elec­tion with full par­tic­i­pa­tion from vot­ers would ben­e­fit the is­land.

How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted, “The on­ly way we will achieve our de­sire for greater au­ton­o­my is when we have a po­lit­i­cal leader in To­ba­go who does not have al­le­giances to any par­ty in Trinidad to whom one must give favours nor lend one­self to ma­nip­u­la­tion and con­trol by any par­ty in Trinidad.”

The IDA leader al­so stressed, “The po­lit­i­cal leader must have the abil­i­ty to unite To­bag­o­ni­ans and res­i­dents un­der the vi­sion for a greater au­ton­o­my up­on which we can all agree and to cham­pi­on that po­si­tion as a unit­ed To­ba­go in all ne­go­ti­a­tions with both the gov­ern­ing and op­po­si­tion par­ties in Trinidad.”

PNM and PDP of­fi­cials in To­ba­go did not re­spond to ques­tions re­gard­ing Charles’ no vote lob­by.