Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James says To­ba­go must adopt a fixed elec­tion date to pre­vent any ad­min­is­tra­tion from ma­nip­u­lat­ing when vot­ers re­turn to the polls.

His com­ments come as Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is yet to an­nounce the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion date, al­most two weeks af­ter dis­solv­ing the Leg­is­la­ture.

James said the cur­rent sys­tem gives the rul­ing par­ty too much con­trol and warned that at­tempts to use elec­tion tim­ing as a po­lit­i­cal tac­tic rarely work.

“There is no best time that you can de­ter­mine be­fore­hand,” he said. “Any ef­fort to use the tim­ing of an elec­tion as a po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy is ma­nip­u­la­tion and it can back­fire. Vot­ers will make you pay for it.”

He said an­a­lysts al­so can­not re­li­ably pre­dict when an elec­tion will be called be­cause To­ba­go lacks the kind of de­tailed polling need­ed to mea­sure po­lit­i­cal sen­ti­ment.

“There’s noth­ing there for an an­a­lyst to re­al­ly com­ment on. One can­not know for sure,” he said. “We have not done all the polling that one prob­a­bly needs to do.”

Mean­while, Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran sup­ports James’ call. He said the THA should ur­gent­ly adopt a fixed elec­tion date. He de­scribed the cur­rent un­cer­tain­ty as un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and dam­ag­ing to the is­land’s po­lit­i­cal cli­mate.

“There should be no need for such un­cer­tain­ty about an elec­tion date,” he said. “It is not re­al­ly fair and free elec­tions if the oth­er par­ties have to keep guess­ing. On­ly the rul­ing par­ty will be able to plan.”

He said pre­dictable elec­tion dates are es­sen­tial for sta­bil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly in a small so­ci­ety like To­ba­go.

“Cer­tain­ty is a key in­di­ca­tor for coun­try de­vel­op­ment,” he said. “I was ex­pect­ing the new To­ba­go gov­ern­ment to make the elec­tion date cer­tain and show some good ex­am­ple for a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety.”

De­osaran al­so said he is con­cerned about the use of ma­jor gov­ern­ment projects dur­ing cam­paign pe­ri­ods, not­ing that in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers have pre­vi­ous­ly crit­i­cised sim­i­lar be­hav­iour in Guyana.

“If there were in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers for the To­ba­go elec­tions, they would make the same claim against the rul­ing par­ty,” he said. “You can­not use build­ings and projects dur­ing the cam­paign be­cause it is un­fair. It is tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.”

Au­gus­tine dis­solved the As­sem­bly Leg­is­la­ture on No­vem­ber 12 and is yet to call the date.