Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says he is still think­ing about the elec­tion date and pray­ing on it, even though the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) was dis­solved this week and the le­gal count­down for the poll has al­ready be­gun.

The an­nounce­ment of the date is one of the fi­nal steps need­ed to trig­ger the for­mal start of To­ba­go’s elec­tion pe­ri­od, but Au­gus­tine made it clear he is not rush­ing the process.

He said he has not yet ad­vised the Prime Min­is­ter or the Pres­i­dent of a date, which is re­quired un­der law be­fore the elec­tion ma­chin­ery can be­gin.

“The law said that I have to ad­vise the PM and Pres­i­dent. Not giv­en such ad­vise­ment as yet. I’m still sleep­ing on it, think­ing about it, pray­ing about it, but cer­tain­ly in due course the Pres­i­dent will be ad­vised of a date, and that will be an­nounced to the pub­lic.”

Ac­cord­ing to the THA Act, the elec­tion must fall with­in a strict win­dow once the House is dis­solved. Au­gus­tine re­mind­ed re­porters that the time­line is now fixed.

“The house was dis­solved yes­ter­day. Which means that we have two to three months be­fore we have THA elec­tions.”

The three-month elec­toral win­dow means the vote must take place no ear­li­er than ear­ly Jan­u­ary and no lat­er than ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, un­less Au­gus­tine sets a De­cem­ber date — some­thing he pre­vi­ous­ly hint­ed was pos­si­ble. In ear­li­er pub­lic com­ments, he sug­gest­ed To­bag­o­ni­ans could re­turn to the poll in “De­cem­ber or Jan­u­ary”, though he has not com­mit­ted to any spe­cif­ic day.

De­spite the un­cer­tain­ty, cam­paign prepa­ra­tions are al­ready in mo­tion across the is­land. Au­gus­tine said the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) will ap­proach the elec­tion fo­cused on its record over the past term and on the de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy it has set for the is­land’s long-term growth.

“First­ly, we’ll be cam­paign­ing on our achieve­ments. We al­so will be cam­paign­ing on the de­vel­op­ment path­way for To­ba­go that we have de­vel­oped. That de­vel­op­ment path­way is from this year, 2025, all the way to 2040. And we’ll be putting To­ba­go on a tra­jec­to­ry that will lead to stronger so­cio-eco­nom­ic growth.”

The TPP has re­peat­ed­ly ar­gued that its ac­com­plish­ments, from so­cial sup­port pro­grammes to in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ments and ex­pand­ed au­ton­o­my ad­vo­ca­cy, form the foun­da­tion of a strong re-elec­tion case. Au­gus­tine has said the par­ty ex­pects To­bag­o­ni­ans to recog­nise what it de­scribes as its “hard work” over the past cy­cle.

But the up­com­ing vote will not be un­con­test­ed. De­spite los­ing the last THA elec­tion 14–1 and al­so suf­fer­ing a ma­jor de­feat in the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) says it ful­ly in­tends to com­pete for con­trol of the As­sem­bly.

PNM po­lit­i­cal leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said the par­ty has been do­ing the nec­es­sary ground­work and re­mains con­fi­dent about its chances in To­ba­go.

“We will do all that is nec­es­sary to give us the best pos­si­ble chance… We are not go­ing to take the po­si­tion that it is not pos­si­ble. The truth is that every time an elec­tion takes place, you have to do the work…”

She said par­ty groups have been hold­ing meet­ings, com­plet­ing screen­ing, and re­con­nect­ing with com­mu­ni­ties across To­ba­go in prepa­ra­tion for the cam­paign.

With both ma­jor par­ties prepar­ing to in­ten­si­fy their out­reach, To­bag­o­ni­ans now wait on the date.