No To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tion has ever been won by a slim mar­gin.

Since the THA was formed in 1980, on­ly the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Ac­tion Con­gress (DAC)/Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) and the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) have gov­erned the is­land.

Be­tween them, the small­est vic­to­ries have been 8 seats to 4, com­ing in 1980 when the DAC won the first THA elec­tion, in 2001 when the PNM won for the first time and in 2009, again a PNM win.

In 2009, the new boys on the block were the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) led by Ash­worth Jack who had bro­ken away from Ho­choy Charles and brought to­geth­er for­mer DAC/NAR sup­port­ers.

All oth­er THA re­sults have been sweep­ing – 11-1 to the DAC in 1984 and 1988, the same mar­gin to the NAR in 1992, and the PNM got that too in 2005.

There was a 10-1-1 to the NAR in 1996 with an In­de­pen­dent and PNM get­ting seats but the PNM is the on­ly par­ty to win 12-nil, in 2013.

It means To­bag­o­ni­ans are nev­er of­ten un­cer­tain about who they want to lead them.

A gran­u­lar look at the dis­tricts will show some tough fights over the years but over­all re­sults have been clear.

For the first 20 years it was the DAC/NAR and for the next 20, the PNM.

With Scar­bor­ough a grave­yard of oth­er par­ties that tried and failed, de­bate nev­er ceased on the main fac­tors that would make To­bag­o­ni­ans up­end a regime.

Notwith­stand­ing the PNM's de­clared poli­cies, it was clear that when they broke the DAC/NAR back in 2001, an an­ti-NAR and an­ti-UNC vote had al­so fac­tored.

To­bag­o­ni­ans were no longer com­fort­able with ten­sions be­tween Ho­choy Charles and the UNC Gov­ern­ment. Charles and Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day were at war over the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the au­thor­i­ties un­der the Fifth Sched­ule of the THA Act.

When, for ex­am­ple, UNC Works Min­is­ter Car­los John moved to pave Mil­ford Road in 2000, Charles had THA trucks block their work, ar­gu­ing that paving in To­ba­go was sole­ly the THA’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The UNC con­tend­ed they were the Gov­ern­ment for all of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The sub­se­quent starv­ing of funds trig­gered the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mis­sion to de­ter­mine how much To­ba­go should get from the na­tion­al bud­get, and soured re­la­tions even more.

Charles too had lost the faith of his peo­ple with the loss of mil­lions in the De­cem­ber 1999 Ring­bang con­cert that nev­er brought the gains he promised.

At the same time the UNC’s treat­ment of Arthur NR Robin­son (through which the UNC got in­to of­fice with a 1995 al­liance) and To­ba­go West MP Pamela Nichol­son, was not sit­ting well with To­bag­o­ni­ans.

So with the UNC en­ter­ing the THA race in 2001 and with an­ti-NAR sen­ti­ment high, To­bag­o­ni­ans chose the PNM, led by Orville Lon­don. 

There's not been a flip of ad­min­is­tra­tion since then and those fac­tors aren't present to­day.

It means, there­fore, that if the Pa­tri­ot­ic De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (PDP), which took two seats from the PNM in 2017, is to turn the tide, it would have to be sole­ly on its pro­posed poli­cies.

And that, to­day, is for To­ba­go to de­cide up­on.

Ei­ther way, this will be an his­toric elec­tion - one that could see the PNM be­com­ing the on­ly par­ty to gov­ern be­yond 20 years or one in which fresh blood is brought in with­out any ma­jor ex­ter­nal fac­tors.

We wait to see what new chap­ter of his­to­ry is writ­ten on an is­land that has had a long his­to­ry of gov­er­nance, hav­ing changed hands 33 times be­fore In­de­pen­dence.

May the best par­ty pre­vail.