With the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) hav­ing called on its sup­port­ers and as­sem­bly­men to pre­pare for the up­com­ing To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tion, oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties say they are al­ready mak­ing moves to get ready.

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) To­ba­go Coun­cil leader An­cil Den­nis con­firmed that the par­ty has al­ready trig­gered its nom­i­na­tion process in line with the par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion.

He said the dead­line for in­ter­est­ed can­di­dates in To­ba­go West is May 28, and for To­ba­go East is June 11.

“We are prepar­ing. We are cur­rent­ly meet­ing our mem­bers. We have had some meet­ings—16 in to­tal—and we’ve com­plet­ed sev­en so far,” Den­nis said.

He ex­plained the par­ty is us­ing these meet­ings to re-en­er­gise mem­bers and lis­ten to feed­back fol­low­ing the last gen­er­al elec­tion re­sults.

In the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, the PNM lost both To­ba­go seats to the TPP. TPP can­di­dates Joel Samp­son and David Thomas won in To­ba­go East and West re­spec­tive­ly, end­ing a nine-year hold by the PNM of those seats.

Den­nis, re­spond­ing to a re­cent call by TPP leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine for his elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to “come out of those Pra­dos and For­tuners” and re­turn to the ground,  said com­mu­ni­ty out­reach should nev­er stop—elec­tion or not.

“Elect­ed as­sem­bly­men should al­ways re­main on the ground. That is part of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty—to be in touch with the peo­ple. Not just when an elec­tion is com­ing.”

Mean­while, the po­lit­i­cal leader of the In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA), Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus, ac­cused Au­gus­tine of be­ing “con­flict­ed.”

“The Chief Sec­re­tary sounds very con­flict­ed. On one hand, he’s urg­ing his par­ty to pre­pare for elec­tions. On the oth­er, he’s try­ing to rush a fa­tal­ly flawed au­ton­o­my bill through Par­lia­ment,” she said.

Tsoiafatt-An­gus be­lieves the re­al pri­or­i­ty should be in­clu­sive con­sul­ta­tion, not cling­ing to pow­er.

“If his pri­or­i­ty is sim­ply hold­ing on to what­ev­er pow­er he thinks he has, then by all means, call elec­tion to­mor­row. But I be­lieve he’s miss­ing a crit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­fine his lega­cy, not by cling­ing to of­fice but by show­ing he tru­ly cares about To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment.”

She told Guardian Me­dia the IDA re­mains fo­cused on re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship and will con­tin­ue its elec­tion prepa­ra­tion up to the day polls are called.

“As for the In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance, our fo­cus has al­ways been on readi­ness and re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship. Un­like the Chief Sec­re­tary, we are not just fo­cused on win­ning elec­tions—we are fo­cused on build­ing a bet­ter To­ba­go.”

Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke said his par­ty will re­veal its elec­tion readi­ness at a me­dia con­fer­ence sched­uled for next Mon­day.

The THA elec­tion date has not yet been an­nounced, but there are signs of ear­ly cam­paign­ing.

The last elec­tion was held on De­cem­ber 6, 2021. The PDP won 14-1 against the PNM.