An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Hours af­ter the polls closed in To­ba­go and the two seats were de­clared to have been won by the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP), ju­bi­lant leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine said he in­tends to start ne­go­ti­a­tions to­day with the in­com­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) gov­ern­ment.

Ad­dress­ing the crowd of ju­bi­lant sup­port­ers at the Es­planade, Scar­bor­ough, just be­fore mid­night, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary ac­knowl­edged those who came out and vot­ed.

De­clar­ing that “tonight’s vic­to­ry is an im­por­tant one for To­ba­go,” he said To­bag­o­ni­ans had sat by qui­et­ly for the last four years and ac­cept­ed the abuse from Port-of-Spain.

He said, “To­ba­go, you went out to­day and you ex­act­ed re­venge on our be­half.”

Au­gus­tine re­mind­ed po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents that they should not have count­ed To­bag­o­ni­ans out as 60,000 strong lis­tened to the call, and came out and demon­strat­ed just how im­por­tant they were.

He said while To­ba­go will be sit­ting in the na­tion­al Par­lia­ment, it is still not quite the lev­el nec­es­sary to war­rant con­sti­tu­tion­al change on the is­land. How­ev­er, he said this was suf­fi­cient to form an “ex­treme­ly strong ne­go­ti­at­ing point start­ing to­mor­row morn­ing.”

Thank­ing God first, he went on to thank his cam­paign man­agers for their hard work across the is­land. Ad­mit­ting vot­er turnout dur­ing this Gen­er­al Elec­tion had been low­er than in 2020, Au­gus­tine said this meant they had to do some in­tro­spec­tion and re­flec­tion in or­der to bring those on the fringes back in.

He called on the par­ty to un­der­stand it had much work left to do to build an in­clu­sive out­fit—and with the work due to start to­day, he urged them to fin­ish cel­e­brat­ing safe­ly.

The TPP leader al­so ex­tend­ed con­grat­u­la­tions and best wish­es to in­com­ing prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as he urged every­one to re­alise they had to be­come one T&T in or­der to en­gen­der the change they want to see.

Au­gus­tine was elect­ed as the THA leader back in 2021 on a Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) tick­et, which was a par­ty birthed by Wat­son Duke in 2015.

Mean­while, the de­feat­ed Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) To­ba­go Coun­cil leader, An­cel Den­nis, said he in­tends to meet with the PNM leader to­day, as well as the cam­paign man­ag­er, to ad­dress is­sues that had arisen dur­ing the past month.

Dur­ing a speech in which he con­ced­ed just be­fore 11 pm, he said, “You win some, you lose some.”

Ex­tend­ing con­grat­u­la­tions to the suc­cess­ful can­di­dates, he claimed they would be go­ing back “to re­strate­gise and re­group.”

Promis­ing to be bet­ter pre­pared for the next elec­tion on the sis­ter isle, Den­nis thanked the two for­mer prime min­is­ters, Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Stu­art Young, for their ser­vice to coun­try.