Minor Tobago boundary changes unlikely to sway THA election, analysts say

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­[email protected]

Po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil and for­mer Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), An­cil Den­nis, has de­scribed the re­cent bound­ary ad­just­ments to two To­ba­go elec­toral dis­tricts as mi­nor, not­ing they are un­like­ly to af­fect the re­sults of the up­com­ing elec­tions.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Den­nis stat­ed that the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) act­ed with­in its le­gal man­date.

“The EBC is re­quired to do its work in ac­cor­dance with the law, and I think they have done so. I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have any thoughts or any is­sues with the rec­om­men­da­tions based on what I’ve seen in the re­port,” he said.

The changes will re­sult in a slight­ly larg­er elec­torate and ad­just­ments to two seats for the THA polls.

As of Ju­ly 7, 2025, the to­tal To­ba­go elec­torate stood at 52,857. The EBC has rec­om­mend­ed al­ter­ing the Ma­son Hall/Mo­ri­ah and Bagatelle/Ba­co­let bound­aries—and re­nam­ing both dis­tricts. The two elec­toral dis­tricts will now be known as Ma­son Hall North/Mo­ri­ah and Ma­son Hall South/Bagatelle.

Of the 15 elec­toral dis­tricts in To­ba­go, 13 re­tained their ex­ist­ing names and bound­aries. This in­for­ma­tion is con­tained in the EBC’s 14th re­port, dat­ed Au­gust 29, 2025, which was laid in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Fri­day by Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kadi­jah Ameen.

The EBC not­ed that its analy­sis and rec­om­mend­ed ad­just­ments were guid­ed by the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the elec­torate among ex­ist­ing dis­tricts as of Ju­ly 7, 2025. The last THA elec­tion was held in 2021.

Den­nis clar­i­fied the prac­ti­cal im­pli­ca­tions for vot­ers: “All it means is that per­sons from one polling di­vi­sion that used to vote in the dis­trict pre­vi­ous­ly will now be vot­ing in the oth­er dis­trict right next door at the bor­der­line.”

When asked whether these changes could af­fect elec­tion re­sults, Den­nis was un­equiv­o­cal: “No, I don’t see it af­fect­ing the out­come of the elec­tion.”

On his par­ty’s prospects, Den­nis ex­pressed strong con­fi­dence, as­sert­ing that any suc­cess would stem from pub­lic dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion rather than bound­ary ad­just­ments.

“Our suc­cess in the elec­tion wouldn’t have any­thing to do with any bound­ary changes. I be­lieve our suc­cess will be based on the fact that this cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion has de­stroyed this is­land across every sec­tor. Peo­ple are feel­ing the pain and ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the hard­ship as a re­sult of that, and I ex­pect them to vote ac­cord­ing­ly,” he said.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath echoed Den­nis’ sen­ti­ments, de­scrib­ing the changes as “nor­mal and nat­ur­al” and rou­tine un­der EBC reg­u­la­tions.

“You will al­ways have changes be­cause of pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty. There will al­ways be some mi­nor ad­just­ments. So as far as I am con­cerned, two elec­toral dis­tricts had two mi­nor ad­just­ments,” he ex­plained.

Re­gard­ing whether the ad­just­ments could af­fect elec­tion out­comes, Ra­goonath said: “Not re­al­ly. In some in­stances the PNM lost the elec­tions by about 500 votes, but I don’t think that will sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact the elec­torate and the vot­ing.

“What we re­alised in the last THA elec­tions and the gen­er­al elec­tion is that just over 50 per cent of the elec­torate vot­ed. Whether this time around we would have greater turnout I can’t say... What we know is that this time around the PNM is try­ing to put up a stronger chal­lenge. Whether or not peo­ple would see that as crit­i­cal, I don’t know.”

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James al­so agreed that the EBC act­ed in ac­cor­dance with the rules re­gard­ing the size of elec­toral dis­tricts. He added that he was un­cer­tain whether the re­nam­ing of dis­tricts would in­flu­ence elec­tion out­comes.

The THA elec­tions have been set for Jan­u­ary 12, 2026.