TPP pledges inclusive governance after THA clean sweep

De­spite se­cur­ing a clean sweep in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions, the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty says it will gov­ern in the in­ter­est of all To­bag­o­ni­ans, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.

With the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty now hold­ing every seat in the As­sem­bly, leader and Chief Sec­re­tary-elect Far­ley Au­gus­tine says he will an­nounce plans on Thurs­day to en­sure that gov­ern­ment de­ci­sions re­main sub­ject to over­sight and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

It was not a wave, but a sea of blue last evening in To­ba­go as Scar­bor­ough be­came the epi­cen­tre of a mas­sive vic­to­ry cel­e­bra­tion af­ter the par­ty de­clared vic­to­ry.

The at­mos­phere reached a fever pitch at ex­act­ly 11:00 PM when the Au­gus­tine ar­rived at the Scar­bor­ough Es­planade.

Hail­ing yes­ter­day as a “his­toric” day, Au­gus­tine said, “This is a true vin­di­ca­tion that the last four years through which we saw many ups and downs, many tri­als, not of our own do­ing.”

Au­gus­tine pledged to gov­ern in the best in­ter­est of every To­bag­on­ian, ir­re­spec­tive of par­ty lines.

“Tonight, how­ev­er, while we cel­e­brate win­ning 15 seats, I want us to be clear that we must be gra­cious in vic­to­ry. Our cam­paign said that To­ba­go is we. That means that the To­ba­go we rep­re­sent in­cludes those that did not vote for us. And I want to say that as long as I’m the leader of this team, we will en­sure that all To­bag­o­ni­ans, all of To­ba­go, whether you are black, blue, red, white, or in­dif­fer­ent, that you are pro­vid­ed for by the To­ba­go com­mu­ni­ty.”

He then an­nounced that the TPP’s first or­der of busi­ness will be push­ing for self-gov­er­nance, which was a ma­jor pil­lar of its cam­paign.

“We re­quire as our first, first ob­ject of gov­er­nance is get­ting our au­ton­o­my bills done. To­ba­go re­quires greater au­ton­o­my at this time and that means that all peo­ple from all po­lit­i­cal par­ties, all vil­lages must get in­volved in build­ing out what that plat­form will look like.”

The TPP, in its 2026 “Blue­print” man­i­festo, promised to achieve full in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment and greater fis­cal au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go, fram­ing the is­land as an equal part­ner rather than a sub­or­di­nate in the twin-is­land re­pub­lic. The par­ty pledged to se­cure leg­isla­tive pow­er for the THA to make its own laws and ad­vo­cates for di­rect con­trol over rev­enue col­lec­tion, mar­itime bound­aries, and lo­cal re­sources like oil and gas.

Au­gus­tine ex­pects that on Thurs­day, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo will come to the is­land to over­see the swear­ing-in process.

The THA will find it­self with­out an elect­ed op­po­si­tion, sim­i­lar to what oc­curred in 2013 when the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment won all 12 seats against the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple, mak­ing it the first time that a sin­gle par­ty won every seat in an elec­tion.

Be­cause the sweep left the THA with­out an elect­ed Mi­nor­i­ty Leader, then Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don lat­er re­quest­ed a con­sti­tu­tion­al change to al­low for the ap­point­ment of in­de­pen­dent coun­cil­lors to serve as an op­po­si­tion voice, en­sur­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic over­sight. That, how­ev­er, did not hap­pen.

Au­gus­tine last night said, “I will ad­dress the To­ba­go pub­lic on mech­a­nisms that we will put in place to en­sure that democ­ra­cy re­mains alive and that all peo­ple in To­ba­go will have ac­cess to ask ques­tions, to be crit­i­cal, to share crit­i­cisms, and to even en­gage with their rep­re­sen­ta­tives on what they would like to see.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the de­feat­ed PNM, Au­gus­tine said, “All young peo­ple said to­day, your pen­nies (ref­er­enc­ing PNM leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les) are pow­er­less in To­ba­go. Tonight, if there were any doubts about whether or not the po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion I lead has the right to lead, if there were any doubts about whether or not the peo­ple of To­ba­go are be­hind us, to­day, the peo­ple of To­ba­go said we on­ly want an in­dige­nous To­ba­go po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion.”

He added, “I tried to lis­ten to the con­ces­sion speech a while ago, which was not much of a con­ces­sion speech, to be hon­est. But, for a sec­ond time, this post of To­ba­go po­lit­i­cal leader from the PNM was ques­tion­ing why give us an­oth­er four years. To­ba­go said why not give the TPP an­oth­er four years? Why not?”