To­ba­go vot­ers have de­liv­ered a strong man­date to the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP), which swept all 15 seats in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), leav­ing the leg­is­la­ture with­out an elect­ed op­po­si­tion. In re­sponse, the is­land’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to adopt a more as­sertive over­sight role to help safe­guard ac­count­abil­i­ty and en­sure To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment agen­da re­mains on track.

The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) con­firmed that the TPP polled 16,240 votes, well ahead of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), which se­cured 10,456, and the In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA), which re­ceived 181 votes. The new As­sem­bly will op­er­ate with­out an op­po­si­tion pres­ence, rais­ing con­cerns about checks and bal­ances in To­ba­go’s gov­er­nance.

The To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce says it in­tends to func­tion as a de fac­to watch­dog by close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the TPP’s cam­paign blue­print. Di­vi­sion pres­i­dent Cur­tis Williams con­grat­u­lat­ed TPP Po­lit­i­cal Leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine and his team, de­scrib­ing the re­sult as a clear and de­ci­sive sig­nal from To­bag­o­ni­ans.