skl
10-03-2007, 03:38 PM
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl ... =161210831 (http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=161210831)
A WEEK, the popular maxim says, is a long time in politics with just over four weeks to go before polling day 2007. However, there already appears not enough time for the idea of an opposition coalition in Tobago to take root.
In fact, the idea of an opposition alliance in the first place was being held tightly under wraps, precisely because some of the key players harboured deep fears of a premature death, if word of it had been mooted in public too soon.
And no sooner than the issue was broken in the Tobago news in mid September, jeopardy was already evident.
Christo Gift, chairman and leader of the National Alliance for Reconstruction Tobago, objected strenuously to what he saw as the attempt in the Tobago News article, by Hochoy Charles to hijack the effort.
Mr Charles has since been unrepentant. The Democratic Action Congress, the Tobago rump of the party once led by ANR Robinson, is the only active, viable political organisation in Tobago, Mr Charles continues to assert, to the chagrin of Mr Gift and others among whom this unity ambition had been floating.
Citizens in Tobago were being told that the idea had been under discussion for several months, that the pace of the discussions had quickened as anticipation concerning the pending election heightened after the early reading of the budget on August 20.
A launch had been planned for late September, but as late as this week, this development remained still-born.
One week ago, Charles was refusing to be drawn on the question of the campaign launch for this Tobago United opposition, saying ominously that whatever happens there will always be a Plan B.
His own advocated aspiration is that the results in the election should be such as to deny the Trinidad parties, any of the significant three, opportunity to get a majority enabling them to single handedly alter the constitution. But more than that. He proposes an equation in which no party in Trinidad must be able to form and run the government effectively on its own. He is convinced that a DAC-led coalition in Tobago will recapture the two seats there, giving it the perch from which to influence national policy and direction, with Tobagonian interest given equal status on that agenda.
Even without a crossing of the floor as happened when the UNC was helped to form the government with that Tobagonian support in 1995, the bitter lessons from that experience for Tobago seem lost on the DAC leader. They may note, however, a host of those voters upon whom he is counting to effect the equation he has in mind-20-19-2.
Of the parties in Trinidad, only the PNM has had the strength to maintain its presence in Tobago, through all the years of being in the wilderness there, between 1976 and 2000.
Six years after recapturing both seats in the parliament, however, that position is not sufficiently secure for comfort by the incumbents.
NAR Tobago is almost an estranged sibling of NAR Trinidad. In fact the DAC was revived over bitter differences which emerged in the Trinidad and Tobago NAR. In a strange complex also, the UNC Alliance is staying out of any active presence in Tobago.
But the Democratic National Assembly which has thrown in its lot with this alliance, still maintains its own, independent Tobago arm. The Congress of the People is yet to clarify how it will play Tobago.
From significant quarters in the sister island, there are choruses of discontent not only about objective conditions of life as they affect huge columns of the population. On that score, the realities in Tobago continue to be pegs higher than in Trinidad.
Over and above these, however, those questions relating to the state of the constitutional and political union have remained festering.
The relationship between the London-led Tobago House of Assembly and Manning-led government in Port of Spain has been too cosy for the comfort of many in the Tobago for Tobagonians movement. "Tobago must be liberated," the branch chairman of the DNA declares at a launch in Tobago West last Saturday.
This is what cuts across alternative political perspectives as they thrive on the sister island. But harmonising these separate verses into a single song on the same sheet, with a choir master sufficiently acceptable to those who must come to the concert, is where the production gets choked.
A great deal of anticipation and expectation in being placed on a proposed meeting in Scarborough this evening, after which Hochoy Charles' Plan B may well be rolled out. Or the Tobago united against the PNM movement will gather steam, and hit the road over the next four weeks. This latter option appears to require a tremendous amount of work still to be done.
A WEEK, the popular maxim says, is a long time in politics with just over four weeks to go before polling day 2007. However, there already appears not enough time for the idea of an opposition coalition in Tobago to take root.
In fact, the idea of an opposition alliance in the first place was being held tightly under wraps, precisely because some of the key players harboured deep fears of a premature death, if word of it had been mooted in public too soon.
And no sooner than the issue was broken in the Tobago news in mid September, jeopardy was already evident.
Christo Gift, chairman and leader of the National Alliance for Reconstruction Tobago, objected strenuously to what he saw as the attempt in the Tobago News article, by Hochoy Charles to hijack the effort.
Mr Charles has since been unrepentant. The Democratic Action Congress, the Tobago rump of the party once led by ANR Robinson, is the only active, viable political organisation in Tobago, Mr Charles continues to assert, to the chagrin of Mr Gift and others among whom this unity ambition had been floating.
Citizens in Tobago were being told that the idea had been under discussion for several months, that the pace of the discussions had quickened as anticipation concerning the pending election heightened after the early reading of the budget on August 20.
A launch had been planned for late September, but as late as this week, this development remained still-born.
One week ago, Charles was refusing to be drawn on the question of the campaign launch for this Tobago United opposition, saying ominously that whatever happens there will always be a Plan B.
His own advocated aspiration is that the results in the election should be such as to deny the Trinidad parties, any of the significant three, opportunity to get a majority enabling them to single handedly alter the constitution. But more than that. He proposes an equation in which no party in Trinidad must be able to form and run the government effectively on its own. He is convinced that a DAC-led coalition in Tobago will recapture the two seats there, giving it the perch from which to influence national policy and direction, with Tobagonian interest given equal status on that agenda.
Even without a crossing of the floor as happened when the UNC was helped to form the government with that Tobagonian support in 1995, the bitter lessons from that experience for Tobago seem lost on the DAC leader. They may note, however, a host of those voters upon whom he is counting to effect the equation he has in mind-20-19-2.
Of the parties in Trinidad, only the PNM has had the strength to maintain its presence in Tobago, through all the years of being in the wilderness there, between 1976 and 2000.
Six years after recapturing both seats in the parliament, however, that position is not sufficiently secure for comfort by the incumbents.
NAR Tobago is almost an estranged sibling of NAR Trinidad. In fact the DAC was revived over bitter differences which emerged in the Trinidad and Tobago NAR. In a strange complex also, the UNC Alliance is staying out of any active presence in Tobago.
But the Democratic National Assembly which has thrown in its lot with this alliance, still maintains its own, independent Tobago arm. The Congress of the People is yet to clarify how it will play Tobago.
From significant quarters in the sister island, there are choruses of discontent not only about objective conditions of life as they affect huge columns of the population. On that score, the realities in Tobago continue to be pegs higher than in Trinidad.
Over and above these, however, those questions relating to the state of the constitutional and political union have remained festering.
The relationship between the London-led Tobago House of Assembly and Manning-led government in Port of Spain has been too cosy for the comfort of many in the Tobago for Tobagonians movement. "Tobago must be liberated," the branch chairman of the DNA declares at a launch in Tobago West last Saturday.
This is what cuts across alternative political perspectives as they thrive on the sister island. But harmonising these separate verses into a single song on the same sheet, with a choir master sufficiently acceptable to those who must come to the concert, is where the production gets choked.
A great deal of anticipation and expectation in being placed on a proposed meeting in Scarborough this evening, after which Hochoy Charles' Plan B may well be rolled out. Or the Tobago united against the PNM movement will gather steam, and hit the road over the next four weeks. This latter option appears to require a tremendous amount of work still to be done.