More back pockets

ANCIL DENNIS missed an opportunity on Monday.

In moving to dissolve the Tobago House of Assembly (THA), thereby paving the way for the THA election, the Chief Secretary did not announce the date for the poll.

“We in the People’s National Movement (PNM) are quite ready,” Mr Dennis told the media outside the Assembly Legislature, Scarborough.

The comment underlined the advantage held by the incumbent. Knowledge is power. Knowing the exact election timeline while opponents do not gives one an advantage.

Mr Dennis was perhaps following in the footsteps of his predecessors and the example set by the Prime Minister, who this year kept the date for the general election in his back pocket too.

Dr Rowley was hardly the first prime minister to do so and – despite unheeded calls for fixed election dates – looks not to be the last.

The THA having been dissolved, the election must now be held within a specific window – between mid-January and mid-February. That relatively specific period is at least some consolation for all the bodies that must prepare.

But Mr Dennis’s status as the THA’s youngest chief secretary deepens our sense of disappointment. Here was a chance to demonstrate forward thinking and to affirm the principle of transparency.

The fact that Mr Dennis also answers to the PNM Tobago Council’s leader Tracy Davidson-Celestine, who broke the glass ceiling to become the first woman in that post, does not absolve him. It spreads the blame.

“The PNM is always ready to take care of Tobago,” the council said in a statement on Monday. “Tobago is ready.” Even the minority party, the Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP), said, “We were expectant.”

Can voters be ready if no one tells them the date?

Under the law, it falls to Dr Rowley, Mr Dennis and, in her capacity as Mr Dennis’s council leader, Ms Davidson-Celestine – to all three of them – to take the dates out of their back pockets and instead have election dates formally fixed.

Though political factors may explain the silence on the date, it is hard to understand Mr Dennis’s failure to say on Monday what steps have been taken in Tobago in relation to covid19 and the upcoming poll.

The experience of the general election, which saw a record-low turnout, is enough evidence of the need for reassurance.

Recent scares such as a prison outbreak – which forced the controversial opening of a temporary penal facility in a Tobago neighbourhood – are reminders that there is alarm and a need for caution.

Given questions about the efficacy of the Elections and Boundaries Commission’s process in August, it is only fair to consider what will be different in Tobago this time around.

Judging from Monday, not much.