UNC deputy leader Senator Jearlean John said Tobago voters had shown the country the way ahead by wresting control of the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) from the PNM in Monday's election.
"Tobagonians live by very simple principles," she told WESN television host Andy Johnson.
"Tobagonians don't like advantage. Tracey and Dr Rowley just forgot those principles."
She said all the money spent during the campaign just "turned their stomachs."
John recalled her idyllic childhood amid the waves and hills of Charlotteville to chide the PNM by asking why it was so hard to develop Tobago which had so much to work with.
She asked why after 21 years in the THA, the PNM could not present a campaign to say ''This is was what I've done, this is where I am, and this is where I'm heading.'
'I think Tobagonians just got tired. For 21 years they are toiling in the vineyard and they just have nothing to show. They are not foolish people. This was really a repudiation.
"Tobagonians tonight chose substance over character assassination, they took policies backed by facts over plain lies and foolishness, and they took hope and inspiration and idealism over the 'green avocado' they (PNM) were showing."
She said PDP deputy leader Farley Augustine and Goodwood/Belle Garden West PDP candidate Dr Faith B.Yisrael were each inspirational and decent young people, in contrast to the alleged toxicity embraced by many PNM leading lights in Tobago.
"I hope Trinidad is taking note. All the vitriol and insults, Tobago has led the way and said, 'Enough is enough.'"
John hit the PNM for spending, what she described as, obscene sums of money in the period around the campaign, saying, Tobagonians would not accept that.
"Tonight I congratulate Tobago for teaching us all something.
"We are decent people.We don't like people to take advantage. Tonight we push back. Tonight Tobago spoke."
B.Yisrael, who won her seat, told Johnson on WESN television the results showed Tobagonians had recognised it was time for a change after 21 years of one type of governance under the PNM. She said the PDP had not been scared even as the PNM had thrown everything into the campaign.
"Tobagonians are brighter than that and were not to be fooled by the trinkets they were throwing at them."
Political analyst Dr Bishnu Ragoonath told Newsday the PDP could not afford the very costly television adverts run by the PNM on television nationwide nightly, largely featuring negative campaigning against the PDP's leaders.
He said allegations of corruption within the Tobago PNM had surfaced in the January THA election when the PDP vote had surged to give a six-six tie with the PNM, and seemingly had reappeared for Monday's polls. Another issued still hovering around, Ragoonath said, was how the Tobago PNM had treated its own members.
"There was the concern about how the former chief secretary (Kelvin Charles) was treated by the PNM and how Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-Angus was treated by the PNM."
Tsoiafatt-Angus had contested the PNM Tobago Isl
