Pao­lo Ker­na­han

The scram­ble for seats in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions is heat­ing up, al­though it would seem cov­er­age of the cam­paign­ing in Trinidad's dai­ly pub­li­ca­tions is some­what lim­it­ed. There seem to be more full-page ad­ver­tise­ments be­ing placed by the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP), al­though it is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine to whom those gar­ish and ex­pen­sive ad­verts are meant to ap­peal.

The leader of the TOP, Ash­worth Jack, was the fo­cus of me­dia at­ten­tion with unan­swered ques­tions about his abil­i­ty to ac­quire a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar prop­er­ty in To­ba­go. Air PNM in Trinidad ca­vort­ed dai­ly with in­sin­u­a­tions and thin­ly-veiled ac­cu­sa­tions of im­pro­pri­ety in pub­lic of­fice.

Mr Jack did him­self no favours with his stub­born de­fi­ance; his re­fusal to spill his guts over the in­ti­mate de­tails of his fi­nan­cial life. Pho­tographs ap­peared of Mr Jack in his "gar­den," spawn­ing a slew of typ­i­cal­ly weak Tri­ni joke: "I want to know whot ky­na ponkin it is he growin dey so I could get some seed fuh me­self!"

Try­ing to steer To­bag­o­ni­ans clear of "dis­trac­tions" foist­ed on the pub­lic by the rul­ing PNM "Lon­don broth­ers' As­sem­bly dy­nasty," Mr Jack has been harp­ing on the track record of the THA un­der the stew­ard­ship of Chief sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don. His ar­se­nal in­cludes ref­er­ences to a num­ber of cap­i­tal projects yet to be com­plet­ed by the THA, wan­ton waste by the As­sem­bly and a glar­ing lack of di­rec­tion or a gov­er­nance phi­los­o­phy.

Re­cent­ly, Mr Jack was quot­ed as de­scrib­ing Scar­bor­ough as a dy­ing town, as­crib­ing what he con­sid­ers to be the fail­ing for­tunes of the cap­i­tal of To­ba­go to the in­ep­ti­tude of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion. It was a risky move, giv­en the sort of re­ac­tions which fol­lowed from the To­ba­go pub­lic: "Whaaat chupid­ness he talkin', Scar­bor­ough much more bet­ter and more clean­er than all of Trinidad!"

Com­ing from the mouth of the av­er­age To­ba­go Joe, that re­mark of course has noth­ing to do with Mr Jack's as­sess­ment of the eco­nom­ic stand­ing of Scar­bor­ough but points to some­thing more pro­found. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, To­bag­o­ni­ans do not vote the way Trinida­di­ans do sim­ply be­cause they don't have the deeply en­trenched trib­al pol­i­tics sup­port­ed by decades of racial di­vi­sion. Not to wor­ry, though, it seems that can be changed!

Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance in the THA, Anselm Lon­don, was re­cent­ly spot­ted on face­book post­ing dire warn­ings against al­low­ing these "for­eign­ers" a foothold on the is­land. His naked xeno­pho­bia was di­rect­ed in­ward, at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)-a Trinida­di­an po­lit­i­cal par­ty-not out­ward at some face­less in­vad­ing ag­gres­sor (al­though it could be ar­gued that he views them as one and the same thing).

Anselm Lon­don has al­ways had very strong views on the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go. In an ex­ten­sive in­ter­view he trilled sweet­ly about the glow­ing cred­it rat­ing be­stowed up­on To­ba­go by the in­ter­na­tion­al cred­it rat­ing agency, Stan­dard and Poor's.

Mr Lon­don viewed this favourable rat­ing as an en­dorse­ment of the sound fis­cal gov­er­nance of the THA. He then made a very cu­ri­ous re­mark: the Fi­nance Sec­re­tary sug­gest­ed that their cred­it rat­ing could have been high­er had it not been pulled down by the poor per­for­mance of the Trinidad econ­o­my.

One could in­ter­pret that to mean that To­ba­go would fare much bet­ter were it not strick­en with the al­ba­tross of the over­bear­ing big broth­er that is Trinidad. This might play well with the To­ba­go elec­torate (not that there is any truth to it) be­cause while they may be un­hap­py with the per­for­mance of the present regime, they cer­tain­ly don't want to im­port Trinidad's cur­rent brand of gov­er­nance to their is­land.

The TOP is be­ing sold by the PNM as a mere corol­lary to the ques­tion­able prac­tices of the UNC-led cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. That is enough to ter­ri­fy any right-think­ing To­bag­on­ian.

Fear of the UNC notwith­stand­ing, the in­cum­bent does have a prob­lem. It has presided over steadi­ly de­clin­ing tourist ar­rivals. Ac­cord­ing to in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Dr Vic­tor Wheel­er, To­ba­go has suf­fered a 60 per cent de­cline in tourist ar­rivals over the past five years. Orville Lon­don has in the past at­trib­uted the anaemia in the in­dus­try to the glob­al eco­nom­ic cri­sis.

With tourism re­bound­ing in pre­vi­ous­ly stag­nat­ed tourist economies like St Lu­cia, Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica, Orville Lon­don's jus­ti­fi­ca­tion has out­lived its use­ful­ness. This has been com­pound­ed by the de­ci­sion of Vir­gin Air­lines to pull its flights for the sum­mer months, a dread­ful turn of events laid square­ly in the lap of the As­sem­bly by Tourism Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz.

The As­sem­bly's re­sponse was: "The re­la­tion­ship be­tween the THA and the air­lines is some­thing that the min­is­ter does not un­der­stand." In oth­er words, stay out of big peo­ple busi­ness.

To­bag­o­ni­ans have a tough de­ci­sion on their hands: re­in­stall a regime which has not yield­ed any sig­nif­i­cant change on the is­land oth­er than du­bi­ous and cost­ly in­fra­struc­tur­al projects, or vote in the TOP, a Tro­jan horse for the UNC Gov­ern­ment. The re­la­tion­ship be­tween the is­lands has al­ways been a com­plex af­fair; it is like­ly to be made more so re­gard­less of the out­come of the THA elec­tions.