It is some eight years that the Orville Lon­don-led To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) pro­duced a draft bill en­ti­tled ‘The Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) (To­ba­go Self-Gov­ern­ment) Bill, 2016’ af­ter ‘wide­spread con­sul­ta­tion’ with To­bag­o­ni­ans, and every now and then, giv­en the non-set­tle­ment of the self-gov­ern­ment is­sue, peo­ple tell me we should go back to it since it con­tains many im­pres­sive pro­pos­als for more au­tonomous gov­ern­ment in the is­land.

They tell me this even af­ter the Gov­ern­ment set up a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee to, in large part, ex­am­ine the bill, and in­cor­po­rat­ed some of the pro­pos­als in­to two new bills in 2021, and, in fact, bran­dished it hope­ful­ly in the lead-up to the De­cem­ber 2021 THA elec­tions (which they re­sound­ing­ly lost). In­deed, some peo­ple call it Orville’s Bill—some­what wist­ful­ly, I some­times think.

No­body has got­ten around to telling me what the im­pres­sive pro­pos­als are. But since I share their view in part, I will tell you some of the things I like about the bill.

One of the things I like is the fact that it de­fines Trinidad and To­ba­go, Trinidad, and To­ba­go. Trinidad and To­ba­go ‘com­pris­es the Is­land of Trinidad, the Is­land of To­ba­go and oth­er is­lands of the arch­i­pel­ago that are en­closed land­ward of the arch­i­pel­ag­ic base­lines, as well as the arch­i­pel­ag­ic wa­ters, the 12-mile ter­ri­to­r­i­al sea, and in­clud­ing the seabed and sub­soil sit­u­at­ed be­neath the ter­ri­to­r­i­al sea of Trinidad and To­ba­go and their su­per­ja­cent air-spaces.’

Trinidad shall ‘com­prise the is­land of Trinidad and oth­er is­lands of the arch­i­pel­ago that are en­closed land­ward of the arch­i­pel­ag­ic base­lines drawn around the is­land of Trinidad as well as the arch­i­pel­ag­ic wa­ters, the 12-mile ter­ri­to­r­i­al sea mea­sured sea­wards from the said base-lines as well as such part of the in­land wa­ters equidis­tant be­tween the is­land of Trinidad and the is­land of To­ba­go and to the ex­tent of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al sea of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the re­spec­tive su­per­ja­cent air space above these afore­men­tioned mar­itime ar­eas and over the land space.’

Note the phrase ‘such part of the in­land wa­ters equidis­tant be­tween the is­land of Trinidad and the is­land of To­ba­go’. I like that. It leads log­i­cal­ly to the con­clu­sion that To­ba­go’s sea­wa­ters make To­ba­go larg­er than Trinidad. Much larg­er. To­ba­go shall ‘com­prise the is­land of To­ba­go, Lit­tle To­ba­go, St Giles Is­land, Mar­ble Is­land, Goat Is­land, Sis­ters Is­land, and oth­er off-shore is­lands and the arch­i­pel­ag­ic wa­ters ly­ing land­ward of the es­tab­lished straight base-lines, the 12-mile ter­ri­to­r­i­al sea mea­sured sea­wards from the said base-lines, as well as the in­land wa­ters equidis­tant be­tween the is­land of Trinidad and the is­land of To­ba­go and to the ex­tent of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al sea of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the su­per­ja­cent air-space above these afore­men­tioned mar­itime ar­eas and over the land space.’

As you must have no­ticed, the idea of equidis­tant wa­ters nec­es­sar­i­ly comes up again in the de­f­i­n­i­tion of To­ba­go.

A sec­ond thing I like is the amend­ment of the Con­sti­tu­tion by in­ser­tion of a new Sec­tion 1A, which states: ‘There shall be equal­i­ty of sta­tus be­tween the Is­land of Trinidad and the Is­land of To­ba­go … and the Is­land of To­ba­go shall no longer car­ry the des­ig­na­tion of a ward.’

Won­der­ful, this idea of equal­i­ty, isn’t it? But what/where is the de­f­i­n­i­tion of equal­i­ty of sta­tus? I can­not find it any­where in the amend­ed Con­sti­tu­tion. It won’t be found in the Par­lia­ment; in the 41-mem­ber House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, To­ba­go has two seats while Trinidad has 39; and in the Sen­ate, To­ba­go has no manda­to­ry rep­re­sen­ta­tion. But per­haps we can amend the com­po­si­tion of the Sen­ate to have an equal num­ber of rep­re­sen­ta­tives for To­ba­go and Trinidad?

A third is self-de­ter­mi­na­tion for To­ba­go. It means that ‘the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go shall freely de­ter­mine their po­lit­i­cal sta­tus and freely pur­sue their eco­nom­ic, so­cial, and cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment on a na­tion­al lev­el, and that the peo­ple of To­ba­go as they be­long to an au­tonomous re­gion shall de­ter­mine in To­ba­go their po­lit­i­cal sta­tus and freely pur­sue their eco­nom­ic, so­cial and cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment.’

Else­where the bill says that the right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion for Trinidad and To­ba­go shall not pre­clude recog­ni­tion of the right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion for the peo­ple of To­ba­go.’

I think every­body wants self-de­ter­mi­na­tion as de­fined. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, though, Trinidad has dis­ap­peared from the equa­tion, and it is now self-de­ter­mi­na­tion for To­ba­go as an au­tonomous re­gion and self-de­ter­mi­na­tion for Trinidad and Trinidad and To­ba­go—as what?

There’s clear­ly some­thing wrong with the equa­tion. A fourth thing is the pro­pos­al to move from a uni­cam­er­al leg­is­la­ture to a bi­cam­er­al one. In ad­di­tion to the THA, there would be a Sec­ond House in an ex­pand­ed leg­is­la­ture. And that House would be pop­u­lat­ed and com­posed in ac­cor­dance with the dis­cre­tions of the First House. I wel­come the ex­pan­sion of the Leg­is­la­ture, but we are not told what they would be do­ing. Per­haps they would act as an over­sight body? But how can they pro­vide over­sight of the body that ap­point­ed them in the first place?

A fifth thing I like is To­ba­go mak­ing its own laws. The amend­ment says: ‘The To­ba­go Leg­is­la­ture shall make laws for the peace or­der and good gov­ern­ment of To­ba­go with re­spect to all mat­ters save and ex­cept those which are set out in the Fourth Sched­ule here­to.’

If we are to be­come tru­ly de­mo­c­ra­t­ic, we have to get prac­tice. And we can on­ly get that prac­tice through the au­thor­i­ty of law.

There are oth­er pro­pos­als I am im­pressed with in Orville’s Bill but there is on­ly so much space a col­umn has.