The re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go may be for­malised by ge­og­ra­phy and con­sti­tu­tion, but the emo­tion­al and po­lit­i­cal links be­tween the two is­lands have al­ways been sea­soned by sharp over­tones of re­sent­ment and con­flict that are best de­scribed in the lo­cal par­lance as "To­ba­go love." Our two is­lands, de­spite their prox­im­i­ty and the ready flow of cit­i­zens be­tween them are quite dif­fer­ent in pace, so­cial con­text and goal set­ting. Those dif­fer­ences, broad­ly char­ac­terised as the dif­fer­ence be­tween an oil-dri­ven, heav­i­ly in­dus­tri­alised Trinidad and the more rus­tic, per­son­able and vis­i­tor fo­cus of To­ba­go can lead to cul­ture shock on both sides when it's nec­es­sary for the two is­lands to work to­geth­er. Ever since its for­ma­tion in 1980 as the lo­cal gov­ern­ment body re­spon­si­ble for the gov­er­nance of To­ba­go, the THA has been a light­ning rod for po­lit­i­cal sen­ti­ment on the is­land, be­gin­ning as a ve­hi­cle for the rise of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Ac­tion Con­gress (DAC), which was, in turn, re­spon­si­ble for the po­lit­i­cal re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of Arthur NR Robin­son and, it might be ar­gued, the be­gin­ning of third par­ty pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Un­der a PNM gov­ern­ment, the PNM-led To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) had a sym­pa­thet­ic ear in the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and a po­lit­i­cal ho­mo­gene­ity that act­ed as a lu­bri­cant for the so­cial dif­fer­ences be­tween the two is­lands. The 2009 THA elec­tion was won by the PNM, but al­so elect­ed four mem­bers of the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP), led by Ash­worth Jack who aligned his par­ty with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship elec­toral coali­tion. The 2010 tri­umph of the PP Gov­ern­ment gave the TOP a lev­el of en­gage­ment with­in the THA dis­pro­por­tion­ate to its one-third rep­re­sen­ta­tion and has, ap­par­ent­ly, in­spired the coali­tion gov­ern­ment to pur­sue an un­for­tu­nate cam­paign of con­fronta­tion with the THA.

De­spite sug­ary words of con­cern and com­pas­sion for the peo­ple of To­ba­go and its right to ex­pand the scope of its pres­ence on the is­land, the blunt ad­vances of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment on what might be de­scribed as THA, and by in­fer­ence, PNM po­lit­i­cal ter­ri­to­ry have been re­buffed quite specif­i­cal­ly by the Lon­dons of To­ba­go. Anselm and Orville have spo­ken out in clear and un­equiv­o­cal terms about the way the Gov­ern­ment has been seek­ing to am­pli­fy its pres­ence on the is­land, and it would take a par­tic­u­lar­ly high lev­el of po­lit­i­cal naivety not to un­der­stand that the Gov­ern­ment's re­cent over­tures are at­tempts at sec­ond guess­ing the man­age­ment plans and strate­gies of the THA.

Just weeks ago, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, wrap­ping up the coali­tion Gov­ern­ment's cel­e­bra­tion of its first year in of­fice in To­ba­go, an­nounced that she would be ac­ti­vat­ing the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in To­ba­go and dri­ving a ques­tion­able re­fresh of the Cepep pro­gramme in the is­land. Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don re­spond­ed with threats of le­gal ac­tion. The most re­cent con­fronta­tion be­tween the THA and the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment sug­gest­ed that mil­lions of tax­pay­er dol­lars al­leged­ly re­leased to the au­thor­i­ty for use in the Cepep com­mu­ni­ty im­prove­ment pro­gramme that the gov­ern­ment claims were re­turned in June, 2009. At the core of this is­sue is the quite in­flam­ma­to­ry al­le­ga­tion of a "par­al­lel" Cepep pro­gramme lay­ered on top of the ex­ist­ing project in To­ba­go which would ben­e­fit from more di­rect links with the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and, pre­sum­ably, in turn, cre­ate more po­lit­i­cal good­will for the coali­tion Gov­ern­ment. This would take place in di­rect vi­o­la­tion of the laws gov­ern­ing the scope of the THA's re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and un­less ex­plained in clear­er terms that de­fine the val­ue of this ini­tia­tive to the peo­ple of To­ba­go, is like­ly to stand as a guile­less at­tempt at vot­er in­flu­enc­ing. The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment is like­ly to have a bet­ter ex­pe­ri­ence in To­ba­go by plac­ing their ef­forts at iron hand­ed gov­er­nance in the vel­vet glove of con­sid­ered diplo­ma­cy and co­op­er­a­tive en­gage­ment. Such an ef­fort would ac­knowl­edge and re­spect the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly guar­an­teed role of gov­er­nance of the THA over the is­land of To­ba­go and seek op­por­tu­ni­ties to forge mean­ing­ful and mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial points of en­gage­ment and sup­port for the for­tunes of the peo­ple of our more beau­ti­ful half.