Is the surge in­to To­ba­go by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Cab­i­net, start­ing to­day, about launch­ing the cam­paign for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions sched­uled for ear­ly 2013? Or is it a gen­uine at­tempt by the Gov­ern­ment to ad­vance the is­sue of in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for the peo­ple of To­ba­go?

Cab­i­net meet­ings in To­ba­go go back to the 1980s when ANR Robin­son was the prime min­is­ter. He took the Cab­i­net across the wa­ter as an in­di­ca­tion of his in­ten­tion to strike a mean­ing­ful part­ner­ship be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad; and he had every rea­son, be­ing the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for To­ba­go East go­ing back to the 1960s. Patrick Man­ning con­tin­ued the trend and now the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Prime Min­is­ter is fol­low­ing.

Over the decades the con­tention of those rep­re­sent­ing To­ba­go has fo­cused on a new con­sti­tu­tion­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween the is­lands, with in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go be­ing the ide­al. Notwith­stand­ing the fact that Mr Robin­son, along with the of­ten for­got­ten Dr Win­ston Mur­ray, who was then the MP for To­ba­go West, had been the ini­tia­tor of the mod­ern As­sem­bly, the change in the re­la­tion­ship has not hap­pened.

And not even dur­ing pe­ri­ods when the cen­tral gov­ern­ment and the THA were con­trolled by the same po­lit­i­cal par­ty. Not even the zeal­ous­ness of the To­ba­go MPs and the mi­nor­i­ty leader in the THA should de­lude them in­to be­liev­ing that mean­ing­ful con­sti­tu­tion­al change will hap­pen now just be­cause it has been promised to them by the Prime Min­is­ter.

The peo­ple of To­ba­go should use their pow­ers of dis­cern­ment and their known sin­gle-mind­ed­ness to put the wel­fare of To­ba­go ahead of all else and refuse to be caught up in par­ty games­man­ship. They must de­mand, ahead of every­thing else, the promised con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form to es­tab­lish once and for all times, a frame­work for a bal­anced and pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two is­lands.

It is on­ly such a frame­work that will serve the in­ter­ests of the peo­ple, whether the PNM, the TOP, the UNC, or the COP is in pow­er at the cen­tral gov­ern­ment and THA lev­els. Twice, first un­der the late Sir Isaac Hy­atali, and then in the con­tem­po­rary work done by the Dr John Prince com­mit­tee, con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form teams have trav­elled across To­ba­go and con­sult­ed with the peo­ple res­i­dent on the is­land.

No At­tor­ney Gen­er­al should seek to un­der­mine such an ex­er­cise and de­ter­mine in ab­strac­tion the needs of the peo­ple of To­ba­go-far less try to leg­is­late new con­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments with­out con­sult­ing the mem­bers of the is­land's own gov­ern­ment.

At the very least, such an at­tempt would give the im­pres­sion that the PP Gov­ern­ment is not aware of or does not care about ei­ther ac­cept­able pro­to­col or the feel­ings of To­bag­o­ni­ans. Both the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the THA must put aside par­ti­san think­ing and seek a for­mat that is agree­able not on­ly to them, but, more im­por­tant­ly, to the peo­ple they whose in­ter­ests they claim to rep­re­sent.

Now is the time, too, for the peo­ple of To­ba­go to de­mand of the par­ties want­i­ng to con­trol the as­sem­bly and the in­ter­nal af­fairs of To­ba­go bind­ing agree­ments to en­sure that they are cen­tral to the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form ex­er­cise and that po­si­tions tak­en must be in­sti­tut­ed at the ap­pro­pri­ate point.

To­ba­go can­not await the out­come of the po­lit­i­cal games which have held up re­form of the na­tion­al con­sti­tu­tions for over 25 years. Politi­cians and their par­ties are most like­ly to lis­ten and agree in the ap­proach to an elec­tion. To­bag­o­ni­ans in turn must be wise and tough with their de­mands and not take pap­pyshow from any of them.