CASAN­DRA THOMP­SON�FORBES

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Orville Lon­don is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad�Bisses­sar to re­sume dis­cus­sions about full In­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go.He be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment is mum on the is­sue. The cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, through the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs, is cur­rent­ly hold­ing con­sul­ta­tions on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.

Three meet­ings were held in To­ba­go last month. Lon­don be­lieves To­bag­o­ni­ans are be­ing hood­winked in­to be­liev­ing To­ba­go's mat­ters are di­rect­ly be­ing dealt with. He re­cent­ly ex­pressed con­cern about the ap­par­ent si­lence by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment on the is­sue of in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go af­ter it was a ma­jor cam­paign is­sue on the hus­tings lead­ing up to the Jan­u­ary 21 THA elec­tion.

He said: "Be­fore the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion it was the ma­jor top­ic, in fact one would be­lieve that the elec­tion would have been fought pri­mar­i­ly on this sin­gle is­sue."Be­fore the elec­tion, I think all the par­ties had one thing in com­mon and that was a com­mit­ment to in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go."

Lon­don said in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment was para­mount for the peo­ple of To­ba­go but now it was not be­ing giv­en pri­or­i­ty it de­served as the elec­tion out­come was not as an­tic­i­pat­ed by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment.He added the THA would not al­low To­ba­go's state of af­fairs to be shelved.

He said: "I find it very dis­con­cert­ing that de­spite var­i­ous over­tures made to the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, in per­son and by writ­ten cor­re­spon­dence, we have got no in­di­ca­tion from the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment it in­tends to give any pri­or­i­ty to this is­sue.

"We in To­ba­go are sup­port­ive of the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form dis­cus­sions but we in To­ba­go can­not af­ford for this is­sue, which has en­gaged our at­ten­tion for the past 50 years and which we have been fo­cus­ing even more at­ten­tion over the last four years, to be over­shad­owed by the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form dis­cus­sions."He be­lieves both talks should not be en­twined. He urged To­bag­o­ni­ans to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly in the dis­cus­sions.