CASAN­DRA THOMP­SON�FORBES

Chief sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Orville Lon­don has met with lead­ers of the po­lit­i­cal par­ties in To­ba­go to dis­cuss is­sues re­lat­ed to To­ba­go's strug­gle for in­ter­nal self-gov­er­nance.The meet­ing was held at the Mt Irv­ing Bay Ho­tel on Tues­day.At­tend­ing the meet­ing were PNM To­ba­go coun­cil chair­man Neil Wil­son, po­lit­i­cal leader of the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) Ash­worth Jack and leader of The Plat­form of Truth Ho­choy Charles.

Af­ter the meet­ing, the lead­ers and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives con­clud­ed that with re­spect to full au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go, the in­ter­est and de­mands of the peo­ple must take pri­or­i­ty over par­ti­san pol­i­tics."The lead­ers agreed that they had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to de­vise strate­gies and mech­a­nisms to trans­late the le­git­i­mate de­mands of the peo­ple in­to mean­ing­ful re­al­i­ty and they al­so agreed that a suc­cess­ful res­o­lu­tion to these trou­bling and long­stand­ing is­sues can on­ly be achieved through a unit­ed and sus­tained ap­proach," Lon­don said.

He said there was a con­sen­sus that lead­ers meet with­in one month to de­cide on non-ne­go­tiable de­mands and strate­gies to be pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic."At that meet­ing, the lead­ers are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive at a con­sen­sus on the non-ne­go­tiable de­mands, the strate­gies to trans­late those de­mands in­to mean­ing­ful re­al­i­ty and the mea­sures to be im­ple­ment­ed for the mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion of the church­es, youth groups, busi­ness sec­tor, civ­il so­ci­ety, com­mu­ni­ty and oth­er groups," he said.

Jack said the meet­ing on the is­sue of au­ton­o­my was a good idea as it would chart the way for­ward for gen­er­a­tions to come."I be­lieve To­ba­go's au­ton­o­my will ben­e­fit not on­ly To­ba­go but all of Trinidad and To­ba­go and even the Caribbean by ex­ten­sion," Jack said."With that in mind, as we have al­ways done, we will con­tin­ue to work in the best in­ter­est of the peo­ple of To­ba­go to en­sure that fu­ture gen­er­a­tions will be able to make de­ci­sions that af­fect us here by the per­sons who re­side in this is­land."

Charles al­so told the me­dia that a unan­i­mous voice from the po­lit­i­cal heads was need­ed to lib­er­ate the peo­ple of To­ba­go."We ought to speak for To­ba­go with one voice be­cause the is­sue is an is­sue of lib­er­a­tion and em­pow­er­ment of the peo­ple, that is the To­ba­go is­sue and we could not do it as in­di­vid­u­als or sep­a­rate groups and that has been the mantra com­ing from The Plat­form of Truth," he said.