The THA elec­tion is over for now, and is­sues of cor­rup­tion, the use of pub­lic funds, gov­er­nance and in­ter­nal self gov­ern­ment dom­i­nat­ed the cam­paign trail. But should To­ba­go get in­ter­nal self gov­ern­ment as has been de­mand­ed by the is­land then can its econ­o­my stand on its own, or will it sim­ply be a case of tax­es from Trinidad be­ing re­mit­ted to an is­land that has no re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ac­count for its use?

Well, To­ba­go-born econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James be­lieves that To­ba­go’s econ­o­my must be seen in the con­text of what he calls To­ba­go’s wa­ters and the hy­dro­car­bons that are con­tained in them.

He ar­gued that To­ba­go’s wa­ters en­com­pass­es 60 per cent of all the mar­itime bound­ary of Trinidad and To­ba­go and that the re­cent BHP/BP gas find in the North­ern Li­cense and the Shell Bar­racu­da and Col­ib­ri projects are re­al­ly To­ba­go’s gas projects.

“If by To­ba­go you mean To­ba­go with ap­pro­pri­ate bound­ary—the me­di­an line bound­ary—all the BHP Bil­li­ton finds and the Shell finds are in To­ba­go in that con­text,” James in­sist­ed.

James ar­gued To­ba­go does not want to be a proces­sor of nat­ur­al gas and would hap­pi­ly see it de­vel­oped in Trinidad which al­ready has the in­fra­struc­ture in place. He as­sert­ed that the long-term sus­te­nance of Trinidad’s gas in­dus­try is de­pen­dent on the gas north of To­ba­go.

“We are not talk­ing pure­ly about hy­dro­car­bons for a To­ba­go econ­o­my, we are talk­ing about the pro­duc­tion and ex­port of the cap­i­tal ser­vices on the back of tourism, di­ver­si­fy­ing tourism prop­er­ly the way the na­tion has nev­er both­ered to.”

He said To­ba­go could be like the Cay­man is­lands, which James ar­gued earns US $2 bil­lion from fi­nan­cial ser­vices and has a per-capi­ta GDP of US$80,000 as op­posed to US$4,000 for the av­er­age To­bag­on­ian. He said Cay­man gets 550,000 stay-over tourists per an­num and 1.5 mil­lion cruise ship vis­i­tors.

“The main prize is that we can de­vel­op ex­portable ed­u­ca­tion, ex­portable health care, ex­portable cre­ative in­dus­try and sports for that mat­ter if we take them se­ri­ous­ly,” James told the Busi­ness Guardian in an in­ter­view last Mon­day.

He in­sist­ed that To­ba­go can be­come a sig­nif­i­cant play­er in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and will al­low the na­tion­al econ­o­my to trans­form.

But for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Sel­by Wil­son in­sist­ed that To­ba­go must ac­count for the sub­stan­tial funds it has been giv­en over the years and ques­tioned the call for greater au­ton­o­my.

He said go­ing for­ward Trinidad must al­so ben­e­fit from its union with To­ba­go.

Wil­son said, “It must be a union which ben­e­fits both coun­tries. It can’t be a sit­u­a­tion where To­ba­go de­mands things and gets it and have no ac­count­abil­i­ty to Trinidad. To­ba­go has an eco­nom­ic con­tri­bu­tion to make to coun­try of Trinidad and To­ba­go, they just have to man­age their op­por­tu­ni­ties more ef­fec­tive­ly.”

He con­tin­ued: “One re­al­ly has to ask what is there to show for the funds giv­en to To­ba­go over the years? Have they re­al­ly demon­strat­ed a ca­pac­i­ty to utilise the funds in a mean­ing­ful way to en­cour­age growth and de­vel­op­ment? One has to look more care­ful­ly at To­ba­go and find out how are they be­ing man­aged? Is the THA do­ing the best they can do? Are they be­ing pro­gres­sive enough in the man­age­ment of what­ev­er funds they get? Or whether they are just milk­ing it for all they can get?”

But James is call­ing for more mon­ey to be spent on To­ba­go, not less. He said while the dis­pute res­o­lu­tion for­mu­la al­lows the gov­ern­ment to al­lo­cate ex­pen­di­ture based on pop­u­la­tion size what should hap­pen is a con­sid­er­a­tion of ge­o­graph­ic space and on that ba­sis 32 per cent of the coun­try’s cap­i­tal bud­get should be spend on de­vel­op­ing To­ba­go, even af­ter it gets in­ter­nal self gov­ern­ment.

He said it should be seen as an in­vest­ment in an un­der de­vel­oped re­source called the To­ba­go econ­o­my.

Asked why should the peo­ple of Ma­yaro or La Brea or Point Fortin in­vest their tax dol­lars on To­ba­go when their area is un­der-de­vel­oped Dr James said that’s an is­sue for the peo­ple in those ar­eas who have failed to mo­bilise and fight for things like To­bag­o­ni­ans have done and are do­ing.

“The democ­ra­cy in the coun­try needs to be sought out. We have a messy ex­ec­u­tive dom­i­nat­ed de­mo­c­ra­t­ic struc­ture which blocks com­mu­ni­ties from play­ing any sig­nif­i­cant role in dri­ving the way de­vel­op­ment al­lo­ca­tions are made in the coun­try.

“That’s your prob­lem in Trinidad, we don’t want to con­tin­ue that kind of de­sign here in To­ba­go. You have to fight to build, with the racial struc­ture you have in Trinidad you have a prob­lem to do it, but you need to change the gov­er­nance mod­el in Trinidad to al­low a rep­re­sen­ta­tive, a set of rep­re­sen­ta­tives from across Trinidad to dom­i­nate the Cab­i­net,” James said.

He added: “We want au­ton­o­my be­cause un­der your con­trol of the gov­ern­ment in Trinidad we will nev­er get it. You don’t want no democ­ra­cy in Trinidad. We want democ­ra­cy to reign here, to put an end to Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil vic­tim­i­sa­tion of To­bag­o­ni­ans and al­low for a flour­ish­ing of rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy on the is­land and if Trinida­di­ans are stuck with their par­tic­u­lar mode of au­thor­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment down there, that’s up to you.”

Both James and Wil­son agree that the THA can­not con­tin­ue to em­ploy al­most 70 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion.

Wil­son said: “They have to in­crease their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, they have to in­crease their in­no­v­a­tive­ness and that is so whether they go it alone or whether they have in­de­pen­dence or au­ton­o­my. I think right now they have a fair de­gree of au­ton­o­my and they are mak­ing heavy weath­er of get­ting more and more au­ton­o­my and one has to ask to do what with.

“The best au­ton­o­my they can get is to gen­er­ate their own in­come. If they de­pend on Trinidad to pass them de­vel­op­ment dol­lars and re­cur­rent rev­enue dol­lars and they want au­ton­o­my, they are not go­ing to have it. Be­cause there will come a point in time when Trinidad will say we can’t give you all we can on­ly give you is some of it. They are shout­ing for things, and to me they don’t know what they re­al­ly shout­ing at.

“They have to be in­no­v­a­tive and it cant be that they want this au­ton­o­my for au­ton­o­my sake to say they are on an equal foot­ing with Trinidad. This is non­sense.”

For James the present op­er­a­tion of the THA is noth­ing short of a scan­dal. “The THA em­ploys 68 per cent of the em­ploy­ees of To­ba­go, that’s a scan­dalous thing, it shouldn’t be any­more than 14/15 per cent. That’s a mea­sure of low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty all across the To­ba­go land­scape and its dis­gust­ing.”