STEPHON NICHOLAS

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) will not pro­pose pro­vi­sions for se­ces­sion in its push for greater au­ton­o­my. How­ev­er, he made it clear that if pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions re­veal sup­port for in­clud­ing such an op­tion, To­bag­o­ni­ans “will get what they want.”

Au­gus­tine made the state­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing an on­line me­dia brief­ing fol­low­ing his trip to St Kitts and Nevis for the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing. He was part of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s del­e­ga­tion and was specif­i­cal­ly in­vit­ed to meet lo­cal of­fi­cials and ex­am­ine the fed­er­a­tion’s gov­er­nance struc­ture.

Last week, Au­gus­tine de­scribed Nevis’ au­ton­o­my laws as “pro­gres­sive” and said To­ba­go could draw lessons from them in its quest for greater self-de­ter­mi­na­tion.

Un­der Ar­ti­cle 113 of the St Kitts and Nevis Con­sti­tu­tion, Nevis has the right to se­cede once two-thirds of vot­ers ap­prove the move in a ref­er­en­dum. A 1998 at­tempt to se­cede fell just four per­cent­age points short of the re­quired 66 per cent thresh­old.

“Our pro­pos­als for a ref­er­en­dum would not in­clude a right to se­cede,” Au­gus­tine said. “What St Kitts and Nevis did was place a very high bench­mark in law — two-thirds of the pop­u­la­tion plus two-thirds of the Nevis Is­land Ad­min­is­tra­tion must say yes in or­der for Nevis to de­part from the fed­er­a­tion. That right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion is em­bed­ded in their laws.”

He em­pha­sised that the ul­ti­mate de­ci­sion will rest with the peo­ple of To­ba­go. De­spite his To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty win­ning all 15 seats in the THA elec­tions, Au­gus­tine said the ad­min­is­tra­tion is tak­ing a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic ap­proach.

“I am not com­ing up with these laws and say­ing this is what I want. We are go­ing to the peo­ple of To­ba­go, and what they want will fac­tor in­to the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion,” he said.

Au­gus­tine added that a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty would not be suf­fi­cient for a de­ci­sion as con­se­quen­tial as se­ces­sion.

“You don’t want the union to be sep­a­rat­ed by just 51 per cent of the peo­ple say­ing yes. That can’t work. It has to be a spe­cial and high bench­mark if such a pro­vi­sion is to be in­clud­ed in the laws,” he said.

Dur­ing his vis­it, Au­gus­tine met with Nevis Pre­mier Mark Brant­ley, who re­viewed con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sions re­lat­ed to au­ton­o­my in de­tail. He al­so met Sir Kennedy Sim­monds, the 90-year-old for­mer Prime Min­is­ter of St Kitts and Nevis who was in of­fice when Nevis was grant­ed au­ton­o­my.

Au­gus­tine said he was struck by the con­trast be­tween the gov­er­nance re­la­tion­ship in St Kitts and Nevis and that of Trinidad and To­ba­go. He al­so point­ed to sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences be­tween pre­vi­ous failed au­ton­o­my bills un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion and the arrange­ments cur­rent­ly in place in St Kitts and Nevis.