We sent Ho­choy (Charles) home on Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 4, 2024, and what a send-home it was. All the trib­utes, in­clud­ing the eu­lo­gy, were un­abashed­ly filled with praise for this first chief sec­re­tary of To­ba­go who, hav­ing learnt at the feet of ANR Robin­son but with­out sac­ri­fic­ing his own in­de­pen­dence and sense of self, was laud­ed, trib­ute af­ter trib­ute, for a vi­sion of To­bag­on­ian de­vel­op­ment that placed him above all oth­er chief sec­re­taries and even the first chair­man him­self.

His fi­nan­cial ad­ven­tur­ism, in re­spect of Ring Bang, AD­DA, and, in­cred­i­bly, Granadil­lo, was not for­got­ten, but it was pushed un­der the car­pet to make way for his tire­less com­mit­ment to the is­land’s de­vel­op­ment, as well as for a fu­ture schol­ar­ship in which stu­dents of his­to­ry would re­view his con­tri­bu­tion to To­ba­go with far more in­form­ing da­ta and con­text, and deep­er analy­sis and eval­u­a­tion than the trib­ute-givers and colum­nists like my­self could muster.

It is his­to­ry as it hap­pens, and if you want a well-re­spect­ed pur­vey­or of such his­to­ry, go no far­ther than the late po­lit­i­cal his­to­ri­an Sel­wyn Ryan.

An­tic­i­pat­ing our fu­ture schol­ars of To­bag­on­ian his­to­ry, mi bre­dren Vanus, even though aware of Ho­choy’s (and Bas’) flaws, writes ful­some­ly of his con­tri­bu­tion. Here are a few snip­pets:

‘Let the record show that Ho­choy and Bas were two po­lit­i­cal ti­tans who es­tab­lished sub­stan­tial foun­da­tions on which the next gen­er­a­tion should build. They left a lot of un­fin­ished work, but then no two men could un­der­stand or do every­thing.’ (His­to­ry for Ho­choy and Bas, 02/01/2024)

‘In To­ba­go, work­ing tire­less­ly with Robin­son and Mur­ray as the self-con­fi­dent and coura­geous Heavy Roller, Ho­choy pushed for in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for the is­land.’ (His­to­ry for Ho­choy and Bas, 02/01/2024)

‘In 1995/1996, work­ing close­ly with Bas as Prime Min­is­ter and Ramesh Ma­haraj as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Ho­choy helped to frame Act #40 of 1996, the law un­der which To­ba­go has been gov­erned since.’ (His­to­ry for Ho­choy and Bas, 02/01/2024)

Vanus iden­ti­fies the fol­low­ing fun­da­men­tal flaws in Act #40 of 1996: As­sign­ment to To­ba­go an un­nat­ur­al and un­just bound­ary of 6 nau­ti­cal miles from shore­line in­stead of draw­ing a me­di­an line be­tween the two is­lands; repli­ca­tion of the au­thor­i­tar­i­an struc­ture of the na­tion­al Con­sti­tu­tion and Par­lia­ment with a dom­i­nant ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee; no com­mit­tees ded­i­cat­ed to ef­fec­tive leg­isla­tive over­sight of the ac­tions of the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil on Fifth Sched­ule mat­ters; no pow­er to make law to ring-fence the pol­i­cy­mak­ing pow­ers of the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil; no arrange­ments for full-in­for­ma­tion de­ci­sion-mak­ing by em­pow­er­ing cit­i­zens to par­tic­i­pate in rou­tine man­dat­ed hear­ings on all rel­e­vant mat­ters; no guid­ance on ad­e­quate bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions for To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment ef­fort; and no arrange­ments for elect­ed sen­a­to­r­i­al over­sight of eq­ui­ty in the spa­tial sta­tus and dis­tri­b­u­tion of de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty in To­ba­go.

Then he eval­u­ates Ho­choy as fol­lows:

‘In time, ex­posed to clear­er think­ing about gov­er­nance and econ­o­my, Ho­choy came to re­gret all these flaws and to ded­i­cate him­self to the fight to cor­rect them in the name of “au­ton­o­my”.’ (His­to­ry for Ho­choy and Bas, 02/01/2024)

For his part, your colum­nist notes that Ho­choy be­came chief sec­re­tary in De­cem­ber 1996 and lost the po­si­tion in Jan­u­ary 2001. He would nev­er win an­oth­er THA elec­tion; in fact, he would nev­er win an­oth­er seat. The elec­torate nev­er for­gave him for his reck­less ad­ven­tur­ism with Ring Bang, AD­DA, and Granadil­lo. Then your colum­nist eval­u­ates his loss as fol­lows:

‘A num­ber of fac­tors lost Charles con­trol of To­ba­go, and they in­clude one-man­ship, cen­tral gov­ern­ment ma­nip­u­la­tion of funds for the As­sem­bly, the fi­nan­cial ad­ven­tur­ism of AD­DA and Ring Bang, and lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty. These fac­tors are a com­bi­na­tion. His one-man­ship is not sep­a­ra­ble from his ad­ven­tur­ism in the han­dling of the As­sem­bly’s fi­nan­cial busi­ness, which is it­self not sep­a­ra­ble from the Pan­day gov­ern­ment’s ma­nip­u­la­tion of how much mon­ey it grant­ed to the As­sem­bly and when it re­leased that mon­ey. But if there is one fac­tor that was re­spon­si­ble for that loss, it is the one-man­ship.

‘It is the one-man­ship that is ap­par­ent­ly re­spon­si­ble for lat­est piece of fi­nan­cial ad­ven­tur­ism on his part that has been re­vealed by his suc­ces­sor: the cre­ation of a frame­work for the in­vest­ment of some $10M US in a com­pa­ny called Granadil­lo (Granadi­lo?) with­out the knowl­edge (and con­se­quent­ly the ap­proval) of ei­ther the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil or the House of As­sem­bly. This, in­cred­i­bly, af­ter AD­DA and Ring Bang.’ (Ho­choy still in fo­cus, May 06, 2001)

I can­not end this in­stant eval­u­a­tion with­out ac­knowl­edg­ing that, in the in­vo­ca­tion of the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mis­sion, it was Ho­choy who chose the dis­pute that the le­gal lu­mi­nar­ies had to re­solve, name­ly, the fund­ing of To­ba­go in the na­tion­al bud­get. As an in­dex of his per­cep­tive­ness, the res­o­lu­tion has been in ef­fect since its in­cep­tion in 2001.

Iron­i­cal­ly, though, the elec­torate de­nied him the op­por­tu­ni­ty of spend­ing the con­sid­er­ably in­creased sums au­tho­rised by the res­o­lu­tion. That ho­n­our would go to Orville Lon­don who at the time was not a cham­pi­on of To­ba­go’s quest for in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment (as it was then called).

Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment, and pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean on ra­dio and TV since the 1970s. He al­so has writ­ten thou­sands of columns for all the ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try. He can be reached at jay­win­ster@gmail.com