There was a time when, out of gov­ern­ment, Dr Row­ley wrote op-eds for one of the dai­ly pa­pers. I read them all for a va­ri­ety of rea­sons, one of which was to avail my­self of his per­spec­tives on his ex­pe­ri­ences when he was a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, and an­oth­er to see how he would pros­e­cute the ideas of his idol Dr Williams, founder of the PNM in the pub­lic me­dia. He stopped writ­ing when he re­turned to gov­ern­ment un­der Patrick Man­ning and, giv­en the pow­ers of of­fice, I hard­ly ex­pect­ed him to write an op-ed as Prime Min­is­ter. So it was re­fresh­ing that he did.

I am think­ing that he must have thought that the medi­um of the op-ed must of­fer at least the ad­van­tages of greater pub­lic reach and more care­ful com­po­si­tion of his mes­sage, which are in­du­bitably le­git­i­mate aims. I am al­so think­ing he must have big in­sight­ful things to say.

He ti­tles his op-ed ‘The Re­la­tion­ship, Au­thor­i­ties and Ad­min­is­tra­tion of these Arch­i­pel­ag­ic Is­lands’ and writes in his ca­pac­i­ties of Prime Min­is­ter–util­is­ing re­sources in that of­fice–and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment. The op-ed be­gins with a back­ground con­sti­tut­ed of ‘a dra­mat­ic change of ad­min­is­tra­tion’ in To­ba­go from PNM to PDP; the con­tin­u­a­tion of a ‘Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the af­fairs of Trinidad and To­ba­go with full recog­ni­tion of the ex­is­tence of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and its au­thor­i­ty and priv­i­leges en­shrined in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act; and the ‘vi­tal’ need for a ‘prop­er un­der­stand­ing and ac­cep­tance of these laws and au­thor­i­ties’ in the in­ter­est of ‘the ex­pect­ed good re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two is­lands.’

A sec­ond con­cern of the op-ed is to re­port on a meet­ing be­tween a Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment team and a THA team. The pur­pose was to ‘en­sure max­i­mum as­sis­tance to the in­com­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion to en­sure that the busi­ness of the peo­ple of To­ba­go would con­tin­ue smooth­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly.’ Dr Row­ley re­ports that there was ‘a very suc­cess­ful out­come in mat­ters of Ad­min­is­tra­tion.’

A third con­cern is to re­view the man­date giv­en to the PDP by the To­bag­on­ian elec­torate and to charge that ‘the elect­ed mem­bers of the PDP … have cre­at­ed a sit­u­a­tion where the busi­ness of the Ex­ec­u­tive of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly has end­ed up in the hands of a self-serv­ing group of in­de­pen­dents, who, while un­der no le­gal re­quire­ment to re­sign their po­si­tions, have no man­date from the peo­ple of To­ba­go.’ In essence, the As­sem­bly is be­ing run by peo­ple who are gov­ern­ing To­ba­go legal­ly but who should have a new (po­lit­i­cal) man­date.

A fourth con­cern is that the ‘in­de­pen­dents’ are form­ing them­selves in­to a brand-new po­lit­i­cal par­ty with the ap­par­ent aim of hold­ing on to of­fice with­out con­test­ing new elec­tions, which would be a re­jec­tion of the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ple of gov­ern­ment ‘for the peo­ple by the peo­ple.’ Ac­cord­ing­ly, ‘the Chief Sec­re­tary would do well to make arrange­ments for an ear­ly elec­tion with­in the same time frame that he is mak­ing to reg­is­ter a NEW po­lit­i­cal par­ty with the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion.’

The fifth con­cern is to show his con­cern about be­hav­iour on the part of the Ex­ec­u­tive of the As­sem­bly in mat­ters of gov­er­nance–re­lat­ing to their ‘warped in­ter­pre­ta­tion’ of the … Con­sti­tu­tion  and the THA Act–which ‘should be of great con­cern to the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion’, and at the same time pro­vide five ex­am­ples of that be­hav­iour, three of which are re­pro­duced be­low:

1. The Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture act­ing with fla­grant dis­re­gard of the EMA Act.

2. The Chief Sec­re­tary pub­licly sup­port­ing the il­le­gal ac­tion of the De­part­ment of In­fra­struc­ture on the grounds that the EMA Act does not ap­ply in To­ba­go and it is the THA that gives in­struc­tions to the EMA which that agency must fol­low.

3. The fil­ing of a Mo­tion in the As­sem­bly, by the Chief Sec­re­tary, with the pur­port­ed aim of en­cour­ag­ing the con­stant and re­peat­ed breach of the EMA Act in wil­ful dis­re­gard of the law.

Fi­nal­ly, a sixth con­cern is the need to avoid an ap­proach that could cause ‘un­nec­es­sary, un­pro­duc­tive dis­cord and nu­mer­ous ex­pen­sive and de­struc­tive out­ings to the court for ad­ju­di­ca­tion, clar­i­fi­ca­tion and more.’ Bet­ter for the THA to ‘re­spect the–Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment’s sense of–lim­its of its au­thor­i­ty.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there are no big in­sight­ful ideas here, and this is a big dis­ap­point­ment af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter has been in gov­ern­ment for so long. His mes­sage is un­spec­tac­u­lar­ly two-pronged. The first prong is that the THA in­de­pen­dents have lost their man­date and must ac­quire a new one through fresh elec­tions. The sec­ond prong is that they must al­so re­spect the lim­its of the law (as he sees them). There is no ex­am­i­na­tion of how new elec­tions, with­out le­gal changes, would end the au­toc­ra­cy of the Chief Sec­re­tary–and, in­evitably, Prime Min­is­ter–func­tion and bring the democ­ra­cy that would place the peo­ple struc­tural­ly at the cen­tre of the gov­er­nance process. Mere­ly chang­ing gov­ern­ments–if that were to hap­pen–would not change the price of co­coa.

More of this anon.

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 hun­dreds of columns for all the ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try. He can be reached at jay­win­ster@gmail.com