Whether To­ba­go’s long and com­plex quest for au­ton­o­my fi­nal­ly ends this year de­pends en­tire­ly on the re­la­tion­ship that de­vel­ops be­tween the Far­ley Au­gus­tine-led To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment.

The hours-long meet­ing be­tween Au­gus­tine and Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Tues­day and the Prime Min­is­ter’s post-Cab­i­net an­nounce­ments two days lat­er, sent promis­ing sig­nals. Those ear­ly in­di­ca­tions that the two sides are de­vel­op­ing a dif­fer­ent work­ing re­la­tion­ship au­gur well for the res­o­lu­tion, at long last, of all the is­sues that have stood in the way of To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my.

To­bag­o­ni­ans have been call­ing for con­trol over their is­land’s af­fairs since the 1970s. How­ev­er, to date, leg­isla­tive ef­forts—no­tably, the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) (To­ba­go Self-Gov­ern­ment) Bills of 2018 and 2020–were ham­pered by po­lit­i­cal dis­agree­ments and the strict con­sti­tu­tion­al re­quire­ment of a three-fourths ma­jor­i­ty need­ed to pass the leg­is­la­tion.

The re­la­tion­ship be­tween the cen­tral gov­ern­ment and the THA is both mul­ti­fac­eted and evolv­ing and the way for­ward re­quires more open, con­tin­u­ous di­a­logue be­tween the two ad­min­is­tra­tions to ad­dress long­stand­ing is­sues while bal­anc­ing na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties.

There­fore, it was an­oth­er pos­i­tive step when Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that the Chief Sec­re­tary would be in­vit­ed to at­tend Cab­i­net meet­ings when­ev­er is­sues re­lat­ed to To­ba­go arise.

This will pro­vide am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ties to dis­cuss prospects for ex­pand­ing the THA’s leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry pow­ers for more con­trol over crit­i­cal ar­eas such as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, tourism, and in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment.

This col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach is meant to en­sure that To­ba­go’s unique needs and pri­or­i­ties are met while still con­tribut­ing to the over­all de­vel­op­ment of both is­lands.

Broad­en­ing the scope of the THA’s au­thor­i­ty will pro­vide a sys­tem of gov­er­nance where lo­cal ex­per­tise and per­spec­tives in­form de­ci­sions that di­rect­ly im­pact To­bag­o­ni­ans, im­prov­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery and in­still­ing a sense of own­er­ship over lo­cal af­fairs.

Hope­ful­ly, this new re­la­tion­ship be­tween the cen­tral gov­ern­ment and the THA will not on­ly rem­e­dy the inat­ten­tion his­tor­i­cal­ly ex­pe­ri­enced in To­ba­go, but set the stage for more tai­lored and re­spon­sive pol­i­cy­mak­ing.

In her post-Cab­i­net com­ments on Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar put for­ward a mod­el of con­tin­u­ous con­sul­ta­tion and mu­tu­al re­spect that was not achieved be­tween the Au­gus­tine-led THA when the cen­tral gov­ern­ment was led by To­ba­go-born Dr Kei­th Row­ley. That was a con­tentious re­la­tion­ship from the start, as Row­ley and Au­gus­tine were nev­er able to set aside their po­lit­i­cal ri­val­ries.

This time around, while Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Au­gus­tine are on dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal sides they are not ri­vals. Au­gus­tine’s To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) did not join the UNC’s Coali­tion of In­ter­ests to con­test the polls but faced no chal­lenges from Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s par­ty in its fight for the two To­ba­go seats.

Since the elec­tion, there has been in­tense spec­u­la­tion about whether the TPP might for­mal­ly join forces with the UNC Gov­ern­ment, in or­der to gain a more pow­er­ful plat­form to ne­go­ti­ate for greater au­ton­o­my and en­hanced re­sources for To­ba­go. For that rea­son, in­ter­ac­tions be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and the Chief Sec­re­tary will con­tin­ue to at­tract great po­lit­i­cal in­ter­est.

A stronger voice for To­ba­go in na­tion­al de­ci­sion-mak­ing is the ul­ti­mate po­lit­i­cal prize for any THA ad­min­is­tra­tion, as it can lead to bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the is­land’s in­ter­ests in poli­cies af­fect­ing its econ­o­my, so­cial ser­vices and in­fra­struc­ture.

It will be in­ter­est­ing to see how Au­gus­tine and his THA team nav­i­gate this de­vel­op­ing re­la­tion­ship.

This just might be the be­gin­ning of a new era for To­ba­go af­fairs.