The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly has been grant­ed $2.357 bil­lion of the ex­pen­di­ture in the 2021-22 Na­tion­al Bud­get of $52.4 bil­lion, which works out, Min­is­ter Im­bert tells us, at 4.5 per cent. We don’t know what for­mu­la he used and he has nev­er told us, but what is clear is that 4.5 per cent is big­ger than 4.03 per cent–by a measly 0.47 per­cent­age points–which the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mis­sion ruled in­to law in 2000 should be the min­i­mum per­cent­age, and 6.9 the max­i­mum, that the Gov­ern­ment should al­lo­cate to the THA.

Since 2001, the Gov­ern­ment has been mak­ing sure that its al­lo­ca­tion to To­ba­go does not fall be­low 4.03, and while the al­lo­ca­tion has gen­er­al­ly been greater than 4.03, the in­crease has nev­er been sig­nif­i­cant. It has nev­er, for ex­am­ple, risen to five per cent, which is the ap­prox­i­mate fig­ure mi bre­dren Vanus cal­cu­lates it should be this year if Im­bert used a for­mu­la con­sist­ing of each cit­i­zen be­ing as­signed the same share of the na­tion­al re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture based on the size of the coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion, with To­ba­go’s slice of that pop­u­la­tion be­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 66,000, as­sum­ing that the is­land’s pop­u­la­tion growth rate of 12.55 per cent in the decade lead­ing up to the 2011 cen­sus was main­tained up to 2020.

So, since 2001, no PNM Gov­ern­ment–and all the gov­ern­ments save one, and all the THAs, have been PNM ones–has gone to five per cent. In­deed, Orville Lon­don, Chief Sec­re­tary for 16 straight years, re­li­gious­ly an­nounced him­self as sat­is­fied with what­ev­er min­i­mums PNM Fi­nance Min­is­ters (but not the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship one!) doled out.

With­out a doubt, there has been sta­sis all along, and the ques­tion aris­es, How could To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment and, by ex­ten­sion, the coun­try’s, have been ad­vanced in a con­text of sta­t­ic an­nu­al shares of the na­tion­al bud­get?

Fol­low­ing Lon­don’s prac­tice, Fi­nance and Econ­o­my Sec­re­tary, Joel Jack an­nounced him­self sat­is­fied, but To­ba­go PNM leader, Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine con­ced­ed that 4.5 per cent was too small, though, in an amaz­ing re­lease of po­lit­i­cal nar­cis­sism, she blamed the PDP and UNC for it.

It is in­deed too small, es­pe­cial­ly the al­lo­ca­tion of $264 mil­lion for de­vel­op­ment spend­ing, in the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal con­text where thou­sands of voic­es in To­ba­go are call­ing for equal­i­ty of sta­tus with Trinidad and greater self-de­ter­mi­na­tion.

More per­ti­nent­ly, the measly and miser­ly al­lo­ca­tion is com­ing in a con­text where every­body in To­ba­go now knows that there are sub­stan­tial amounts of gas and oil in the na­tion’s mar­itime space that is un­de­ni­ably clos­er to To­ba­go as land than Trinidad as land.

How does a gov­ern­ment and a par­ty that has presided over To­ba­go’s af­fairs for so long–and kept it de­pen­dent, men­di­cant, and sta­t­ic–can­not go to high­er points in the 4.03-6.9 al­lo­ca­tion range, say the 6.8 per cent it pro­posed in the Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment and Is­land Gov­ern­ment Bills, to spur To­ba­go’s long over­due de­vel­op­ment?

How does this Gov­ern­ment and par­ty watch To­bag­on­ian cit­i­zens in the face and tell us it will con­tin­ue with the pol­i­cy of keep­ing the is­land in sta­sis even as it pro­pos­es in bills be­fore the Par­lia­ment that To­ba­go should get at least 6.8 per cent?

And no, I am not for­get­ting that the As­sem­bly has pow­ers to bor­row both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. But I al­so know that in 20 years, the PNM-led As­sem­bly has not been able to bor­row sig­nif­i­cant­ly to in­vest for cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment, in­come gen­er­a­tion, and ex­port. There is no fin­ished prod­uct it can point to. It has bor­rowed some $161 mil­lion at an in­ter­est rate of 4.5 per cent but the pub­lic does not know what it is spend­ing the mon­ey on and how it is go­ing to re­pay it and make the debt sus­tain­able if its rate of growth, stymied by its eco­nom­ic de­pen­den­cy on Trinidad over the years, is small­er than the bor­row­ing rate (un­less the Gov­ern­ment takes re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the oblig­a­tions aris­ing).

Fur­ther, there’s the small prob­lem of the Gov­ern­ment/Cab­i­net hav­ing to ap­prove of As­sem­bly bor­row­ings. If you are the Gov­ern­ment of To­ba­go but your bor­row­ing is con­trolled by some­body else, how can you be in­no­v­a­tive and self-con­fi­dent?

When will this au­to­crat­ic, if not tyran­ni­cal, de­ter­mi­na­tion and over­sight of To­ba­go’s bud­get end?

And when will the struc­tur­al drift of large pro­por­tions of the To­bag­on­ian pop­u­la­tion to Trinidad and be­yond and, con­se­quent­ly, loss of fu­ture gen­er­a­tions end?

There is a prin­ci­ple en­shrined in Ar­ti­cle 21 of the Uni­ver­sal De­c­la­ra­tion of Hu­man Rights, which speaks to cit­i­zen en­ti­tle­ment to the same gov­ern­ment ser­vices. Here it is: Every­one has the right of equal ac­cess to pub­lic ser­vice in his coun­try.

With­out prej­u­dice to oth­er cit­i­zens, does Im­bert’s 4.5 per cent of the bud­get to the THA sat­is­fy this right of equal ac­cess to gov­ern­ment ser­vices by To­bag­o­ni­ans?