The peo­ple of To­ba­go have spo­ken and they have re­pu­di­at­ed Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine’s Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). The par­ty on Mon­day night lost four more seats in the as­sem­bly than it start­ed off with, and nar­row­ly won the pop­u­lar vote. There is now a sense that the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (PDP) is on the march to se­cur­ing con­trol of To­ba­go.

Of course we have a stale­mate with a 6/6 dead­lock and, at time of writ­ing, it was not clear which par­ty will be in con­trol of the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil in To­ba­go, but a mere five months af­ter the peo­ple vot­ed in the gen­er­al elec­tion to re­turn the two To­ba­go seats to the PNM, and with the na­tion­al par­ty led by a To­ba­go-born Prime Min­is­ter who has fo­cused much of his time and in­ter­est on de­liv­er­ing things to the peo­ple of To­ba­go, this co­nun­drum must be a bit­ter pill to swal­low.

It shows once again why the peo­ple of To­ba­go have con­sis­tent­ly re­mained in pole po­si­tion since 2000 as they have demon­strat­ed that no po­lit­i­cal par­ty can take their votes for grant­ed and are pre­pared to switch al­le­giance if the oth­er side, in their view, would do a bet­ter job at rep­re­sent­ing their in­ter­est.

In the last year, the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion de­liv­ered to To­ba­go East a new hos­pi­tal, a new fire sta­tion, a new po­lice sta­tion. The sod has been turned for a ma­jor tourism project. To­ba­go has got­ten two fer­ries both boats, paid by Trinidad tax­pay­ers, car­ry­ing To­ba­go names. A nod to To­bag­o­ni­ans.

A new air­port ter­mi­nal build­ing is be­ing con­struct­ed and the run­way ex­tend­ed. Bil­lions of dol­lars be­ing pumped in­to the To­ba­go econ­o­my as the To­ba­go-born Prime Min­is­ter tries to sure up the par­ty’s sup­port on the is­land. Mon­day night’s re­sults show it sim­ply has not worked.

From what we have heard on the ground there were at least two key is­sues, the first be­ing that of gov­er­nance.

The rev­e­la­tion that $2.5 mil­lion of tax­pay­ers mon­ey were spent on a zi­pline project with on­ly rope to show for it res­onat­ed with many peo­ple who saw it as an ex­am­ple of the wastage and lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty that hap­pens at the THA.

At no time in the cam­paign did David­son-Ce­les­tine ad­dress the is­sue frontal­ly. She nev­er apol­o­gised and in­stead start­ed off by say­ing she was not there at the time and could not be held re­spon­si­ble, even though the records are clear, she was Tourism Sec­re­tary for al­most two years af­ter the project was ap­proved by the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil.

She then tried to shift the blame to the pub­lic ser­vants say­ing they were not good at doc­u­ment­ing things.

David­son-Ce­les­tine re­spons­es al­lowed the PDP to car­i­ca­ture her as “tricky Tra­cy” and the Prime Min­is­ter en­ter­ing the fray and ig­nor­ing the loss of pub­lic’s funds, in­stead say­ing to her to fin­ish the project, added in­sult to in­jury as it showed his con­cern is not ac­count­ing for pub­lic funds but rather win­ning an elec­tion.

More must be said of this in the fu­ture.

There was, of course, the profli­ga­cy of this David­son-Ce­les­tine PNM to set­tle scores that was al­so blamed for the poor per­for­mance, with the dis­parag­ing re­marks aimed at Dr Vanus James, the hound­ing of Kelvin Charles out of of­fice, the re­jec­tion of cer­tain can­di­dates.

But the re­al­i­ty is who­ev­er gets con­trol of the THA, the fun­da­men­tal is­sues still re­main and they must be a con­cern of every tax­pay­er in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The first is the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.

PDP’s deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine has in the past made it clear that he and the par­ty wants a changed re­la­tion­ship with Trinidad.

For him in­ter­nal self gov­ern­ment is the least that To­ba­go should ac­cept with it mak­ing its own laws and run­ning its own show.

For me this is an im­por­tant evo­lu­tion and quite frankly must be a first step to To­ba­go re­al­is­ing its ul­ti­mate goal of be­ing an in­de­pen­dent is­land. The un­easy re­la­tion­ship that has ex­ist­ed since the par­ing of the is­lands by the British and the aban­don­ing of the Min­istry of To­ba­go Af­fairs by the late Dr Er­ic Williams are deep seat­ed and en­graved in the hearts of To­bag­o­ni­ans.

We must not pre­tend oth­er­wise!

There­fore this is a nec­es­sary step. But with it must be new eco­nom­ic arrange­ments be­tween the two is­lands.

The peo­ple of Rio Claro/Ma­yaro, La Brea, San­ta Flo­ra, Point Fortin, Cou­va and oth­er in­dus­tri­al oil and gas vil­lages, can­not be ex­pect­ed to spend their bil­lions on To­ba­go in this new arrange­ment while their ar­eas con­tin­ue to be ne­glect­ed by the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion.

I have al­ready heard the rum­blings in To­ba­go about Shell’s Bar­racu­da and Col­ib­ri projects, with the same ar­gu­ments that the gas in is “To­ba­go wa­ters” and so on.

I would sim­ple urge all those who as­cribe to that view to look at the EITI re­ports that de­tails by com­pa­ny, their con­tri­bu­tion to the trea­sury and com­pare sim­i­lar gas pro­duc­tion and you just might find that the $2.5 bil­lion that To­ba­go gets an­nu­al­ly will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly slashed by be­tween 60 and 75 per cent should that log­ic be ap­plied in the way funds are dis­bursed.

The re­al­i­ty is that To­ba­go on its own does not gen­er­ate a lot of mon­ey, in fact its tourism sec­tor gen­er­ates less tax­es to gov­ern­ment than does the Trinidad tourism sec­tor.

There is a myth that the To­ba­go econ­o­my is dri­ven by tourism. This is noth­ing but old talk and To­ba­go de­pends on gov­ern­ment spend­ing for is sus­te­nance.

The PNM-con­trolled THA em­ployed close to 70 per cent of all the work­ers on the is­land. This is un­sus­tain­able and suc­ces­sive Cen­tral gov­ern­ments have been afraid to chal­lenge the THA on this is­sue.

It is a mod­el that cre­ates de­pen­den­cy on Trinidad for funds and en­sures that the de­pen­den­cy is car­ried on­to or­di­nary cit­i­zens in To­ba­go, there­by keep­ing the vote in check and un­der the con­trol of the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate.

This may be the end of the rope for the PNM for now in To­ba­go but it is the be­gin­ning of what has to be new arrange­ments be­tween the two is­lands, one in which To­ba­go is al­lowed to run its own show but not on the strength of Trinidad’s tax­pay­ers.

The longest rope must have an end.