Far­ley Au­gus­tine swept the polls in the last To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tion and has es­tab­lished au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go as a pri­or­i­ty in his role as Chief Sec­re­tary.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­so made a com­mit­ment to bring a bill based on con­sul­ta­tion be­tween the As­sem­bly and the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment in quick time to the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

All of this is well and good for the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate of the THA and Trinidad and To­ba­go, and for legal­ly and leg­isla­tive­ly es­tab­lish­ing the terms of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of pow­er be­tween the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and To­ba­go is­land gov­ern­ment, but will it fa­cil­i­tate sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of the is­land of To­ba­go and its peo­ple? Will it strength­en pros­per­i­ty in both To­ba­go and Trinidad? And will it make the na­tion state of Trinidad and To­ba­go stronger, more vi­able and uni­fied in our di­ver­si­ty as a coun­try and peo­ple? And if such things are de­sir­able, how will we make this op­er­a­tional­ly suc­cess­ful and sus­tain­able?

From the To­ba­go point of view, the ground has long shift­ed from “de­vo­lu­tion” (pow­er grant­ed or trans­ferred by cen­tral gov­ern­ment) to in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment (con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er to man­age its own af­fairs). Trans­fer of con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er of this or­der re­quires a three-fourths ma­jor­i­ty in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to set­tle the dis­tri­b­u­tion of pow­er is­sue be­tween a “self-gov­ern­ing” To­ba­go and the cen­tral gov­ern­ment. This means the Gov­ern­ment re­quires Op­po­si­tion sup­port. The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), which con­test­ed the THA elec­tion, did not win any seats, so it has no leg­isla­tive voice in To­ba­go. The To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) has all 15 THA seats and two seats in Par­lia­ment. So, it con­trols the To­ba­go leg­is­la­ture and ex­ec­u­tive and has a voice in the na­tion­al Par­lia­ment.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment has a work­ing part­ner­ship with the TPP as a home-grown To­ba­go po­lit­i­cal par­ty and move­ment that has made To­ba­go au­ton­o­my and self-gov­ern­ment a pri­or­i­ty. Invit­ing Au­gus­tine to St Kitts and Nevis to meet oth­er Cari­com lead­ers, to strength­en To­ba­go-Trinidad re­la­tions and to ex­am­ine first-hand how Nevis and St Kitts func­tion to­geth­er, is a pos­i­tive step for T&T and our Prime Min­is­ter de­serves to be com­mend­ed on this.

Au­gus­tine will meet face-to-face with Nevis Pre­mier Mark Brant­ley to talk through is­sues of rel­e­vance to To­ba­go au­ton­o­my, based on con­sti­tu­tion­al and leg­isla­tive arrange­ments which de­ter­mine how Nevis and St Kitts func­tion as sep­a­rate is­lands and to­geth­er as a na­tion. I imag­ine that Au­gus­tine would be in­ter­est­ed in fi­nan­cial arrange­ments which could strength­en au­ton­o­my, and oth­er is­sues in St Kitts/Nevis leg­is­la­tion which could have in­flu­ence on claus­es be­ing craft­ed in the Trinidad and To­ba­go leg­is­la­tion.

So, Au­gus­tine’s en­gage­ment of the Nevis Pre­mier is like a first-hand prac­ti­cal view of how au­ton­o­my ac­tu­al­ly works in St Kitts/Nevis to see what might be ap­plic­a­ble here in T&T, based on his own vi­sion of To­ba­go’s po­si­tion­ing in the na­tion state of T&T.

Some of the key is­sues of in­ter­est are like­ly to be se­cu­ri­ty and au­ton­o­my through fund­ing arrange­ments, pow­er for rev­enue gen­er­a­tion, bor­row­ing pow­er, and the bal­ance be­tween leg­isla­tive arrange­ments and con­sti­tu­tion­al guar­an­tees.

Sec­tion 113 of the St Kitts/Nevis con­sti­tu­tion gives Nevis the right to se­cede and a path­way to in­de­pen­dence in­volv­ing their leg­is­la­ture and a ref­er­en­dum.

This was ne­go­ti­at­ed by Nevis as the ul­ti­mate lever­age to guar­an­tee ad­her­ence to con­sti­tu­tion­al and leg­isla­tive arrange­ments, dis­pute res­o­lu­tion, and mu­tu­al re­spect.

In oth­er words, even if that coun­try nev­er gets to se­ces­sion, the threat is al­ways there po­ten­tial­ly.

This has nev­er come up overt­ly in dis­cus­sions in T&T about To­ba­go au­ton­o­my. But en­gag­ing in dis­cus­sions with the Nevis Pre­mier may trig­ger var­i­ous thoughts.

Au­gus­tine is look­ing to a con­stituent as­sem­bly in March of this year, so the en­gage­ment of Nevis/St Kitts is­sues comes at a pro­pi­tious time. He is look­ing to the pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion be­fore the end of 2026 to give To­ba­go au­ton­o­my. The Prime Min­is­ter has al­so in­di­cat­ed that she wants to keep faith with that sched­ule.

Let us see whether the tone changes af­ter the meet­ings in St Kitts/Nevis.

Cit­i­zens of T&T should be alert to the fact that au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go should not be a mat­ter of ne­go­ti­a­tion be­tween Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and THA alone. That To­ba­go au­ton­o­my is not a mat­ter for To­bag­o­ni­ans on­ly. Au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go and the terms and con­di­tions of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad should be mat­ters that give all our cit­i­zens com­fort and a sense of col­lec­tive well-be­ing.