Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the change in cen­tral gov­ern­ment will not af­fect To­ba­go’s on­go­ing ef­fort to bring San­dals back—this time with a fresh plan.

“We es­sen­tial­ly de­cid­ed about a month ago that we will wipe the slate clean. We will not con­sid­er any­thing in the old San­dals pro­pos­al,” Au­gus­tine told re­porters af­ter at­tend­ing the swear­ing-in of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as T&T newest Prime Min­is­ter at Pres­i­dent’s House, St Ann’s, yes­ter­day.

“We are invit­ing San­dals to re­turn to To­ba­go with a brand-new pro­pos­al for us. That does not change.”

Au­gus­tine said San­dals had al­ready re­ceived a let­ter from him and sev­er­al key stake­hold­ers—in­clud­ing the To­ba­go di­vi­sion of the Cham­ber of Com­merce, re­li­gious bod­ies, farm­ers and fish­er­folk groups—wel­com­ing them back to the ta­ble.

“We wel­come any over­ture to us from them. From our end, we will con­tin­ue to reach out through for­mal and in­for­mal chan­nels so we keep the con­ver­sa­tion go­ing,” he said.

But he stressed that it’s big­ger than just one re­sort brand.

“The con­ver­sa­tion is re­al­ly big­ger than San­dals. It’s about an is­land that has great po­ten­tial for tourism de­vel­op­ment,” he said. “It is about reach­ing out to play­ers in the re­gion, out­side of the re­gion, and say­ing we are, in fact, open for busi­ness.”

Au­gus­tine was re­spond­ing to ques­tions in the wake of for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s claim that he feared the San­dals deal may again be shelved un­der the new Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) gov­ern­ment.

With a new gov­ern­ment un­der the UNC in Trinidad, Au­gus­tine said he in­tends to restart reg­u­lar meet­ings with the Prime Min­is­ter and Cab­i­net, as re­quired un­der the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act.

“I have every in­ten­tion of meet­ing with the new Prime Min­is­ter, meet­ing with her Cab­i­net … and cer­tain­ly my line sec­re­taries, in ac­cor­dance with the law, are pre­pared to meet with cor­re­spond­ing min­is­ters in Cab­i­net,” he said.

On the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty agen­da, hav­ing tak­en the two To­ba­go seats in Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion, he said, “The is­sues of the high­est for me will be the au­ton­o­my is­sue. Sec­ond­ly, we have as pri­or­i­ty the fund­ing is­sue. We have had sev­er­al in­stances … where mon­ey is ap­pro­pri­at­ed to the THA through the ap­pro­pri­a­tion bills of Par­lia­ment (but) don’t ac­tu­al­ly reach us in to­tal sum.”

Au­gus­tine ac­cused past cen­tral gov­ern­ments of breach­ing the law.

“For the last what, five years—cer­tain­ly for the du­ra­tion of my tenure here—we have had in­stances where the cen­tral gov­ern­ment breached the law in not mak­ing our re­leas­es avail­able to us quar­ter­ly and in block.”

He be­lieves if the cen­tral gov­ern­ment ho­n­ours the THA Act, the re­la­tion­ship be­tween both is­lands could im­prove.

“We must build a re­la­tion­ship for a stronger Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He al­so dis­missed the idea of cre­at­ing a new min­istry just for To­ba­go.

“What we re­al­ly and tru­ly need is for a cen­tral gov­ern­ment that re­spects the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, ho­n­ours its com­mit­ments… and al­lows the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to gov­ern in a way that ben­e­fits the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

Asked about what role the TPP will play in Par­lia­ment, Au­gus­tine said, “We don’t have to be in a Cab­i­net. We don’t have to be in a large gov­ern­ment or aligned to a larg­er par­ty to have an im­pact. We need to be stead­fast in what we need and be able to ad­vo­cate strong­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly for that.”

He not­ed the TPP’s two seats may prove cru­cial if the gov­ern­ment seeks con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.

“There are some con­sti­tu­tion­al changes that the rul­ing gov­ern­ment may want to make that may re­quire at least a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty.”

On crime, Au­gus­tine wel­comed the new Prime Min­is­ter’s fo­cus but said To­ba­go is al­ready see­ing re­sults. “Be­tween Oc­to­ber last year and present, we have sig­nif­i­cant­ly car­ried down our crime rate. I think we’re prob­a­bly just around three (mur­ders), and all three have been solved to date.”