Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

An­gry over the state of To­ba­go au­ton­o­my, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has de­scribed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley as a “house slave," ac­cus­ing him of ig­nor­ing the needs of To­ba­go’s peo­ple.

Au­gus­tine made these com­ments af­ter the To­ba­go Self-Gov­ern­ment Bill and the To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment Bill failed in Par­lia­ment.

Ear­li­er this morn­ing, Au­gus­tine called for more con­sul­ta­tion, stat­ing that the bills do not meet the needs of To­ba­go and its peo­ple.

In re­sponse to Au­gus­tine’s What­sApp re­quest just min­utes be­fore the sit­ting to pro­pose amend­ments, the Prime Min­is­ter told the House that Au­gus­tine’s at­tempt to stall the process was pre­pos­ter­ous.

Af­ter the bills’ fail­ure, Au­gus­tine post­ed on Face­book, say­ing, “Noth­ing is worse than when your rel­a­tive, who sits in the seat of pow­er, is noth­ing but a house slave who ig­nores the re­al dreams and as­pi­ra­tions of those he left be­hind in the field in To­ba­go.”

He hash­tagged “House slave men­tal­i­ty” and “Wicked prime min­is­ter”.

An­cil Den­nis, leader of the PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil, ex­pressed his anger at the out­come, call­ing it a “sad day for To­ba­go”.

He said he fears that the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­solve this is­sue may nev­er come again in his life­time.

Den­nis re­mind­ed every­one of a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion in 1996, when for­mer Prime Min­is­ter ANR Robin­son strug­gled to gain re­al pow­er for To­ba­go. He warned that, with­out these bills, To­ba­go would con­tin­ue to op­er­ate un­der lim­it­ed laws with a bud­get that can­not meet the is­land’s needs.