Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) will con­tin­ue to fol­low the po­si­tion of the cen­tral gov­ern­ment on mat­ters of for­eign pol­i­cy, in­clud­ing the cur­rent ten­sions in­volv­ing Venezuela and the Unit­ed States in the Caribbean re­gion.

Au­gus­tine made the com­ment while re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the Unit­ed States se­cu­ri­ty alert is­sued over the week­end, in which Amer­i­can per­son­nel were ad­vised to avoid US gov­ern­ment fa­cil­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go due to what was de­scribed as a po­ten­tial se­cu­ri­ty threat.

Days ago, the coun­try re­served its po­si­tion and did not en­dorse the Cari­com state­ment reaf­firm­ing the re­gion as a “Zone of Peace.”

Au­gus­tine said the THA has no le­gal au­thor­i­ty to take any in­de­pen­dent po­si­tion on for­eign af­fairs.

“The To­ba­go as­sem­bly, not hav­ing any re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions, has al­ways adopt­ed the pol­i­cy where­by we al­low the cen­tral gov­ern­ment to take the lead on in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions be­cause that is the do­main legal­ly and we tend to fol­low,” he said.

He added that this has al­ways been the po­si­tion of the THA.

“The for­mer gov­ern­ment took a po­si­tion on the war in Pales­tine and the THA did not dis­pute that po­si­tion be­cause it was the then gov­ern­ment’s au­thor­i­ty in law so to do,” he said.

On the ex­ist­ing geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion and Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ap­proach, he said: “This Gov­ern­ment has adopt­ed some po­si­tions with re­gard to Amer­i­ca’s po­si­tion­ing with­in the Caribbean re­gion and in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters, might I add, and so we have no choice but to re­spect the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion there­in.”

Au­gus­tine al­so spoke about con­cerns over lo­cal fish­er­men op­er­at­ing near for­eign wa­ters and asked them to avoid en­ter­ing oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions with­out ap­proval.

“Re­al­ly and tru­ly, we should be op­er­at­ing with­in our wa­ters, not in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters, not owned by any­body else,” he said. “I don’t know why peo­ple will want to be in an­oth­er coun­try with­out go­ing through the for­mal chan­nels, why peo­ple want to be in an­oth­er coun­try with­out pass­ports and go­ing through cus­toms and im­mi­gra­tion.”