The re­jec­tion of the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bills in Par­lia­ment has left the is­land’s politi­cians and stake­hold­ers point­ing fin­gers, with some say­ing the bills’ re­turn to the House was noth­ing but a show.

While some ar­gued yes­ter­day that po­lit­i­cal games and di­vi­sion caused their fail­ure, oth­ers be­lieve the bills wouldn’t have brought any re­al change.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris called the out­come a “deeply dis­ap­point­ing mo­ment for To­ba­go,” plac­ing blame square­ly on the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) for pri­ori­tis­ing “po­lit­i­cal self-in­ter­est” over the is­land’s push for greater self-gov­er­nance.

He al­so bashed Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine for what he de­scribed as “po­lit­i­cal ma­noeu­vring and a lack of uni­ty,” which he said dealt the fi­nal fa­tal blow to the bills.

“This will for­ev­er be a stain on To­ba­go’s quest for au­ton­o­my,” Mor­ris said, while com­mend­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MPs for their votes to­ward the bill.

De­spite the set­back, he en­cour­aged To­bag­o­ni­ans not to lose hope, say­ing, “This is not the end of our fight. We live to dream an­oth­er day.”

How­ev­er, In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA) leader De Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus wel­comed the re­jec­tion of the bills, ar­gu­ing that the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion would not have im­proved the lives of or­di­nary To­bag­o­ni­ans.

“These bills do not guar­an­tee the man on the street a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life. They give more dom­i­nance to Cab­i­net and the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil while ig­nor­ing the needs of com­mu­ni­ties.”

Tsoiafatt-An­gus al­so crit­i­cised Au­gus­tine’s ap­proach, call­ing his last-minute use of What­sApp to com­mu­ni­cate with MPs and the prime min­is­ter as “dis­turb­ing and em­bar­rass­ing.”

She called for a broad­er and more in­clu­sive process say­ing, “This is not about your opin­ion, Chief Sec­re­tary. It’s not even about par­ty pol­i­tics. It must be a To­ba­go po­si­tion.”

To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber chair­man Mar­tin George was not sur­prised by the out­come, de­scrib­ing the au­ton­o­my ef­forts as a “po­lit­i­cal cha­rade” in this in­stance. He ac­cused politi­cians of us­ing the is­sue as a “po­lit­i­cal foot­ball” while fail­ing to achieve mean­ing­ful re­forms.

George said, “It ap­pears that with the reg­u­lar cha­rade of these bills be­ing brought forth and the shenani­gans which ac­com­pa­ny them, you know, it’s been played out once again in the na­tion­al par­lia­ment. And too of­ten, it ap­pears that, you know, the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers use this as a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball, and they have.

He added: “To­bag­o­ni­ans chas­ing be­hind the ball, run­ning up and down the field while they keep shift­ing the goal post on them each time so that it be­comes im­pos­si­ble to score.”

He felt it was time To­ba­go fo­cus­es on fi­nan­cial au­ton­o­my, ex­plain­ing that fi­nan­cial in­de­pen­dence would em­pow­er To­ba­go to make its own de­ci­sions.

“Once you’re fi­nan­cial­ly au­tonomous, you don’t need to ask any­one for per­mis­sion to pur­sue in­de­pen­dence,” he said.

Mean­while, To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce chair­man Cur­tis Williams said more time was need­ed to ed­u­cate the pub­lic and ad­dress con­cerns raised by the THA.

“We need­ed more time to un­der­stand how these bills could ben­e­fit busi­ness­es and the wider To­ba­go pub­lic.”

Williams called for a fo­cus on in­creas­ing fund­ing and en­sur­ing fu­ture pro­pos­als are trans­par­ent and in­clu­sive.

Sen­a­tor An­cil Den­nis, po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM’s To­ba­go Coun­cil, con­demned the UNC’s role in the bills’ fail­ure and crit­i­cised Au­gus­tine for un­der­min­ing the process with “jokey amend­ments.”

Den­nis, in a so­cial me­dia post, com­pared the sit­u­a­tion to 1996, say­ing To­ba­go re­mains trapped un­der the in­ad­e­quate To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act 40 of 1996, with lim­it­ed bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions and no leg­isla­tive pow­ers.

“This is a sad day for To­ba­go. I do not know if we will get an­oth­er chance to fix this in­jus­tice in my life­time,” he said.