The year 2023 will un­doubt­ed­ly be re­mem­bered as a time of up­heaval in To­ba­go’s his­to­ry, filled with con­tro­ver­sies, scan­dals, un­ex­pect­ed turns, and heat­ed bat­tles be­tween Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Un­re­solved con­flicts, ac­cu­sa­tions, and le­gal bat­tles dom­i­nat­ed the head­lines.

The year be­gan with un­re­solved con­flicts and a failed at­tempt at rec­on­cil­i­a­tion af­ter Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke ex­tend­ed an olive branch to Au­gus­tine.

From al­le­ga­tions of ter­ror­is­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans to shock­ing au­dio record­ings, a se­ries of events un­fold­ed that cap­ti­vat­ed To­bag­o­ni­ans and ac­cord­ing to re­tired Pub­lic Ser­vice head Regi­nald Du­mas, it will leave a per­ma­nent mark on To­ba­go’s rep­u­ta­tion.

Chaos on the roads/ ac­cu­sa­tions of “ter­ror­is­ing” tac­tics

In April, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine ac­cused Trinidad Li­cens­ing Of­fi­cers of “ter­ror­is­ing” To­bag­o­ni­ans dur­ing road ex­er­cis­es. Over 692 fixed-penal­ty no­tices were is­sued, with even Au­gus­tine’s wife be­ing stopped for dri­ving with­out a per­mit. Au­gus­tine de­clared war and raised con­cerns about the con­duct of Trinida­di­an au­thor­i­ties in To­ba­go.

Au­dio gate: The scan­dal that rocked the is­land

The month of May brought about a shock­ing rev­e­la­tion as a leaked record­ing sur­faced, ex­pos­ing two THA of­fi­cials—a man and a woman— dis­cussing the use of pub­lic funds for po­lit­i­cal so­cial me­dia pro­pa­gan­da. The THA Ex­ec­u­tive re­mained silent for weeks, prompt­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans to de­mand an ex­pla­na­tion. Au­gus­tine—backed by the team— even­tu­al­ly ad­mit­ted, in a pre-record­ed video, his in­volve­ment in the record­ing, but down­played its sig­nif­i­cance, la­belling it as a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion.

He blamed PDP po­lit­i­cal leader and his for­mer al­ly Wat­son Duke for the leak. He said “And when you look at the facts, we ent hire no team nowhere bout that just on Face­book ped­dling ru­mours. This leak, as un­for­tu­nate as it is, it proves to us the kind of col­league we had in Duke, be­cause I very well be­lieve that this is the source of the leak.”

Mean­while, Regi­nald Du­mas de­scribed the plans made in the au­dio record­ing as “a cor­rupt act and a vi­o­la­tion of the law.”

But over the past months, Au­gus­tine in­sist­ed it was a pri­vate dis­cus­sion rather than ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing.

A lit­tle over a month af­ter the leak, a team of of­fi­cers as­signed to the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau and Fraud Squad trav­elled to To­ba­go to probe the au­dio record­ing.

Soon af­ter, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion launched an of­fi­cial probe in­to the mat­ter. When con­tact­ed for an up­date last week, the com­mis­sion briefly said “It is ac­tive and still on­go­ing.”

Act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Curt Si­mon could not be reached, yes­ter­day, for an up­date on this in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany weighed in on the scan­dal, ex­press­ing doubts about the au­dio record­ing’s por­tray­al of the en­tire sto­ry. Ghany be­lieved that the con­tro­ver­sy delved in­to the dark­er un­der­bel­ly of pol­i­tics and raised sig­nif­i­cant is­sues con­cern­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s af­fairs.

How­ev­er, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Derek Ram­samooj said that Au­gus­tine is show­ing signs of hubris syn­drome— a state where some­one in a po­si­tion of pow­er de­vel­ops a mag­ni­fied view of them­selves and their ca­pa­bil­i­ties, re­sult­ing in ex­ces­sive self-con­fi­dence and ob­ses­sion with per­son­al im­age.

More shocks and twists

The au­dio gate con­tro­ver­sy took an­oth­er twist dur­ing a spe­cial sit­ting of the As­sem­bly Leg­is­la­ture in June. There, Au­gus­tine played se­cret­ly record­ed videos of a whistle­blow­er, Ak­il Ab­dul­lah. In the video, Ab­dul­lah was heard ac­cus­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials, and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher of plot­ting to un­der­mine Au­gus­tine’s ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Hare­wood-Christo­pher out­right de­nied the ac­cu­sa­tion, say­ing she re­ceived no di­rec­tive from the Prime Min­is­ter.

This sparked an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty in­to al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct by of­fi­cers in To­ba­go dur­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to au­dio­gate.

Row­ley al­so de­nied hav­ing in­ter­act­ed or plot­ted the demise of the Au­gus­tine-led THA with Ab­dul­lah.

Ab­dul­lah claimed he had been paid by PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil po­lit­i­cal leader An­cil Den­nis and the par­ty it­self. How­ev­er, Ab­dul­lah lat­er re­tract­ed this state­ment on two oc­ca­sions.

With these claims, the strained re­la­tion­ship be­tween Au­gus­tine and Row­ley be­came ap­par­ent even more af­ter Au­gus­tine ac­cused a con­trac­tor, close to the Prime Min­is­ter, of at­tempt­ing to ex­tort THA funds by claim­ing work had been com­plet­ed when it had not.

Ten­sions be­tween Au­gus­tine/ Row­ley soar

Row­ley, in a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Ma­son Hall, dis­tanced him­self from Au­gus­tine fol­low­ing the con­spir­a­cy al­le­ga­tions, stat­ing that he pre­ferred to have a third par­ty present dur­ing any fu­ture in­ter­ac­tions.

“In­stead of Far­ley com­ing and telling you the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment has done that, he comes to tell you that we gave him mon­ey to give our friend and to tell him how much to pay his friend and so on. That is a man not to be trust­ed,” Row­ley said in June. “I am hav­ing noth­ing to do with Far­ley un­less there is a third-par­ty present.”

Con­tin­ues on page 11

In Sep­tem­ber Row­ley said he had not got­ten over Au­gus­tine’s ac­cu­sa­tions against him. But in re­sponse, Au­gus­tine said, “I am not re­al­ly con­cerned about the feel­ings of a big man.”

Since then, the two have not met but in an in­ter­view in De­cem­ber Au­gus­tine said he an­tic­i­pates the re­la­tion­ship be­tween him and the Prime Min­is­ter would im­prove in 2024. How­ev­er, he said even if it doesn’t, he will con­tin­ue to en­gage Row­ley on To­ba­go-re­lat­ed mat­ters.

Le­gal bat­tles

Le­gal bat­tles loomed large through­out the year as threats of le­gal ac­tion were hurled be­tween the THA and the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. In Ju­ly, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency took the THA to court over its fail­ure to ob­tain nec­es­sary ap­provals for road­works. While in Sep­tem­ber, Row­ley pur­sued a law­suit against whistle­blow­er Ab­dul­lah for his al­le­ga­tions dur­ing the spe­cial sit­ting. In No­vem­ber, Au­gus­tine threat­ened to take Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to court over out­stand­ing bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions owed to To­ba­go.

To­ba­go Car­ni­val- cel­e­bra­tions and crit­i­cisms

Oc­to­ber marked the peak of To­ba­go’s sec­ond Car­ni­val, with thou­sands flock­ing to the is­land for four days of cel­e­bra­tion. The Rox­g­lo Con­cert in Rox­bor­ough kick-start­ed the fes­tiv­i­ties, fol­lowed by the Rhythm, Steel, and Pow­der event in Scar­bor­ough host­ed by Pan Trin­ba­go. The Vibes with Voice con­cert at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex added to the rev­el­ry. The Car­ni­val was deemed a suc­cess by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, To­ba­go Di­vi­sion and oth­er cul­tur­al stake­hold­ers.

But, crit­i­cisms arose when Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion boss Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters point­ed out miss­ing key el­e­ments in the Car­ni­val, spark­ing anger among the THA and To­bag­o­ni­ans, de­mand­ing re­trac­tions and apolo­gies.

To­ba­go’s food cri­sis, car­go down!

In Sep­tem­ber, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan an­nounced plans to re­solve the gap in the car­go ser­vice to To­ba­go af­ter a fire on­board the Cabo Star car­go ves­sel forced it in­to dry­dock for im­me­di­ate re­pairs.

With­in two weeks there was a short­age of flour, bread, wa­ter, live­stock feed, build­ing ma­te­ri­als and beers caus­ing the To­ba­go cham­ber to de­clare a food cri­sis. Fol­low­ing a meet­ing af­ter the re­turn of the ves­sel three weeks lat­er, Sinanan promised To­ba­go a cus­tom-built ves­sel in 2024.

THA aban­dons “To­ba­go House”

The THA came un­der fire in Au­gust af­ter a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­vealed that it had de­cid­ed not to re­new the lease on a build­ing lo­cat­ed at 24-26 Pem­broke Place, Pem­broke Street in Port-of-Spain, af­ter pay­ing al­most $2 mil­lion in rent for the un­oc­cu­pied space.

Au­gus­tine ad­mit­ted that the de­ci­sion to rent a build­ing in Trinidad was not the best move and so the as­sem­bly de­cid­ed to end the three-year con­tract pre­ma­ture­ly af­ter the first year. How­ev­er, he did say plans for a ‘To­ba­go House” in Trinidad are still on the ta­ble.

Duke: Let’s kiss and make up

In a sur­pris­ing turn of events, in Sep­tem­ber, Duke called on Au­gus­tine to unite, for the ben­e­fit of To­ba­go. He said he was ready to for­give and rec­on­cile with Au­gus­tine af­ter a week-long pub­lic spat in 2022, which led to the res­ig­na­tion of Duke as deputy chief sec­re­tary. Soon af­ter, all mem­bers of the THA ex­ec­u­tive re­signed from Duke’s par­ty and went on to es­tab­lish the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty in April this year.

In re­sponse to Duke’s rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of­fer, Far­ley told re­porters, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Mur­ders, rob­beries—​A thorn in To­ba­go’s side

De­spite To­ba­go po­lice’s best at­tempts to have a sev­en per cent re­duc­tion in mur­ders, the is­land has had a record high of 14 mur­ders this year. Over 95 per cent of the mur­ders in­volved firearms.

For 2022, To­ba­go record­ed ten mur­ders.

In June, head of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion ACP Col­lis Hazel, an­nounced an in­creased po­lice pres­ence to help com­bat the ris­ing crime on the is­land.

The vic­tims of 2023 in­clude Nigel Sandy, Lynch Bovell, Don­neil Thomas, Ha­keem Thomas, Den­son Turn­er, Al­li­son Bal­lah, Pre­cious Wills, and Rae Ann Hen­ry.

How­ev­er, Rae Ann Hen­ry’s death was re­clas­si­fied fol­low­ing ad­vice from the DPP for a coro­ner’s in­quest. The is­land’s toll was re­vert­ed to nine in Oc­to­ber.

But in the first week of No­vem­ber, Mal­ick’s moth­er, thir­ty-four-year-old Chini­qua White was shot dead in Black Rock push­ing the toll to ten. In the sec­ond week of De­cem­ber To­ba­go record­ed three mur­ders in less than 24 hours. On De­cem­ber 19 Jan­nelle Sowe-Thomas was found dead in a drain in Mt Irvine with her hands and feet bound. Her body was bad­ly burnt.

Less than 24 hours lat­er po­lice re­spond­ed to a dou­ble mur­der in Crown Point. Akiem Firth and Law­er­ance Al­leyne were both shot dead af­ter 1 am while lim­ing.

Through­out the year po­lice record­ed a wor­ry­ing spike in lar­ce­ny and rob­beries at schools, church­es and pri­vate homes.

On De­cem­ber 27, the is­land was reel­ing again, this time from re­ports that two sis­ters were found dead in an apart­ment at Wood­lands, Mo­ri­ah. Though their deaths re­main un­clas­si­fied, it left peo­ple con­fused.

Trevor’s ride

In Oc­to­ber THA Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries, and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment, Trevor James, char­tered a pri­vate air­craft to re­turn from Mar­tinique due to the im­pend­ing Trop­i­cal Storm Tam­my af­ter at­tend­ing a con­fer­ence in Mar­tinique.

Guardian Me­dia was told the cost of the char­ter cost be­tween US$5,000 to US$9,000. James, along with an­oth­er THA of­fi­cial and two em­ploy­ees of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean States (ACS), at­tend­ed the con­fer­ence.

This prompt­ed the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (CAA) to raise con­cerns as the air­craft did not have au­tho­ri­sa­tion for com­mer­cial trav­el.

In a ple­nary sit­ting that same week, James claimed that he pri­vate­ly arranged and fund­ed the flight us­ing his “wide and deep” con­nec­tions.

Au­gus­tine stat­ed that the as­sem­bly would not bear the cost of the flight. He told the me­dia he was ready to give a hard re­jec­tion if James re­quest­ed re­im­burse­ment.

In re­sponse to the con­tro­ver­sy, Trevor James de­nied us­ing un­der­hand­ed tac­tics and claimed that his fam­i­ly and friends arranged and paid for the flight af­ter he ran out of mon­ey.

James stat­ed that cus­toms and im­mi­gra­tion pro­to­cols were fol­lowed, and there was mis­in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the al­le­ga­tions. He em­pha­sized that his pri­or­i­ty was his safe­ty and the safe­ty of the THA staff mem­bers with him. How­ev­er, PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil leader, An­cil Den­nis, called for trans­paren­cy re­gard­ing the cost of the flight and who ac­tu­al­ly paid for James’ re­turn.

Far­ley promis­es big things for 2024

As 2023 drew to a close, Au­gus­tine, in a sit-down in­ter­view on a morn­ing show, in ear­ly De­cem­ber, hint­ed at ma­jor de­vel­op­men­tal projects for the is­land’s econ­o­my to piv­ot af­ter a year filled with con­tro­ver­sies, scan­dals, and po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sions. A ma­jor part of these plans may in­clude the in­tro­duc­tion of a new air­line that would be based in To­ba­go to op­er­ate in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal flights. In Au­gust, the Chief Sec­re­tary made a pas­sion­ate plea for more to be done to at­tract oth­er air­lines to ser­vice the lo­cal air­bridge.

He even asked if To­ba­go should find mon­ey to lease and op­er­ate its own planes. Back then he said many To­bag­o­ni­ans had com­plained about the fre­quent chal­lenges on the air and seabridge.

Speak­ing dur­ing a town hall meet­ing on in­ter-is­land trans­porta­tion and con­nec­tiv­i­ty at the Mount Irvin Bay Ho­tel, Au­gus­tine sug­gest­ed an in­te­grat­ed agency be cre­at­ed to have over­sight of all air, sea and ground trans­porta­tion be­tween the is­lands.

By De­cem­ber, Au­gus­tine said the THA was close to fi­nal­is­ing an agree­ment with an air­line to pro­vide in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal flights in and out of the is­land.

He as­sured it was not meant to re­place Caribbean Air­lines but rather seek­ing al­ter­na­tive strate­gies for air­lift to boost the is­land’s tourism prod­uct.