Camille McEach­nie

The no­tion that “many peo­ple (To­bag­o­ni­ans) ...op­posed to the (Au­ton­o­my) Bills are pig­gy­back­ing ...to push se­ces­sion,” as ex­pressed by To­ba­go East area rep­re­sen­ta­tive Sham­fa Cud­joe ap­pears to paint all op­posed to the au­ton­o­my draft bills as suc­ces­sors, say promi­nent To­bag­o­ni­ans.

On Wednes­day and Thurs­day Cud­joe, a To­bag­on­ian and JSC mem­ber study­ing the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bills, made the claim on To­ba­go Chan­nel 5 and i95.5.

Yes­ter­day, she took of­fence with a Guardian Me­dia ar­ti­cle re­port­ing her state­ment and some To­bag­o­ni­ans com­ments con­cern­ing it.

Us­ing her per­son­al Face­book page, she post­ed a 30-sec­ond clip of the PDP’s area rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Ma­son Hall Ian Pol­lard ad­vo­cat­ing se­ces­sion.

She cap­tioned the clip:

“Camille Mc Each­nie of The Guardian… a lit­tle re­search goes a long way…About these To­bag­o­ni­ans who are push­ing Se­ces­sion. (If you’re gonna tell the sto­ry, tell the whole sto­ry…any­thing else is Bo­gus!”

Promi­nent is­lander– PDP’s leader and pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, Wat­son Duke, is al­so on record want­i­ng in­de­pen­dence for To­ba­go.

How­ev­er, many crit­ics of the au­ton­o­my re­port, in­clud­ing for­mer To­ba­go House As­sem­bly chief sec­re­tary Ho­choy Charles, Civil­NET’s Shirley Cooke, Dr Vanus James, and mem­bers of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots(PDP), say they want to re­main with Trinidad.

What they are ad­vo­cat­ing for is fur­ther changes to it and the pas­sage of the au­ton­o­my bills in Par­lia­ment. The ex­ist­ing drafts are Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment ( To­ba­go Self-Gov­ern­ment Bill 2021 and To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment Bill (2021).

Guardian Me­dia reached out to vo­cal crit­ics on the au­ton­o­my re­port, ask­ing if they want to sep­a­rate from Trinidad.

“Quite of­ten, you see politi­cians try­ing to switch nar­ra­tives to broad-brush all op­posed to an is­sue, and this most like­ly is the case here. The sug­ges­tion that peo­ple op­posed to the au­ton­o­my drafts are se­ces­sion­ist needs to be de­bunked,” one of Civil­NET’s com­mit­tee mem­bers Cooke told Guardian Me­dia.

“There are few, not many, who want to se­cede. How­ev­er, Civil­NET’s po­si­tion, as ad­vo­cat­ed by its mem­bers, is that we re­main with Trinidad. Our or­gan­i­sa­tion rep­re­sents a wide cross-sec­tion of civ­il so­ci­ety, and they have not said so,” Cooke added.

Cooke said the pro­vi­sions deal­ing with the over­sight com­mit­tee on the As­sem­bly’s fi­nances and To­ba­go’s equal sta­tus to Trinidad con­cern Civil­NET. “The re­port pays lip ser­vice to equal­i­ty with Trinidad,” she said.

James shared sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments.

“That se­ces­sion com­ment is fear-mon­ger­ing. It’s the con­cept say­ing if you dis­agree with them, (politi­cians) They must paint you in a cer­tain light. To­bag­o­ni­ans are say­ing the JSC drafts are woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate and must be changed.”

James said the JSC re­port should pro­pose an in­crease in To­ba­go’s bud­get.

James al­so said To­ba­go should get “its fair share of its bud­get pro­por­tion­al to the pop­u­la­tion and its fair share of the de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties cre­at­ed by the na­tion­al re­sources.”

He does not pro­pose a fixed over­all min­i­mum al­lo­ca­tion. He wants a bud­get that changes an­nu­al­ly based on pop­u­la­tion size and re­sources in the ge­o­graph­i­cal space. The re­port pro­posed an an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tion of a min­i­mum of 6.8 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get.

Charles said he does not want se­ces­sion, he prefers to talk about “ re­ject­ing the bills out­right.”

“That is what Orville Lon­don would have want­ed as it does not cap­ture what was sent in the 2016 bills to Trinidad. That is what I am con­cerned about, not who say­ing who wants se­ces­sion. Non­sense talk,” Charles told Guardian Me­dia.

He wants To­ba­go to have “re­al leg­isla­tive pow­er not cur­rent­ly out­lined in the JSC re­port, “he said.

One of PDP’s deputy lead­ers, Far­ley Au­gus­tine, said the par­ty does not want to se­cede.

“Bills to be de­bat­ed in the Par­lia­ment, start­ing on Mon­day, do not ac­cede to any of the crit­i­cal is­sues, as out­lined by the peo­ple of To­ba­go,” Au­gus­tine said.

“It is there­fore disin­gen­u­ous of the Mem­ber for To­ba­go West, Ms. Sham­fa Cud­joe to ig­nore the fact that the JSC that she has been a part of has dis­re­spect­ed and ig­nored the wish­ing of To­ba­go. “

He added:” In­stead, she is fo­cus­ing on the dog-whis­tle word se­ces­sion¿ with hopes of in­still­ing fear in­to the peo­ple of To­ba­go while in­cit­ing anger in the peo­ple of Trinidad.