Speak­ing as if she was re­spond­ing in part to my col­umn of Sep­tem­ber 17, 2023, our brand-new Pres­i­dent, Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, in her ad­dress to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly on Sep­tem­ber 27, 2023, re­vealed that she did not raise the mat­ter of To­bag­on­ian au­ton­o­my in her speech to the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the 4th ses­sion of the 12th Par­lia­ment be­cause she want­ed first to meet with the To­ba­go com­mu­ni­ty.

That’s re­spect­ful, and it is to her cred­it as Head of State. She is Pres­i­dent of the two is­lands and so needs to show in­ter­est in the po­lit­i­cal, so­cial, and eco­nom­ic af­fairs of both. All her pre­de­ces­sors, ex­cept Arthur N R Robin­son, stayed mum on the is­sue of To­bag­on­ian au­ton­o­my. The con­sti­tu­tion­al lawyer El­lis Clarke. The Chief Jus­tice Noor Has­sanali. The UWI Prin­ci­pal G Maxwell Richards. The for­mer judge and pros­e­cu­tor of the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court An­tho­ny Car­mona. And the Ap­peals Court judge and first fe­male pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes. All of them main­tained of­fi­cial si­lence. But not Robin­son. And now, in the wee stages of her term, the for­mer sen­ate pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo.

I am as­sum­ing that by ‘To­ba­go com­mu­ni­ty’ she meant the po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the To­bag­on­ian elec­torate. The lat­ter vot­ed their rep­re­sen­ta­tives in­to the THA in the last elec­tions and the biggest is­sue that was fo­cused on is au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go. Fif­teen seats were con­test­ed and the PDP won 14 (with 13 of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives since re­sign­ing from that par­ty but stay­ing in the House) while the PNM won the re­main­ing one. By talk­ing with the As­sem­bly first, Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo not on­ly did the re­spect­ful thing, but the right thing. It is in the THA elec­tions that the is­sue of au­ton­o­my has been thrashed out, not the par­lia­men­tary ones.

And To­ba­go showed over­whelm­ing­ly by the vote that they did not want the PNM ver­sion of it.

Here are some of her words on the mat­ter:

‘Let me as­sure you that the mat­ter of au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go is one that I re­gard as ab­solute­ly crit­i­cal to the prop­er de­vel­op­ment of our coun­try.’

‘I be­lieve that at this junc­ture of our coun­try’s his­to­ry, the sig­nal im­por­tance of which has not es­caped the Chief Sec­re­tary nor me is to fight to keep the ques­tion of To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my on the na­tion­al agen­da and to strain every mus­cle in us to strug­gle for its achieve­ment un­til it is ad­vanced and achieved.’

Aware that words are ca­pa­ble of mul­ti­ple in­ter­pre­ta­tions as they syn­tac­ti­cal­ly in­ter­act with one an­oth­er to ex­press what the ex­pe­ri­ence-in­formed mind wants to say, and im­pa­tient af­ter so long a wait, I shall take the lib­er­ty of giv­ing her words the most op­ti­mistic in­ter­pre­ta­tion.

So we have ar­rived at a wa­ter­shed. A new Pres­i­dent is sig­nalling that the time has come for the whole na­tion to grab the au­ton­o­my is­sue by the horns and seek to ad­vance it un­til it is achieved. It’s got to be achieved if the coun­try is to de­vel­op prop­er­ly. No more pussy­foot­ing. No more Gov­ern­ment blam­ing of the Op­po­si­tion in re­spect of the ma­jori­ties need­ed in the vote for con­sti­tu­tion­al change. Ac­cept that the To­ba­go peo­ple have spo­ken and that it is there­fore up to the Par­lia­ment to give ef­fect to our voice. This thing is not about PNM ver­sus UNC. No, it is about a Par­lia­ment that is struc­tural­ly not To­ba­go-friend­ly giv­ing To­ba­go what it wants and work­ing out with us the right for­mu­lae and arrange­ments that must re­con­sti­tute the law by which we want to live as a peo­ple.

The Pres­i­dent is clear­ly seized of the is­sue and is will­ing to strain every mus­cle with us to make sure it is re­alised. She is go­ing to lend the grav­i­tas of her of­fice to the agen­da!

A lot has been writ­ten and spo­ken about it and a lot more is still to be writ­ten and spo­ken about it, but we will clar­i­fy our ideas and strate­gies and share them as we forge for­ward. Pow­er­ful ideas such as de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion, equal­i­ty of sta­tus, and bill of rights need to be thrashed out be­fore be­ing adopt­ed.

It is go­ing to be an ex­cit­ing, hair-rais­ing, goosepim­ply time! Or am I in the throes of self-delu­sion?

Doesn’t the Con­sti­tu­tion de­ny the pres­i­den­cy any lever­age on the mat­ter of au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go? Isn’t the role of Kan­ga­loo mere­ly to sign the law passed by the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment? Isn’t she a PNM pres­i­dent who will not, and can­not, chal­lenge the PNM leader’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of au­ton­o­my as ex­pressed in those two aw­ful bills cur­rent­ly on the agen­da of the Low­er House this ses­sion? Isn’t she a bedrock mem­ber of the PNM? Doesn’t Au­gus­tine, like Row­ley, know that the PNM needs the UNC to pass any Con­sti­tu­tion-chang­ing bill? Doesn’t he re­alise that he is com­ing across as re­ly­ing on the Pres­i­dent to do the au­ton­o­my work he is still to do since tak­ing of­fice?

Good­ness!

Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment, and pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean on ra­dio and TV since the 1970s. He has al­so writ­ten hun­dreds of columns for all the ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try. He can be reached at jay­win­ster@gmail.com