Dr Winford James
Max Albert and I continue our series on Tobagonian autonomy.
Tobago’s autonomy debate did not begin yesterday, nor was it born merely out of emotion or political rhetoric. It emerged from real administrative conflict, constitutional uncertainty, and the practical difficulty of governing Tobago through what was, in many respects, an unfinished constitutional experiment.
That experiment cannot properly be understood unless one reads together the Tobago House of Assembly Act No 37 of 1980, the Constitution (Amendment) (No 2) Act No 8 of 1988, and the Tobago House of Assembly Act No 40 of 1996. These enactments represented phases in Tobago’s constitutional evolution toward meaningful self-government within the Republic of T&T.
The 1980 Act restored an Assembly to Tobago and established an executive structure to direct Tobago’s affairs. Yet while Tobago gained political expression, it was not simultaneously granted a fully separate administrative and public service machinery. That was the original contradiction.
The elected leadership could formulate policy and direct governance, but the officers beneath that structure often remained tied to Port-of-Spain and the traditional public service hierarchy.
Questions emerged immediately. To whom did the Tobago public officer answer? The Assembly? The Chief Administrator? The Public Service Commission? Central Government? Or all simultaneously?
The result was uncertainty. Administrative tensions emerged. Governance difficulties arose. Tobago’s pioneers, including Hochoy Charles and Dr Jefferson Davidson, were operating within a partially completed constitutional framework. They were constitutional pioneers attempting to govern Tobago before the full machinery of governance had been put in place.
It was against that background that Parliament intervened through Act No 8 of 1988. That amendment was not mere technical drafting; Parliament amended the Constitution itself by redefining “public service” to mean: “the service of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago or of the Tobago House of Assembly established by section 3 of the Tobago House of Assembly Act, in a civil capacity.”
Those words were transformative.
Act 8 of 1988 did more than stabilise an administrative difficulty. By distinguishing between service “of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago” and service “of the Tobago House of Assembly,” Parliament constitutionally recognised Tobago’s own administrative identity within the wider Republic. Tobago administration was no longer merely an informal extension of central government’s convenience. It had acquired constitutional recognition and legitimacy within the public service structure itself.
In substance, therefore, Tobago does possess a public service, and that reality must now be lifted out of obscurity.
For decades, Tobago’s administrative arrangements evolved within a divided but interconnected framework held together by centralised public service and state institutions such as the Chief Personnel Officer, the Director of Personnel Administration, the courts—civil, criminal, and industrial—the police service, and other national machinery. Those relationships must now be understood constitutionally, but not timidly.
Act 8 of 1988 was Parliament’s attempt to reconcile Tobago’s growing executive authority with the wider public service framework of T&T. It recognised that Tobago’s administration had become sufficiently real and operational to require direct constitutional acknowledgement.
Yet many younger office holders appear not to fully appreciate the constitutional significance of the institutions they now administer. The present generation inherited offices whose historical struggles they did not personally experience. The pioneers understood the tensions because they lived them.
Act No 40 of 1996 attempted in large part to bring maturity to the arrangement. It strengthened the Assembly, clarified portfolios, and expanded Tobago’s institutional identity. Importantly, it empowered the Assembly to “take all such steps and do all such things as may be necessary for the better governance of Tobago.”
Those words carry profound implications.
If Tobago possesses an Executive Council, portfolio responsibility, a constitutionally recognised public service, and authority for the “better governance of Tobago,” then Tobago must govern with constitutional confidence. It must no longer behave as though it possesses merely delegated conveniences. It must begin strengthening its public service, akin to what presently exists in Port-of-Spain, while remaining within the framework of the Republic.
This is especially important in relation to the Fifth Schedule.
The Fifth Schedule cannot be treated as being wrapped in decorative constitutional language. It identifies matters over which Tobago is expected to exercise meaningful responsibility over its own society. Once responsibility is granted over planning, infrastructure, environmental management, utilities and development, the constitutional logic steers us toward greater operational custody and control.
Town and Country Planning exposes the contradiction sharply. Tobago lives with the consequences of land-use decisions in respect of flooding, hillside development, tourism expansion and environmental strain, yet substantial regulatory authority remains centralised. The same logic applies to environmental governance, water, sewerage and utilities generally. Meaningful autonomy requires not merely responsibility, but instruments of implementation and control.
The matter brings us to the need for the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Schedules to now be examined together and settled decisively within the evolving constitutional arrangement. Tobago must no longer govern timidly through memoranda of understanding where constitutional authority and responsibility already exist.
The next phase of Tobago’s evolution is not separation, but the breaking of lingering administrative shackles through a more rational distribution of authority, responsibility, and institutional control.
Autonomy cannot remain a promise permanently deferred.
Tobago must therefore begin to take up the remaining responsibilities and powers contemplated within the constitutional arrangements.
Dr 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 thousands of columns for all major newspapers in the country.
