Dr Win­ford James

Max Al­bert and I con­tin­ue our dis­cus­sions on the To­ba­go Au­ton­o­my Ques­tion.

Last week, we end­ed with one of the great ironies of our po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry. ANR Robin­son won gov­ern­ment in 1980 with 33 par­lia­men­tary seats and left of­fice in 1991. In 1995, he re­turned with on­ly two NAR rep­re­sen­ta­tives from To­ba­go. The UNC and PNM held 17 seats each.

Robin­son no longer had 33. He had two. Yet those two would de­ter­mine who gov­erned Trinidad and To­ba­go.

And here the old crit­i­cism of Robin­son en­coun­ters per­haps its great­est dif­fi­cul­ty. If Robin­son was in­dif­fer­ent to the de­fi­cien­cies of Act 37 of 1980 when he pos­sessed 33 seats, what did he do when his­to­ry re­turned him to in­flu­ence with on­ly two?

He re­turned to To­ba­go’s un­fin­ished busi­ness. The NAR en­tered an arrange­ment with the UNC, Bas­deo Pan­day be­came Prime Min­is­ter, and Robin­son re­turned to gov­ern­ment as Min­is­ter Ex­tra­or­di­naire and Min­is­ter of To­ba­go Af­fairs.

Be­hind him lay Act 37, Sama­roo’s dis­tinc­tion be­tween de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion and de­vo­lu­tion, the NAR’s ex­am­i­na­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, and the work of the Hy­atali Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mis­sion.

Then, in No­vem­ber 1996, Robin­son him­self in­tro­duced the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill con­cern­ing To­ba­go. It sought to place the ex­is­tence of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, its Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil, and its Fund with­in the Con­sti­tu­tion. Along­side it was the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act, No. 40 of 1996. Nei­ther gave To­ba­go every­thing for which gen­er­a­tions had strug­gled; to­day’s con­tin­u­ing au­ton­o­my de­bate proves that. But the chronol­o­gy makes the ac­cu­sa­tion of Robin­son’s ne­glect ex­ceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to sus­tain.

His Gov­ern­ment amend­ed the THA leg­is­la­tion. Sama­roo ar­tic­u­lat­ed de­vo­lu­tion. The NAR con­front­ed the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the As­sem­bly. Hy­atali ex­am­ined the con­sti­tu­tion­al prob­lem. The at­tempt­ed coup in­ter­vened. Robin­son lost of­fice. And when po­lit­i­cal cir­cum­stances re­turned him to in­flu­ence, To­ba­go’s con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tion re­turned with him.

That is not a chronol­o­gy of ne­glect. It is a chronol­o­gy of in­ter­rupt­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al work. Robin­son’s ex­pe­ri­ence al­so teach­es To­ba­go some­thing fun­da­men­tal: po­lit­i­cal friend­ship is not con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion. Gov­ern­ments change. Prime Min­is­ters change. Par­lia­men­tary ma­jori­ties dis­ap­pear.

Robin­son knew that bet­ter than most. He had moved from 33 seats to two.

The chal­lenge was con­vert­ing tem­po­rary po­lit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ty in­to per­ma­nent in­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion—what we have de­scribed as the search for im­preg­nabil­i­ty. Did Act 40 achieve it? Clear­ly not. If it had, To­ba­go would hard­ly still be search­ing 30 years lat­er.

And here his­to­ry be­comes al­most un­can­ny. Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany, now en­gaged in To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my dis­cus­sions, is no new­com­er to this con­sti­tu­tion­al jour­ney. He has served on the Hy­atali Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mis­sion from 1988 to 1990 and sub­se­quent­ly on the THA Tech­ni­cal Team in ne­go­ti­a­tions with Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment from 1992 to 1995. He was there while the ar­chi­tec­ture was be­ing ex­am­ined.

Nor is Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar a stranger to this his­to­ry. She en­tered pol­i­tics dur­ing the NAR pe­ri­od and, as Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs in 1996, par­tic­i­pat­ed in the par­lia­men­tary de­bate on Robin­son’s con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment con­cern­ing To­ba­go. As Prime Min­is­ter in 2012, she again asked Ghany to chair con­sul­ta­tions con­cern­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form and in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go.

To­day, she is Prime Min­is­ter again. And Ghany is again en­gaged.

But there is now an­oth­er ac­tor stand­ing at the cen­tre of To­ba­go’s his­to­ry. One Far­ley Au­gus­tine. His To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty holds To­ba­go’s two seats in the na­tion­al Par­lia­ment. Be­fore the 2025 elec­tion, Far­ley him­self de­scribed those seats as po­ten­tial bar­gain­ing in­stru­ments through which To­ba­go could pur­sue con­sti­tu­tion­al change.

Then came Jan­u­ary 2026. His TPP won all 15 elect­ed seats in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

Few To­ba­go lead­ers have pos­sessed a clear­er lo­cal man­date. Far­ley has re­ject­ed pre­vi­ous au­ton­o­my pro­pos­als as in­suf­fi­cient. He has spo­ken of To­ba­go ob­tain­ing law-mak­ing au­thor­i­ty, de­ter­min­ing its gov­ern­men­tal arrange­ments and ex­er­cis­ing mean­ing­ful au­thor­i­ty over mat­ters af­fect­ing To­ba­go, in­clud­ing its mar­itime space.

The cir­cum­stances may there­fore be deemed to be un­usu­al­ly favourable. A Prime Min­is­ter pub­licly sup­port­ive of To­ba­go’s self-gov­ern­ment. A con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ar car­ry­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al mem­o­ry from the Robin­son era. Two To­ba­go rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Par­lia­ment. And a Chief Sec­re­tary pos­sess­ing an over­whelm­ing man­date at home.

But Robin­son’s his­to­ry sup­plies a warn­ing. Friend­ship with a Prime Min­is­ter is not au­ton­o­my. A favourable Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment is not au­ton­o­my. Two strate­gi­cal­ly im­por­tant par­lia­men­tary seats are not au­ton­o­my. Even 15 As­sem­bly seats are not au­ton­o­my.

They are po­lit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties. The ques­tion is what Far­ley will ac­cept in ex­change for them. Robin­son’s un­fin­ished search was for an arrange­ment ca­pa­ble of sur­viv­ing the politi­cians and par­lia­men­tary arith­metic that pro­duced it.

Thir­ty years af­ter Act 40, To­ba­go should ac­cept no less. The per­son­al­i­ties have changed. Some of the con­sti­tu­tion­al minds have not. The op­por­tu­ni­ty has re­turned.

Will Far­ley use his over­whelm­ing man­date mere­ly to ob­tain more pow­ers, or to com­plete the search for an arrange­ment that can­not eas­i­ly be tak­en away and bro­ker a more per­fect Union for To­ba­go and for the Re­pub­lic?

That ques­tion be­longs to our next dis­cus­sion: Un­der­stand­ing Far­ley.

Dr Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment and pol­i­tics in T&T 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.