Mi bre­dren Vanus has been go­ing to ‘vil­lage com­mu­ni­ties’ in To­ba­go and en­gag­ing fo­cus groups made up of com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers to de­ter­mine, gath­er, and dis­cuss their views about how they want their lives to be im­proved now that PM Row­ley has put the coun­try on the path to con­sti­tu­tion re­form against a back­ground that in­cludes pro­pos­als from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly. So far, he has gone to sev­en of them: Ma­son Hall; John Di­al; Hope/Mesopotamia; Mt St George; Rox­bor­ough; L’Anse Four­mi; and Canaan/Bon Ac­cord.

He has asked them a num­ber of yes/no ques­tions sup­ple­ment­ed by oth­er types of ques­tions de­signed to find out, in­ter alia, why they said yes or no as the case may be, what the state of af­fairs re­gard­ing cer­tain mat­ters was, and how cer­tain pro­pos­als for re­form might be pros­e­cut­ed.

Now, the PM has struck a Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mit­tee which does not in­clude any rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Op­po­si­tion UNC (which I think is need­less­ly coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and di­vi­sive) which al­so goes around the coun­try gath­er­ing views from the pop­u­la­tion.

But those views are not as fo­cused as those from mi bre­dren. In­deed, it must be not­ed that the com­mit­tee’s TORs, which they must have, have not been shared with the pop­u­la­tion.

Vanus is fo­cused on the rights of com­mu­ni­ties, rather than in­di­vid­u­als be­cause none of our post-In­de­pen­dence Con­sti­tu­tions has recog­nised them. These rights are not part of the op­er­a­tions of what we have now: vil­lage coun­cils. He re­ports that the fo­cus groups are of the view that the lat­ter are sim­ply un­fit for the pur­pose of self-de­ter­mi­na­tion.

Vanus asked the Ma­son Hall group the fol­low­ing six gen­er­al yes/no ques­tions, all of which were an­swered with a unan­i­mous ‘yes’. They were bro­ken down in­to sub­ques­tions, which were al­so an­swered unan­i­mous­ly in the af­fir­ma­tive.

Gen­er­al Ques­tion: Do you want pro­vi­sions in the Con­sti­tu­tion that give you a bun­dle of com­mu­ni­ty rights to the pur­suit of com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment–self-de­ter­mi­na­tion?

We all pro­vide mon­ey from our tax­es to run the Gov­ern­ment. Should the Ma­son Hall com­mu­ni­ty be guar­an­teed a fair and pre­dictable ba­sic an­nu­al com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment bud­get–an­nu­al ac­cess to an eq­ui­table share of the na­tion­al (or lo­cal) bud­get for cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­tures aimed at com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment?

Should the Ma­son Hall com­mu­ni­ty have the right to act as a com­mu­ni­ty when us­ing its de­vel­op­ment bud­get? Should the Ma­son Hall com­mu­ni­ty have the right to for­mal op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­flu­ence de­ci­sions made by the To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment?

Should the Ma­son Hall com­mu­ni­ty have ac­cess to a na­tion­al gov­ern­ment that is prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed sim­i­lar to the To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment to en­sure that it can ad­e­quate­ly pe­ti­tion with re­spect to its in­ter­ests when de­ci­sions are be­ing made at the na­tion­al lev­el that will af­fect the com­mu­ni­ty?

Should the Ma­son Hall com­mu­ni­ty have the right to an elect­ed Sen­ate with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the spa­tial eq­ui­ty of ac­cess to de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties across To­ba­go?

Vanus re­ports on the five com­mu­ni­ties gen­er­al­ly as fol­lows:

They view pro­vi­sions for self-de­ter­mi­na­tion as vi­tal to their de­vel­op­ment.

They in­sist that their com­mu­ni­ties could on­ly de­vel­op through self-in­ter­est­ed col­lab­o­ra­tive in­vest­ment and work that in­clude civic lead­ers, en­tre­pre­neurs, ac­tivists and in­volved cit­i­zens who could un­lock the pow­er of com­mu­ni­ty en­ter­prise; pro­fes­sion­als with spe­cial rel­e­vant knowl­edge, skills, and self-con­fi­dence who are ded­i­cat­ed to im­prov­ing var­i­ous as­pects of com­mu­ni­ty life, and to mak­ing their com­mu­ni­ties stronger and more re­silient in so­cial and eco­nom­ic terms; and use of im­prov­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to in­form and in­flu­ence de­ci­sions made else­where that af­fect their de­vel­op­ment ef­forts.

They bring var­ied in­ter­ests and en­dow­ments of re­sources and skills, in­clud­ing pro­fes­sion­als with spe­cial knowl­edge–com­mu­ni­ty so­cial work­ers and spe­cial­ists in the fol­low­ing fields: child and adult ed­u­ca­tion; sports, mu­sic and oth­er cre­ative in­dus­try; youth de­vel­op­ment and crime pre­ven­tion; health care; en­vi­ron­men­tal ed­u­ca­tion; lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment plan­ning; com­mu­ni­ty project de­sign, fi­nanc­ing, and im­ple­men­ta­tion; and the like.

They think that com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers are the ul­ti­mate ex­perts in their own lives and cir­cum­stances, and that they can de­ter­mine the di­rec­tions and di­men­sions of com­mu­ni­ty in­te­gra­tion in­to the wider lo­cal, na­tion­al, and in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment process­es.

They think they can fill many re­source gaps by trad­ing with each oth­er.

Be­yond all this, the fo­cus groups think that there is need for a con­sti­tu­tion­al de­sign that takes ac­count of the gains that can come from de­vel­op­ment of com­mu­ni­ty en­tre­pre­neur­ship and their ca­pac­i­ty to at­tract en­tre­pre­neurs and work­ers with lev­el 4 skills to op­er­ate in the safe zones they can cre­ate. They specif­i­cal­ly want to have the right to in­flu­ence de­ci­sions made in the new To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment (now the THA).

They want it to be re­designed based on the prin­ci­ples of leg­isla­tive over­sight of the ex­ec­u­tive, joint de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and the rule of law, in­clud­ing ac­cess to an elect­ed Sen­ate in To­ba­go with spe­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­dress the spa­tial eq­ui­ty of ac­cess to de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty across To­ba­go and to en­sure that no com­mu­ni­ties are left be­hind.

Vanus tells me that the Ma­son Hall fo­cus group in par­tic­u­lar was, through him, send­ing their views specif­i­cal­ly to the Prime Min­is­ter.

(To be con­tin­ued)