Dr Win­ford James

Have you seen the let­ter sent to Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine by an out­fit called CEP Lim­it­ed, invit­ing him to at­tend a fo­cus group meet­ing on the con­struc­tion of ‘a guide jet­ty’ at the Scar­bor­ough Port?

The let­ter, dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 15, 2023, in­forms the CS that CEP Lim­it­ed was se­lect­ed by the em­ploy­er, NID­CO (Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny) as the con­sul­tant to ‘pro­vide all the nec­es­sary en­gi­neer­ing ser­vices for the de­vel­op­ment of the con­cep­tu­al de­signs’ and was con­cerned to meet with ‘all stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing oth­er Gov­ern­ment agen­cies and rel­e­vant in­ter­est groups with a view to de­ter­min­ing their con­cerns with re­spect to the rec­om­mend­ed works.’

The jet­ty guide was in­tend­ed to ‘in­crease the berthing in­fra­struc­ture at the Port and the pur­pose of the meet­ing was to ‘in­tro­duce and present de­tails on the project and ob­tain valu­able feed­back from the com­mu­ni­ty and stake­hold­ers to ap­ply to the project’s de­vel­op­ment.’

As NID­CO’s con­sul­tant, CEP Lim­it­ed was mak­ing the an­nounce­ment about both the in­tro­duc­tion and the in­vi­ta­tion to Chief Sec­re­tary.

The nerve of the Gov­ern­ment. And NID­CO. And CEP.

They bla­tant­ly ig­nore the House of As­sem­bly and its chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer about this project, then have the gall to lump that of­fi­cer with the rest of the stake­hold­ers in their fo­cus group meet­ing. The Gov­ern­ment is clear­ly and unashamed­ly do­ing its damnedest to make the As­sem­bly and Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil look small and to ex­pand their ju­ris­dic­tion­al in­flu­ence over the To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment and To­bag­on­ian space.

It must be point­ed out, again and again and again, that the coun­try’s Gov­ern­ment/Cab­i­net chose to use, not its prin­ci­pal po­lit­i­cal of­fi­cers to com­mu­ni­cate in­for­ma­tion on this new project, but an un­elect­ed state agency and its equal­ly un­elect­ed con­sul­tant. These two par­ties were used to in­tro­duce to our Chief Sec­re­tary–yes, in­tro­duce!–a project that was pro­posed to be put down in the To­bag­on­ian geopo­lit­i­cal space.

As Bas­deo Pan­day would say over a slight such as this if he were still Prime Min­is­ter, ‘That’s in­sult­ing!’

The in­sult de­rives from the fact, un­der cur­rent As­sem­bly leg­is­la­tion at area of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty 16, the As­sem­bly has ju­ris­dic­tion over ‘in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing air and sea trans­porta­tion, wharves and air­ports and pub­lic util­i­ties.’ So that the Gov­ern­ment is act­ing il­le­gal­ly in ap­pro­pri­at­ing the con­struc­tion of the jet­ty guide at the Scar­bor­ough wharves. And it is com­pound­ing this er­ror by us­ing low-lev­el per­son­nel to treat with the mat­ter.

The Gov­ern­ment’s mas­sive dis­re­spect in this mat­ter re­calls a sim­i­lar be­hav­iour in the con­struc­tion of the new in­ter­na­tion­al air­port at Crown Point. The dis­re­spect is clear­ly in­grained in its po­lit­i­cal modus operan­di.

It would have been far more just for the na­tion­al Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide the As­sem­bly with the funds to op­er­a­tionalise the DIQUD Sec­re­tary’s plans for the Scar­bor­ough Port or, at the very least, to col­lab­o­rate with the As­sem­bly on the de­sign, fi­nanc­ing, and con­struc­tion of the guide in ac­cor­dance with cur­rent As­sem­bly law.

But where To­bag­on­ian au­ton­o­my is con­cerned, there will al­ways be mo­ments for queru­lous pol­i­tics. So far au­ton­o­my has been sub­ject to Trinida­di­an re­cal­ci­trance. Gov­ern­ment af­ter gov­ern­ment, but par­tic­u­lar­ly PNM gov­ern­ments, has want­ed to run things in To­ba­go, whether the Gov­ern­ment in Scar­bor­ough is po­lit­i­cal­ly iden­ti­cal to the one in Port-of-Spain or not.

Ac­cord­ing­ly, there is a strong sus­pi­cion that the na­tion­al Gov­ern­ment, which is in prac­ti­cal terms Trinidad, does not re­al­ly want to de­fine To­ba­go but to con­trol all of the is­land, es­pe­cial­ly its ma­rine space un­der cur­rent law. And min­i­mal­is­ing acts like con­struct­ing the jet­ty guide and treat­ing the As­sem­bly as if it is not the Gov­ern­ment of To­ba­go in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion process are cal­cu­lat­ed to pre­serve, if not ad­vance, Trinidad’s am­bi­tions.

But there is al­so a strong sus­pi­cion about the se­ri­ous­ness of the cur­rent As­sem­bly on the busi­ness of au­ton­o­my. The As­sem­bly is go­ing on 15 months now, but it has said pre­cious lit­tle to To­bag­o­ni­ans about au­ton­o­my, pro­vid­ing in­stead a mas­sive dose of po­lit­i­cal commesse and a wor­ry­ing ex­clu­sion of To­bag­o­ni­ans from its pol­i­cy­mak­ing process.

If you are won­der­ing if Au­gus­tine at­tend­ed the meet­ing (on March 1), he didn’t, pre­fer­ring to send the rel­e­vant sec­re­tary, who sent his coastal en­gi­neer. But the Mi­crosoft Teams link was de­fec­tive when I last checked, so they may have missed the meet­ing.

Sure­ly, prov­i­dence could not have been teach­ing the Gov­ern­ment good man­ners?

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 al­so has writ­ten hun­dreds of columns for all the ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try. He can be reached at jay­win­ster@gmail.com