Last Wednesday, President Christine Kangaloo addressed the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) in a special session, and she stated that the matter of autonomy for Tobago is a critical matter for the development of T&T.
According to her, history will not absolve us if we do not accomplish autonomy for Tobago. In presenting this point of view, the President was putting pressure on the Government to resume debate in Parliament on the subject.
However, it is not as simple as that. There are powerful interests in Port-of-Spain that do not think that Tobago should have that level of autonomy to undo the shackles that bind it to the dictates of the Central Government.
Also, politically there has been a tortuous history of seeking to maintain the dominance from PoS that was imposed by the Order-in-Council of 1898 that reduced Tobago to being a ward of Trinidad and Tobago. Additionally, the laws of Tobago were set aside and the laws of Trinidad became the existing laws of the colony of T&T.
The fact that there is now a delay on the issue of Tobago’s autonomy has to do with the loss of the THA by the PNM in 2021.
The autonomy bills were stalled because of the outcome of the THA elections in December 2021. If the PNM had won the elections, the process would have been revived and continued in an attempt to smear the UNC whose votes are needed to get the constitutional amendments through the House of Representatives and the Senate by suggesting that they were not in favour of autonomy for Tobago.
That political football could no longer be played after the 14-1 outcome of the December 2021 THA elections and the game was stopped. After the 6-6 THA elections tie in January 2021, the Government was still very interested in making the autonomy happen when they went to Parliament and used their simple majority to enact legislation that increased the number of seats in the THA from 12 to 15. That was the same number as specified in the autonomy bills in the Parliament.
That momentum came to a screeching halt on December 6, 2021, with the 14-1 outcome and nothing has been heard since other than the bills have been saved from one session of Parliament to another. The President praised the act of extending the life of these bills from session to session as an act of willingness to continue the debate.
The political turmoil in the THA has not resulted in an outcome that the PNM would like and so there is little likelihood that there will be any restart to the process because the final outcome will not favour the PNM before 2025. Furthermore, the content of these bills was already deemed unsatisfactory by the former PDP members of the THA who have since formed the Tobago People’s Party (TPP). Additionally, the Prime Minister has said that he has not got over the public spat between himself and the Chief Secretary as yet. Until such time as he gets over it, or he gets a favourable outcome, there is nothing that will be happening with those bills.
The PNM will not be handing over control to an autonomous THA dominated by Farley Augustine and the TPP.
Unfortunately, autonomy for Tobago gets caught up in the politics of the relationship between Scarborough and PoS. The President quoted quite liberally from the speech made in the House of Representatives in 1977 by ANR Robinson in his motion for self-government for Tobago. It was refreshing to hear the words that were recited. But the backdrop to that was bitterness by Eric Williams that Robinson had defeated him in Tobago.
According to the late Selwyn Ryan writing in the journal Caribbean Studies Vol 19, Nos 1&2, April/June 1979 in an article titled: Trinidad and Tobago: The General Elections of 1976, he said the following:
“Waxing emotional, Williams told Tobagonians: If you want to go, go. We are not holding you. I’m not going to send any Coast Guard or ship or army there to hold them back. What for? They want to go, go!” (pp 21-22).
Williams’ bitterness over that defeat would colour Trinidad/Tobago relations for decades to come because Tobagonian voting behaviour had nothing to do with the traditionally recited villain of race.
Prof Hamid Ghany is Professor of Constitutional Affairs and Parliamentary Studies at the University of the West Indies (UWI). He was also appointed an Honorary Professor of UWI upon his retirement in October 2021. He continues his research and publications and also does some teaching at UWI.