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.