Dr Win­ford James

Max Al­bert and I con­tin­ue our dis­cus­sion on the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my ques­tion.

Last week, we ex­am­ined what we de­scribed as “the miss­ing math­e­mat­ics” sur­round­ing To­ba­go’s fis­cal al­lo­ca­tion. That dis­cus­sion nat­u­ral­ly leads to an ear­li­er and more fun­da­men­tal ques­tion. Be­fore one can un­der­stand how the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mis­sion ar­rived at its rec­om­men­da­tion of 4.03 per cent to 6.9 per cent, one must first un­der­stand the con­sti­tu­tion­al case that was placed be­fore it.

That case is con­tained in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s State­ment of Case, a doc­u­ment which, in our re­spect­ful view, ought to be es­sen­tial read­ing for every To­bag­on­ian.

Much has been writ­ten about the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mis­sion, but com­par­a­tive­ly lit­tle has been writ­ten about the in­tel­lec­tu­al foun­da­tion up­on which those rec­om­men­da­tions rest­ed. Yet the State­ment of Case demon­strates that To­ba­go’s claim was nev­er con­ceived as a sim­ple dis­pute over mon­ey. It was con­struct­ed as a con­sti­tu­tion­al, le­gal, his­tor­i­cal, and de­vel­op­men­tal ar­gu­ment de­signed to ex­plain why To­ba­go re­quired a dif­fer­ent fis­cal re­la­tion­ship with the State.

The struc­ture of the doc­u­ment is it­self re­veal­ing. It be­gins, not with per­cent­ages, but with his­to­ry. It re­turns to the Union of Trinidad and To­ba­go and re­minds the read­er that fi­nan­cial arrange­ments have oc­cu­pied the cen­tre of To­ba­go’s con­sti­tu­tion­al dis­course since 1889. In­deed, the doc­u­ment records that To­ba­go’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives ar­gued that rev­enues raised on the is­land should be ex­pend­ed for To­ba­go’s ad­min­is­tra­tion and should not sim­ply be ab­sorbed in­to the gen­er­al rev­enues of the unit­ed colony.

That his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive is not in­ci­den­tal. It es­tab­lish­es an im­por­tant propo­si­tion: the ques­tion of To­ba­go’s fi­nances did not be­gin with the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mis­sion or even with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act, 1996. It is part of a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion ex­tend­ing over more than a cen­tu­ry.

Hav­ing es­tab­lished that his­tor­i­cal foun­da­tion, the State­ment of Case turns to law.

Here the ar­gu­ment be­comes par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pelling. The doc­u­ment re­minds the Com­mis­sion that sec­tion 25 of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act, 1996 im­posed up­on the As­sem­bly re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for for­mu­lat­ing and im­ple­ment­ing pol­i­cy across the Fifth Sched­ule, em­brac­ing 33 sub­stan­tive ar­eas of gov­ern­ment.

The im­pli­ca­tion is un­mis­tak­able. Con­sti­tu­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties can­not be dis­charged with­out cor­re­spond­ing fi­nan­cial ca­pac­i­ty. To im­pose statu­to­ry du­ties while with­hold­ing the re­sources nec­es­sary to per­form them is to di­min­ish the ef­fec­tive­ness of the law it­self.

The State­ment of Case then moves be­yond con­sti­tu­tion­al the­o­ry in­to de­vel­op­ment eco­nom­ics.

Short­ly af­ter as­sum­ing of­fice in 1997, the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil com­mis­sioned the prepa­ra­tion of a long-term de­vel­op­ment plan for To­ba­go. That plan iden­ti­fied strate­gic pil­lars in­tend­ed to trans­form To­ba­go’s econ­o­my through in­no­va­tion, ac­tive gov­ern­ment, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion, and the cre­ation of in­sti­tu­tion­al, tech­no­log­i­cal, and ed­u­ca­tion­al con­di­tions ca­pa­ble of stim­u­lat­ing en­tre­pre­neur­ship and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

This as­pect of the doc­u­ment de­serves far greater at­ten­tion than it has re­ceived. It demon­strates that To­ba­go’s bud­get sub­mis­sions were not iso­lat­ed re­quests pre­pared from year to year. They were de­signed to fi­nance an in­te­grat­ed de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy. In oth­er words, the bud­get dis­pute was in­sep­a­ra­ble from the is­land’s long-term eco­nom­ic vi­sion.

The State­ment of Case al­so chal­lenges whether the statu­to­ry con­sid­er­a­tions gov­ern­ing To­ba­go’s al­lo­ca­tions were be­ing prop­er­ly ap­plied.

It points to mat­ters ex­press­ly recog­nised by Par­lia­ment it­self: To­ba­go’s phys­i­cal sep­a­ra­tion by sea, its dis­tance from the prin­ci­pal cen­tres of na­tion­al growth, the ab­sence of the mul­ti­pli­er ef­fects gen­er­at­ed by in­vest­ment in Trinidad, re­strict­ed em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, and the prac­ti­cal dif­fi­cul­ty ex­pe­ri­enced by To­bag­o­ni­ans in ac­cess­ing ma­jor ed­u­ca­tion­al, cul­tur­al, and sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties lo­cat­ed in Trinidad. The As­sem­bly ar­gued that these con­sid­er­a­tions had not been fair­ly re­flect­ed in the al­lo­ca­tion process.

Im­por­tant­ly, the doc­u­ment sup­ports its con­sti­tu­tion­al ar­gu­ments with ev­i­dence.

For the fi­nan­cial year 1999/2000, de­vel­op­ment es­ti­mates ex­ceed­ing one bil­lion dol­lars were re­duced dra­mat­i­cal­ly by par­lia­men­tary ap­pro­pri­a­tions, while re­cur­rent re­quests were sim­i­lar­ly un­der­fund­ed. The state­ment fur­ther records that on­ly a small pro­por­tion of ap­pro­pri­at­ed de­vel­op­ment funds had ac­tu­al­ly been re­leased well in­to the fi­nan­cial year, cre­at­ing ob­vi­ous dif­fi­cul­ties for plan­ning and im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Nor did the As­sem­bly con­fine its case to an­nu­al trans­fers from the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund. It ar­gued that ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance re­quired ac­cess to broad­er fis­cal in­stru­ments, in­clud­ing bor­row­ing, grants, rev­enue col­lec­tion, and in­vest­ment in­come. The doc­u­ment con­tend­ed that ad­min­is­tra­tive ob­sta­cles pre­vent­ed the As­sem­bly from mak­ing full use of those in­stru­ments, there­by frus­trat­ing the per­for­mance of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties im­posed up­on it by law.

Equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant is what the ap­pen­dices re­veal. They con­tain de­vel­op­ment and re­cur­rent bud­get sub­mis­sions, let­ters ex­changed be­tween Chief Sec­re­tary Ho­choy Charles and the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, and the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al, pro­pos­als for grant and loan fi­nanc­ing, and Cab­i­net doc­u­men­ta­tion.

These are not pe­riph­er­al doc­u­ments. They are ev­i­dence of a sus­tained con­sti­tu­tion­al di­a­logue car­ried out through re­search, cor­re­spon­dence, and in­sti­tu­tion­al per­sis­tence.

Every day, To­bag­o­ni­ans rise, go to work, at­tend school, and con­duct busi­ness with­out ful­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al ef­fort that un­der­pins many of the in­sti­tu­tions they now take for grant­ed. Many know the con­clu­sion. Few know the case. Few­er still have read the doc­u­ment that sought to de­fine To­ba­go’s con­sti­tu­tion­al and de­vel­op­men­tal po­si­tion be­fore the na­tion. That is why the State­ment of Case de­serves to be re­dis­cov­ered—not mere­ly as a his­tor­i­cal record, but as an in­tel­lec­tu­al frame­work for fu­ture con­sti­tu­tion­al de­bate.

In our next ar­ti­cle, we shall turn to the work of the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mis­sion it­self. Hav­ing ex­am­ined the con­sti­tu­tion­al foun­da­tion placed be­fore it, we shall ask the ques­tion that re­mains unan­swered more than two decades lat­er: how did the Com­mis­sion move from a sta­tis­ti­cal start­ing point of 4.03 per cent to a rec­om­mend­ed range of 4.03 per cent to 6.9 per cent?

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.