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Wednesday, August 20, 2025

This is NOT an autonomy bill!

by

Dr Winford James
1580 days ago
20210425
Dr Winford James

Dr Winford James

What­ev­er the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) (To­ba­go Self-gov­ern­ment) Bill, 2021 is in­tend­ed to be, it is def­i­nite­ly NOT an au­ton­o­my bill, and I will show you why. This lat­est bill in the on­go­ing saga of the at­tempt to fix To­ba­go’s gov­er­nance struc­ture, while pur­port­ing to recog­nise ‘equal­i­ty of sta­tus’ be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad ‘with­in the uni­tary State of Trinidad and To­ba­go’ and en­able ‘the right of the peo­ple of To­ba­go to de­ter­mine, in To­ba­go, their po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, so­cial and cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment’ falls far short of what is need­ed.

Which is dis­as­trous on a num­ber of grounds af­ter some 137 years of union. I pro­ceed on the as­sump­tion, as does the bill, that au­ton­o­my and self-gov­ern­ment are terms speak­ing to the same state of af­fairs and the lat­ter is re­alised when a ter­ri­to­ry (such as To­ba­go) gov­erns it­self and, there­fore, is not un­der the con­trol of a high­er lev­el of gov­ern­ment.

One ground is that the bill places the gov­er­nance arrange­ments in the Con­sti­tu­tion of T&T—a mech­a­nism that is not con­trolled by To­ba­go but, ul­ti­mate­ly, by 39 Trinida­di­ans in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and a large ma­jor­i­ty of Trinida­di­ans in the Sen­ate. If, af­ter the pas­sage of such a bill, To­bag­o­ni­ans should ever want to up­grade their gov­er­nance to fa­cil­i­tate their free­dom and de­vel­op­ment, they would have to go to Trinidad for per­mis­sion to do so. That must be the an­tithe­sis of equal sta­tus and self-gov­ern­ment and is ac­cord­ing­ly quite in­tol­er­a­ble.

A sec­ond ground is that the bill ex­cludes To­ba­go’s mar­itime bound­aries from the de­f­i­n­i­tion it pro­vides for the is­land. The bill de­clares that “[f]or the pur­pos­es of sec­tions 53, 75A and Chap­ter 11A, a ref­er­ence to ‘To­ba­go’ means the Is­land of To­ba­go, Lit­tle To­ba­go, St Giles Is­land, Mar­ble Is­land, Goat Is­land, Sis­ters Is­land and the in­ter­nal and in­land wa­ters of To­ba­go.” It re­jects the de­f­i­n­i­tion in the cur­rent THA Act (40 of 1996)—which is that To­ba­go’s mar­itime bound­ary is at six miles from the main­land base­line—and fo­cus­es su­per­flu­ous­ly on the in­ter­nal wa­ters. It dis­re­spects the in­ter­na­tion­al de­f­i­n­i­tion, in these kinds of mat­ters, of a me­di­an or equidis­tant line be­tween the base­lines of To­ba­go and Trinidad.

This is a loose state of af­fairs in which the pro­posed TIG (To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment) is de­nied their fair and de­sired nat­ur­al ge­o­graph­i­cal ju­ris­dic­tion over the is­land. If you have a prop­er­ty that in­cludes off­shore wa­ters but you are de­nied own­er­ship of the off­shore wa­ters, aren’t you be­ing de­nied ac­cess to, and ex­ploita­tion of, the wealth in those wa­ters? Sure­ly, the ab­sence of To­ba­go’s nat­ur­al mar­itime bound­aries is ei­ther an un­for­tu­nate over­sight or a de­lib­er­ate bar­ri­er to To­ba­go’s right to a spe­cif­ic for­mu­la and a pre­dictable arrange­ment for fi­nanc­ing To­ba­go’s push for de­vel­op­ment with­in the con­text, and on the be­half, of the na­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

A third ground is that the bill as­signs the THA (To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly) two pre­scribed sched­ules of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties—a 4th Sched­ule of ar­eas for law mak­ing and a 5th Sched­ule of ar­eas for ad­min­is­tra­tion—while leav­ing all re­main­ing ar­eas of gov­er­nance, in­clud­ing re­serve re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, to an en­ti­ty called Trinidad and To­ba­go, which can on­ly be Trinidad. This is the op­po­site of what is re­quired. To be tru­ly self-gov­ern­ing, To­ba­go must pre­scribe what it wants the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to do to fa­cil­i­tate its de­vel­op­ment. And while the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment—as dis­tinct from Trinidad—must have its own pack­age of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, it makes good sense for To­ba­go to have the right of con­cur­rence in re­spect of some of those re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

But on this mat­ter, the framers of the bill faced a co­nun­drum which they ei­ther could not, or were afraid to, re­solve: how to set up self-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments for one of the is­lands in the union with­out do­ing so for the oth­er. So they copped out by al­low­ing ‘Trinidad and To­ba­go’ to be ‘Trinidad’ by de­fault and hop­ing we wouldn’t make a fuss about it.

On this mat­ter of the Sched­ules, at least two fur­ther ob­ser­va­tions need to be made. One is that the prin­ci­ple used to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween the 4th and 5th Sched­ules is opaque, if it ex­ists at all. And a sec­ond is that the 5th Sched­ule has been re­con­sti­tut­ed—some ar­eas have been re­moved and/or ad­just­ed, oth­ers have been in­clud­ed—with­out the mat­ter be­ing specif­i­cal­ly drawn to our at­ten­tion in the Ex­plana­to­ry Notes, mak­ing us sus­pect a cer­tain sneak­i­ness.

A fourth ground is that the bill com­pounds fun­da­men­tal flaws in the cur­rent THA Act by i) pro­vid­ing for ex­ec­u­tive gov­ern­ment un­der rules which al­low the Pre­mier to es­tab­lish an Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil that is a ma­jor­i­ty of the THA; and ii) lack­ing pro­vi­sions for rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment (eg, ef­fec­tive leg­isla­tive over­sight of all ex­ec­u­tive func­tions and ad­e­quate op­por­tu­ni­ties to pe­ti­tion the gov­ern­ment to in­tro­duce laws and poli­cies for fa­cil­i­tat­ing suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion in com­pe­ti­tion).

There’s much more to ex­pose, but suf­fice it to say that, over­all, the bill re­flects lit­tle or no un­der­stand­ing that au­ton­o­my re­al­ly re­sides in a Bill of Rights and that the pros­e­cu­tion of these rights should not be con­strained by some high­er body or lev­el of gov­ern­ment in the union.

(To be con­tin­ued)

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