At what age do you tell an in­no­cent child that there is no San­ta Claus? When and how can you im­press up­on To­bag­o­ni­ans that present­ly there will be great dif­fi­cul­ty to fi­nan­cial­ly fa­cil­i­tate the dream of full in­ter­nal self-gov­er­nance?

Even be­fore COVID-19 re­vealed its ug­ly ru­inous self, there was in­suf­fi­cient mon­ey to just hand give to To­ba­go.

Is in­ter­nal self-gov­er­nance the equiv­a­lent of an overindulged teenag­er crav­ing a Mer­cedes Benz when all you can af­ford, at best, is a mo­tor­cy­cle?

Con­sid­er the dire state of glob­al tourism in this pan­dem­ic. Planes are ground­ed, bor­ders are closed and air­line staff are be­ing off loaded in their thou­sands.

Tourism is a ca­su­al­ty of the pan­dem­ic as world economies strug­gle to keep breath­ing.

Yes, To­ba­go is out­stand­ing­ly beau­ti­ful. But it is al­so the fur­thest south of the Caribbean is­lands. Tourism in To­ba­go was nev­er on par with Ja­maica, Grena­da, St Lu­cia, the Ba­hamas or the Cay­man is­lands.

To­ba­go al­so needs sev­er­al five star ho­tels, so let us all get very re­al in­deed.

T&T has al­ways had the great­est num­bers of vis­i­tors com­ing from Amer­i­ca, which is un­der siege with thou­sands of COVID-19 deaths.

This let­ter is not about Trinida­di­ans be­ing un­car­ing of the To­bag­on­ian dream of in­ter­nal self-gov­er­nance. This is not about not want­i­ng to pan­der to the dream of To­ba­go be­ing even­tu­al­ly an­oth­er Sin­ga­pore or Mona­co.

This is about the po­lit­i­cal re­al­i­ty that there is no fi­nan­cial San­ta Claus sit­ting pool­side in Trinidad just wait­ing to be called.

But, was there ever?

Lynette Joseph

Diego Mar­tin

via email