Re­cent­ly, there was a mo­tion by the mi­nor­i­ty in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) which called for a team to be formed, com­pris­ing mem­bers of both the THA ex­ec­u­tive and mi­nor­i­ty coun­cils, to pur­sue full leg­isla­tive in­de­pen­dence with­out the in­ter­ven­tion of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The mo­tion, which was pi­lot­ed by Far­ley Au­gus­tine, sought to adopt a uni­fied To­ba­go po­si­tion that will force the Gov­ern­ment to grant or at least al­low To­ba­go to make laws to gov­ern it­self as part of the wider push for in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment, some­thing the is­land has been re­quest­ing for many years.

There is no doubt that To­ba­go has to de­ter­mine whether it wants to change the na­ture of the re­la­tion­ship it has with Trinidad. But at the same time, it must ful­ly un­der­stand that this is a re­la­tion­ship in which the peo­ple of Trinidad al­so have a stake.

If there is to be in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go, then sure­ly that is a mat­ter that must be ful­ly ven­ti­lat­ed in the Par­lia­ment of the coun­try to en­sure that all MPs have a say in how that fu­ture re­la­tion­ship will look.

For ex­am­ple, does in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment mean that the an­nu­al bud­get of $2.5 bil­lion is no longer go­ing to be re­quired to be sent from Trinidad? Or does it mean that a new for­mu­la has to be worked out to en­sure that To­ba­go shares the eco­nom­ic cost for things like the in­ter-is­land fer­ry or air ser­vices? Who will al­so be re­spon­si­ble for pay­ing the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) or the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T for ser­vices?

These are all re­al ques­tions that must be an­swered if and when the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go is changed.

We know that there are those who are pro­po­nents of not just in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment but al­so in­de­pen­dence and they ar­gue that To­ba­go has been stymied in its de­vel­op­ment by Trinidad. These lob­by­ists al­so ar­gue that a lot of the oil and gas re­sources that fu­el the coun­try's econ­o­my comes from what they con­sid­er to be To­ba­go's ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters. This, of course, is not true. A sim­ple look at the ge­og­ra­phy of T&T would show you that most of the oil and gas come from off­shore along the East and West coast of Trinidad as well as on-land pro­duc­tion.

It is un­for­tu­nate that the pro­po­nents of in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment make such an ar­gu­ment about the re­sources that both is­lands share, es­pe­cial­ly when one con­sid­ers that on­ly re­cent­ly was oil and gas dis­cov­ered North of To­ba­go when com­pared to more than 100 years of oil in Trinidad.

This de­bate has the pos­si­bil­i­ty of be­ing frac­tious and must be han­dled with great care. There must al­so be a clear un­der­stand­ing of what the con­se­quences are go­ing to be for both is­lands and with an ac­cep­tance that the peo­ple of Rio Claro, Ma­yaro, Ch­agua­nas and Cou­va have as much stake in this as the peo­ple of Scar­bor­ough and Char­lot­teville.