Sto­ries by Gail Alexan­der

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine’s re­cent pre­sen­ta­tion of a mo­tion on a Gov­ern­ment of To­ba­go has been de­scribed by the PNM as an at­tempt to pick a fight with Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to di­vide the twin is­land state.

Ques­tions were raised by THA PNM leader Joel Mor­ris who dis­put­ed the mo­tion pre­sent­ed by Au­gus­tine in THA’s leg­is­la­ture last Thurs­day. The mo­tion called for the “Gov­ern­ment of To­ba­go” to take full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and au­thor­i­ty for the man­age­ment of all mat­ters con­cern­ing the is­land’s en­vi­ron­mentt.

Au­gus­tine said the mo­tion was big­ger than the en­vi­ron­ment and there would be many more mo­tions like it. He cit­ed ex­cerpts from the THA Act and said there are some who try­ing to mis­lead in mis­in­ter­pret­ing what the Act ac­tu­al­ly says.

Au­gus­tine said his team nev­er ar­gued that Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment doesn’t have a right to make law or to es­tab­lish pol­i­cy where none ex­ists cur­rent­ly in To­ba­go.

“What we’ve con­tend­ed is that the ex­e­cu­tion of any such pol­i­cy, once it’s re­lat­ed to the Fifth Sched­ule, must be by THA,” he ex­plained

Au­gus­tine said some statu­to­ry agen­cies refuse to of­fer ser­vices in To­ba­go and the THA had been neg­li­gent on han­dling oth­ers, such as Town and Coun­try Plan­ning He claimed there is a “house-slave men­tal­i­ty”, some want to stymie To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment and peo­ple liked it on­ly when To­bag­o­ni­ans were “danc­ing bare­foot”.

The Chief Sec­re­tary said the THA would fight with full force for To­ba­go “and if that means be­ing rude with those who dis­re­spect To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my, we’ll fight them!”

He said notwith­stand­ing a Prime Min­is­ter who was To­bag­on­ian by birth and “clear­ly be­came a Tri­ni by boat” and de­spite hav­ing To­bag­on­ian Cab­i­net mem­bers, the “dis­re­spect con­tin­ues.” He claimed sec­re­taries were in­vit­ed to cer­tain things and un­in­vit­ed.” He said no cit­i­zen from any part of T&T had any au­thor­i­ty to dis­re­spect the THA.

Au­gus­tine said To­ba­go can’t “make noise” for more au­ton­o­my if it wasn’t op­er­a­tional­is­ing Fifth Sched­ule pow­ers. He added that he wasn’t afraid of any “neo colo­nial mas­sa in Trinidad.” – dey must know dey place!”

Mor­ris agreed that To­ba­go should have im­proved au­thor­i­ty but said that should be “for all the oth­er ar­eas of ad­min­is­tra­tion pro­posed in the To­ba­go Au­ton­o­my Bill that Far­ley and his UNC friends re­fused to sup­port.”

He ques­tioned the rea­son for the mo­tion and felt the THA ad­min­is­tra­tion was pick­ing a fight with Gov­ern­ment to di­vide To­bag­o­ni­ans and Trinida­di­ans and sep­a­rate the twin is­land re­pub­lic.

“Pick­ing fights of which there is lit­tle to no le­gal ba­sis, wast­ing scarce fi­nan­cial re­sources, will not take us nowhere ex­cept the cour­t­house,” Mor­ris warn­ing.

In re­ject­ing the mo­tion, he added: “What this ad­min­is­tra­tion is at­tempt­ing to do is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly un­law­ful, po­lit­i­cal­ly de­cep­tive, di­vi­sive and dan­ger­ous. While the As­sem­bly en­joys wide ar­eas of ad­min­is­tra­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty un­der the THA Act’s Fifth Sched­ule, those re­spon­si­bil­i­ties can­not con­flict or su­per­sede any oth­er re­lat­ed law of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Con­sti­tu­tion.

“Not on­ly does this il­le­git­i­mate Gov­ern­ment of To­ba­go in­tend re­mov­ing the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency, they’re seek­ing to re­place it with their own in­sti­tu­tion. Is it their strate­gic in­ten­tion, via a mo­tion, to cre­ate par­al­lel reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies for every area un­der the Fifth Sched­ule? Was the EMA tar­get­ted as they had warned the THA about the stage in the sea?” Mor­ris asked.

“They can re­fer to them­selves as the gov­ern­ment of in­de­pen­dents, how­ev­er the Con­sti­tu­tion Sec­tion 141A (1) states there shall be an As­sem­bly for To­ba­go.”

Mor­ris re­ferred to a 2015 judge­ment which states that the THA can­not im­ple­ment pol­i­cy and law that is in­con­sis­tent with Cab­i­net pol­i­cy or na­tion­al law.

Not­ing the pub­lic health or­di­nance en­act­ed dur­ing COVID-19, Mor­ris won­dered if Au­gus­tine had­de­cid­ed then as he had “now that we big, bad and name man and we nah lis­sen to no­body from Trinidad, where would we be at this point?”