Michelle Loubon

For­mer MP for To­ba­go East Ren­nie Du­mas de­scribes the new Min­istry of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment as a "cu­ri­ous crea­ture."

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Du­mas said, "It would seem weird (that) the ad­vo­cates of To­ba­go would now pro­pose a Min­istry of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment as a cen­tral gov­ern­ment fea­ture and in­sti­tu­tion. It is a cu­ri­ous crea­ture. Ac­cord­ing to the sched­ule of de­vel­op­ment, a num­ber of de­vel­op­ment is­sues re­dound to the purview of the THA ac­cord­ing to the present sched­ule. "It rais­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty of co­op­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the To­ba­go House of As­sem­by (THA) and the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. Du­mas sees the pos­si­bil­i­ty of con­flict where the Cen­tral Bank will be seek­ing to dom­i­nate the de­vel­op­ment process in To­ba­go.

"Maybe, pos­si­bly, side step­ping the THA and that's cause for con­cern. It might be side­step­ping the mean­ing of the in­sti­tu­tion called the THA. Re­gard­less of the af­fil­i­a­tion of the gov­er­nance, the THA has a unique place in the coun­try's gov­er­nance with re­spect to To­ba­go and that should be re­spect­ed by all." He said the roles be­tween the THA and the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment should not be con­fused. "We went to elect a gov­ern­ment and when we elect the THA we deal with man­agers of the THA. We can't con­fuse the roles and the rel­a­tive sov­er­eign­ty of each body. It should not be con­sid­ered a threat by the gov­ern­ment that emerges at the na­tion­al lev­el," said Du­mas.

On the flip side, Du­mas re­mained con­fi­dent the prop­er ground­work for To­ba­go's de­vel­op­ment had been laid.

"We have laid a ground­work in terms of what we ex­pect. It would have iden­ti­fied what we were do­ing in schools, in­fra­struc­ture and land re­form all of which is be­ing laid out." Du­mas says trust will en­sure the wel­fare of To­bag­o­ni­ans as of para­mount im­por­tance by TOP leader Ash­worth Jack. "One has to trust. Since the TOP was a sig­nif­i­cant part­ner, they would en­sure those things con­tin­ue. It means a lot sym­bol­i­cal­ly in terms of the gov­er­nance of To­ba­go. "Any­thing that threat­ens the in­tegri­ty of the in­sti­tu­tions and ac­cess to ap­pro­pri­ate fi­nan­cial and per­son­nel and strate­gic gov­er­nance space would be re­ject­ed by the peo­ple," added Du­mas.

He said Jack and THA Leader Orville Lon­don sat and de­cid­ed what was the next ap­pro­pri­ate move for the gov­er­nance of To­ba­go. They met the po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties and there was an agree­ment on what moves were ap­par­ent to ad­dress the gov­er­nance, au­ton­o­my is­sue and the whole ques­tion of fis­cal sov­er­eign­ty for the THA. He said the re­quire­ment is to take it to the Par­lia­ment and have it en­act­ed. Ef­forts to con­tact Lon­don proved fu­tile.