Renu­ka Singh

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment To­ba­go Coun­cil leader Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine has again raised the is­sue of se­ces­sion for To­ba­go, say­ing it will be a bad move.

The Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) has been cam­paign­ing on this point in its cur­rent To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly dri­ve, say­ing To­ba­go needs to be in­de­pen­dent of Trinidad.

But speak­ing at the PNM’s cam­paign meet­ing in Dar­rel Spring/Whim on Thurs­day night, David­son-Ce­les­tine warned To­bag­o­ni­ans that se­ces­sion meant no bil­lion-dol­lar bud­get al­lo­ca­tion and no easy ac­cess to Trinidad.

“You will need a visa to vis­it Trinidad and you would have to pay the full fare by boat or plane,” she said.

She said pub­lic ser­vants would al­so lose out on pro­mo­tions with­in the sec­tor.

David­son-Ce­les­tine once again held the PDP re­spon­si­ble for the fail­ure of the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bill.

“To­ba­go re­cent­ly had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come a game-chang­er in terms of our de­vel­op­ment in the re­gion and our de­vel­op­ment in the coun­try,” she said.

“We had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to sign on to the To­ba­go Au­ton­o­my Bill from the PNM and even with the sup­port of the UNC (Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress) but that did not hap­pen.

“And we saw how the PDP hug up with their rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Trinidad to de­ny To­bag­o­ni­ans of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to self-de­ter­mine. And when you look at the rea­sons that they have placed, they would have placed their own in­ter­ests be­fore that of the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

She said PDP deputy leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine wants to be Chief Sec­re­tary with or with­out the sup­port from his leader Wat­son Duke.

“And when he opened the bill that was laid in Par­lia­ment and recog­nised that you must be­come Chief Sec­re­tary by be­com­ing po­lit­i­cal leader and then be cho­sen by the can­di­dates that sat around the ta­ble, he de­cid­ed no, I not go­ing down that road,” she said.

David­son-Ce­les­tine said in the meet­ings that were held as they tried to reach a pow­er-shar­ing agree­ment fol­low­ing the 6-6 tie ear­li­er this year, Au­gus­tine’s fo­cus was in chang­ing the prece­dence in To­ba­go to in­stead vote in a Chief Sec­re­tary through a THA elec­tion.

“That is what he is all about, putting his own per­son­al agen­da in front of the agen­da of the peo­ple of To­ba­go,” David­son-Ce­les­tine said.

Duke, she said, want­ed in­de­pen­dence and se­ces­sion from Trinidad.

“And so he was there in Mag­dale­na (ho­tel) telling the peo­ple that ‘we want our own this and we want our own that’,” she said.

David­son-Ce­les­tine said Duke want­ed To­b­gao cut off from Trinidad and that would be his first or­der of busi­ness if he won the elec­tion.

She urged the peo­ple to pay at­ten­tion to the mean­ing of se­ces­sion.

“But in this con­text, se­ces­sion is about mov­ing To­ba­go away from Trinidad. It is about cut­ting off Trinidad from To­ba­go,” she said.

She called on To­ba­go to “wise up and pro­tect its fu­ture.”

“That $2.2 bil­lion that we now en­joy from Cab­i­net, we will no longer have,” she said, not­ing that be­cause Duke wants to be Prime Min­is­ter, he does not care about To­ba­go los­ing out on the bud­get al­lo­ca­tion.

David­son-Ce­les­tine said if the PDP won the elec­tion, the coun­try would wake up on De­cem­ber 7 and re­alise “cra­paud smoke all ah we pipe.”