Mi bredren Vanus has been going to ‘village communities’ in Tobago and engaging focus groups made up of community leaders to determine, gather, and discuss their views about how they want their lives to be improved now that PM Rowley has put the country on the path to constitution reform against a background that includes proposals from the Tobago House of Assembly. So far, he has gone to seven of them: Mason Hall; John Dial; Hope/Mesopotamia; Mt St George; Roxborough; L’Anse Fourmi; and Canaan/Bon Accord.
He has asked them a number of yes/no questions supplemented by other types of questions designed to find out, inter alia, why they said yes or no as the case may be, what the state of affairs regarding certain matters was, and how certain proposals for reform might be prosecuted.
Now, the PM has struck a Constitution Committee which does not include any representative of the Opposition UNC (which I think is needlessly counterproductive and divisive) which also goes around the country gathering views from the population.
But those views are not as focused as those from mi bredren. Indeed, it must be noted that the committee’s TORs, which they must have, have not been shared with the population.
Vanus is focused on the rights of communities, rather than individuals because none of our post-Independence Constitutions has recognised them. These rights are not part of the operations of what we have now: village councils. He reports that the focus groups are of the view that the latter are simply unfit for the purpose of self-determination.
Vanus asked the Mason Hall group the following six general yes/no questions, all of which were answered with a unanimous ‘yes’. They were broken down into subquestions, which were also answered unanimously in the affirmative.
General Question: Do you want provisions in the Constitution that give you a bundle of community rights to the pursuit of community development–self-determination?
We all provide money from our taxes to run the Government. Should the Mason Hall community be guaranteed a fair and predictable basic annual community development budget–annual access to an equitable share of the national (or local) budget for capital expenditures aimed at community development?
Should the Mason Hall community have the right to act as a community when using its development budget? Should the Mason Hall community have the right to formal opportunity to influence decisions made by the Tobago Island Government?
Should the Mason Hall community have access to a national government that is properly constituted similar to the Tobago Island Government to ensure that it can adequately petition with respect to its interests when decisions are being made at the national level that will affect the community?
Should the Mason Hall community have the right to an elected Senate with responsibility for the spatial equity of access to development opportunities across Tobago?
Vanus reports on the five communities generally as follows:
They view provisions for self-determination as vital to their development.
They insist that their communities could only develop through self-interested collaborative investment and work that include civic leaders, entrepreneurs, activists and involved citizens who could unlock the power of community enterprise; professionals with special relevant knowledge, skills, and self-confidence who are dedicated to improving various aspects of community life, and to making their communities stronger and more resilient in social and economic terms; and use of improving opportunities to inform and influence decisions made elsewhere that affect their development efforts.
They bring varied interests and endowments of resources and skills, including professionals with special knowledge–community social workers and specialists in the following fields: child and adult education; sports, music and other creative industry; youth development and crime prevention; health care; environmental education; local economic development planning; community project design, financing, and implementation; and the like.
They think that community members are the ultimate experts in their own lives and circumstances, and that they can determine the directions and dimensions of community integration into the wider local, national, and international development processes.
They think they can fill many resource gaps by trading with each other.
Beyond all this, the focus groups think that there is need for a constitutional design that takes account of the gains that can come from development of community entrepreneurship and their capacity to attract entrepreneurs and workers with level 4 skills to operate in the safe zones they can create. They specifically want to have the right to influence decisions made in the new Tobago Island Government (now the THA).
They want it to be redesigned based on the principles of legislative oversight of the executive, joint decision-making, and the rule of law, including access to an elected Senate in Tobago with special responsibility to address the spatial equity of access to development opportunity across Tobago and to ensure that no communities are left behind.
Vanus tells me that the Mason Hall focus group in particular was, through him, sending their views specifically to the Prime Minister.
(To be continued)