Last week, Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Lau­rence His­lop called on the THA to change the nar­ra­tive and part­ner with the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for the de­vel­op­ment of To­ba­go. In putting for­ward his call, he was ask­ing the THA to ac­cept what the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment was of­fer­ing in the bud­get. The re­fusal to ac­cept the To­ba­go Au­ton­o­my Bills meant that the THA was re­fus­ing the of­fer of a guar­an­teed 6.8 per cent al­lo­ca­tion in­stead of the cur­rent pre­scribed 4.03 per cent al­lo­ca­tion.

From the stand­point of the Au­ton­o­my Bills, the al­lo­ca­tion of funds to To­ba­go is pro­posed to be gov­erned by sec­tion 30 of the To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment Bill as fol­lows:

“30. Par­lia­ment shall ap­pro­pri­ate for the use of the House of As­sem­bly for any fi­nan­cial year no less than six point eight per cent (6.8 per cent) of the to­tal sum ap­pro­pri­at­ed by Par­lia­ment in that fi­nan­cial year or such oth­er per­cent­age as may be de­ter­mined by the Fis­cal Re­view Com­mit­tee un­der sec­tion 43 and ap­proved by the Par­lia­ment by Res­o­lu­tion.”

The dis­burse­ment will come from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and any funds that the As­sem­bly can raise in the To­ba­go Fund out­side that al­lo­ca­tion is to be off­set against the al­lo­ca­tion it­self from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. This is pro­posed in sec­tion 32(3) as fol­lows:

“(3) Monies cred­it­ed to the To­ba­go Fund in ac­cor­dance with sub­sec­tions (1) and (2) shall be set off against the an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tion ap­pro­pri­at­ed by Par­lia­ment to the To­ba­go Fund.”

The Fis­cal Re­view Com­mit­tee that would have the pow­er to re­set the al­lo­ca­tions for To­ba­go is be­ing de­signed to be con­trolled by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment as fol­lows:

“43. (1) There shall be es­tab­lished a Fis­cal Re­view Com­mit­tee which shall com­prise—(a) a Chair­man, who shall be the Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for fi­nance or his al­ter­nate; (b) a Deputy Chair­man, who shall be the Sec­re­tary with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for fi­nance or his al­ter­nate; (c) one mem­ber ap­point­ed by the To­ba­go Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil; and (d) two mem­bers ap­point­ed by the Cab­i­net.”

In this arrange­ment, the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment will dom­i­nate the com­mit­tee by a three-two mar­gin. Where is the au­ton­o­my?

The ques­tion at hand is more than just the mon­ey. How­ev­er, if it is on­ly about the mon­ey, then some oth­er fac­tors must be tak­en in­to ac­count. One of the cur­rent is­sues that the THA and the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment should ne­go­ti­ate is the is­sue of rev­enue shar­ing from the 2023 Shal­low Wa­ter Com­pet­i­tive Bid Round that was re­cent­ly re­vealed by the Min­istry of En­er­gy. To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my ought to bring the is­sue of rev­enue shar­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion for To­ba­go to get its fair share if the of­fer of au­ton­o­my is a gen­uine one.

Any ex­am­i­na­tion of the map of the blocks that are be­ing put out to auc­tion will show that Blocks 21, 22(a), 22(b) and NC­MA 4(a) should be de­ter­mined for al­lo­ca­tion di­rect­ly to the To­ba­go Fund for the ben­e­fit of To­ba­go and not be giv­en to the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for it to use as it sees fit. Their ge­o­graph­i­cal prox­im­i­ty to To­ba­go’s coast­line ought to guar­an­tee them a fair share in the spir­it of au­ton­o­my.

The ju­ris­dic­tion­al area pro­posed to fall un­der the con­trol of the THA in re­spect of its au­ton­o­my is de­scribed in sec­tion 5(2) of the bill as fol­lows:

“(2) The ex­clu­sive ad­min­is­tra­tive ju­ris­dic­tion, con­ferred on the To­ba­go Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil by sub­sec­tion (1) in re­la­tion to the list of mat­ters set out in Sched­ule 1, shall ex­tend to such part of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al sea of Trinidad and To­ba­go com­pris­ing those ar­eas of the sea hav­ing as their in­ner lim­its the low wa­ter­mark of To­ba­go and as their out­er lim­its, a line mea­sured sea­ward from that low wa­ter­mark, every point of which is at a dis­tance of eleven nau­ti­cal miles from the near­est point of that low wa­ter­mark.”

If the of­fer of au­ton­o­my is gen­uine, then the rev­enue shar­ing from the 2023 Shal­low Wa­ter Bid Round should re­dound to the fi­nan­cial ben­e­fit of To­ba­go so that it can break the shack­les of Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment al­lo­ca­tion of 6.8 per cent which will keep the is­land tied hand and foot to Trinidad while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly beg­ging for au­ton­o­my.

The pow­er­ful com­mer­cial in­ter­ests in Trinidad in 1898 that helped to bring about this sub­ju­ga­tion of To­ba­go since 1899 have a lega­cy that has con­tin­ued to this day. Much of that lega­cy re­mains dis­guised in the two Au­ton­o­my Bills with the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment now re­plac­ing the pre-In­de­pen­dence im­pe­r­i­al pow­er.

Prof Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.