Camille McEach­nie

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the To­ba­go Coun­cil of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine has ex­plained what she meant by de­scrib­ing the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bills as “not per­fect, but will get To­ba­go where they want to be.”

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s query on her state­ment, the PNM leader said the bills are bet­ter than the ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing To­ba­go.

“...I re­fer to the fact that the bills can­not suf­fi­cient­ly ar­tic­u­late the in­di­vid­ual de­sires of every­one. I am com­fort­able, how­ev­er, that they have suf­fi­cient­ly tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the col­lec­tive de­sires of the peo­ple,” she said.

The bills—To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment and Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Self-Gov­ern­ment Bills are at the com­mit­tee stage in Par­lia­ment and ex­pect­ed to be saved and car­ried over to the re­open­ing of Par­lia­ment in Sep­tem­ber 2021.

The Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) that laid the bills says those wish­ing to com­ment can do so un­til Ju­ly 15, 2021.

Dur­ing ex­plo­sive de­bates last week, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) not­ed that To­ba­go’s lead­ers did not agree with some pro­vi­sions and want­ed more time to study them. They quot­ed the PNM leader, too, sug­gest­ing that even she thinks the bills need more work.

David­son-Ce­les­tine added yes­ter­day: “To­bag­o­ni­ans must know that this bill, when com­pared with the THA Act 40, 1996, puts us in a sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter po­si­tion than we are in now.”

“We should re­mem­ber that the last up­date to the Act was 25 years ago. (It) is no longer rel­e­vant in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the de­vel­op­ment To­bag­o­ni­ans want to see.”

She con­tin­ued:” These bills are a step in the right di­rec­tion for the growth and de­vel­op­ment of this is­land through our abil­i­ty to ex­er­cise self-de­ter­mi­na­tion in our af­fairs....”

David­son-Ce­les­tine said they are “a great start.”

“They give equal­i­ty of sta­tus with Trinidad and a bet­ter fi­nan­cial struc­ture with an in­crease in bud­get al­lo­ca­tion and ad­di­tion­al rev­enue streams.”

She al­so re­mind­ed that they gave the As­sem­bly pow­er to make laws to ad­dress the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of land ti­tles.

Since the JCS’s chair­man Camille Robin­son-Reg­is Ju­ly 2 an­nounced the com­mit­tee is still ac­cept­ing com­ments on the bills un­til Ju­ly 15, spec­u­la­tion is rift whether Par­lia­ment will set aside its manda­to­ry re­cess next week and de­bate the bills.

She told Guardian Me­dia, Par­lia­ment will pro­rogue as planned.

“If there is any­thing very ur­gent, then the Stand­ing Or­ders pro­vide for the House to be re­called.”

The Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness added: “The Stand­ing Or­ders al­so pro­vide for Bills etcetera to be saved and car­ried over to the next Ses­sion at the stage where they were last in the House.”

Com­ment­ing on what the pub­lic is view­ing as an ex­ten­sion of the time for com­ments on the bills, David­son-Ce­les­tine said: “It was al­ways stat­ed that com­ments can be sub­mit­ted and amend­ments made, up to the third read­ing of the bill.”

She said stake­hold­ers must un­der­stand Par­lia­ment’s process­es and urged peo­ple to make their con­tri­bu­tions to the bills.