Samp­son Nan­ton

Deputy Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor

samp­son.nan­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' (UNC) out­pour­ing of sup­port to­ward Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Far­ley Au­gus­tine is not earn­ing the UNC any favour in re­turn, as Au­gus­tine has made it clear that he and his To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) wants no align­ment with any­one.

Au­gus­tine has made it clear that the par­ty’s strat­e­gy in­volves seek­ing to win the two To­ba­go seats in the next gen­er­al elec­tion and us­ing them as bar­gain­ing chips to ob­tain au­ton­o­my for the is­land.

He re­vealed this in an hour-long in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex in To­ba­go, where he has an of­fice.

Speak­ing about the UNC’s sup­port, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the par­ty’s his­to­ry of strained re­la­tions with To­ba­go, Au­gus­tine ex­plained that the on­ly re­al sup­port he seeks from the UNC is for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form in the Par­lia­ment when the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bills are de­bat­ed.

“The TPP, of which I am the in­ter­im leader, is not align­ing with any­body. Any­body can sup­port what we pro­pose. In fact, any­body sen­si­ble sup­ports what we pro­pose. I have had meet­ings with trade union lead­ers across the space, but we are not align­ing with any­body. Who­ev­er wants to sup­port our ide­olo­gies, that’s all great,” Au­gus­tine said.

“As a mat­ter of fact, for there to be con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form we need a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty, so I need both par­ties in Trinidad, both ma­jor par­ties, to align them­selves with a vi­sion for a much more au­tonomous To­ba­go.”

The sup­port for the THA leader has been com­ing main­ly from UNC Po­lit­i­cal Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar while cam­paign­ing for the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions af­ter the re­la­tions be­tween Au­gus­tine and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­te­ri­o­rat­ed.

Au­gus­tine ac­knowl­edged that Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is the TPP’s main ad­ver­sary, which he at­trib­uted to the “licks we put on them” in the De­cem­ber 6, 2021 THA elec­tions, where the TPP won by a mar­gin on 14-1.

“Nat­u­ral­ly, the PNM are our ad­ver­sary be­cause they are the ones we de­feat­ed in the last elec­tion. So, nat­u­ral­ly, they find them­selves as our ad­ver­sary, but we are not aligned to any­one. Our strat­e­gy ... this is what’s best for To­ba­go ... is that To­ba­go stands alone. That is what’s best for To­ba­go. To­ba­go wins when To­ba­go stands alone,” he said.

Au­gus­tine main­tained that the UNC was al­so part of the eco­nom­ic stran­gle­hold on To­ba­go over the years.

“It is a po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy to keep us that way and, to be fair, it is not on­ly the PNM that keeps us there. Look back, whether UNC in pow­er, PNM in pow­er, the same kha­ki pants it has been. It was Bas­deo Pan­day in of­fice as prime min­is­ter af­ter To­ba­go gave them two seats ... and you see why there is wis­dom in not try­ing to be part of any Cab­i­net and giv­ing any seat to any­body. Af­ter To­ba­go gave them those two seats there arose con­flict be­tween the two is­lands that trig­gered the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mis­sion,” Au­gus­tine not­ed.

Like the 17-17-2 gen­er­al elec­tion re­sult of 1995, the strat­e­gy now is to win the two To­ba­go seats in the gen­er­al elec­tion and use them as bar­gain­ing chips for To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my.

Au­gus­tine said he be­lieves the PNM was aware that the TPP can win the To­ba­go seats, and that is why he has faced strong op­po­si­tion since tak­ing of­fice.

“To­ba­go per­haps has the two most im­por­tant seats in the Par­lia­ment. And for the PNM, they be­lieve that if we are to win the two To­ba­go seats, it stymies their chances of hold­ing on to  gov­ern­ment in Trinidad giv­en the close mar­gins be­tween them and the UNC,” he said.

The Chief Sec­re­tary added, “To­ba­go might very well have the gold­en tick­et for some­body, but that is not our ma­jor con­cern. Our ma­jor con­cern is the is­sue of greater au­ton­o­my in To­ba­go, that’s our con­cern. From where we sit, we wish to use our two seats as ne­go­ti­at­ing tools by which we can achieve greater au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go.”

Asked if he gen­uine­ly be­lieves he can win the seats, Au­gus­tine replied, “Yes, I do. I’m pret­ty con­fi­dent that we can.”

He said, “The seats won’t go any­where be­cause I can be quite open about what our po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy is, which is that our two seats must be used to ne­go­ti­ate au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go. We are not in­ter­est­ed in any Cab­i­net or form­ing a Cab­i­net or be­ing part of any gov­ern­ment or any big rank or port­fo­lio. What we want is to use our two seats as bar­gain­ing chips, to say, ‘Look, you can get our sup­port if we in To­ba­go can get these need­ed changes to the leg­is­la­tion, to Act 40 of 1996’,” Au­gus­tine said.

No rea­son to mend re­la­tions with PM

On his pub­lic dis­pute with Dr Row­ley, the Chief Sec­re­tary said he does not see any rea­son to seek to mend re­la­tions with the prime min­is­ter.

“It is un­nec­es­sary for me. All I want is for To­ba­go to be left alone to be able to man­age its own af­fairs. Whether the prime min­is­ter says hi to me, whether he shakes my hand, whether we knock glass, those are mat­ters that are in­con­se­quen­tial,” he said.

He said that when he won the elec­tion, it took a month be­fore Dr Row­ley met with him, and it wasn’t un­til for­mer chief sec­re­tary Ho­choy Charles point­ed out that Sec­tion 31 of THA Act re­quired them to meet that Au­gus­tine re­alised it was nec­es­sary.

He ar­gued that the PNM has been send­ing a fake mes­sage about their re­la­tions.

“What irks me is that you get this pub­lic im­pres­sion from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment that we want to col­lab­o­rate, we want to work with you all, and then qui­et­ly they turn their backs and just ig­nore you,” he said.

He said the last time they met was over the con­tro­ver­sy re­lat­ed to the ap­point­ment of the Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor over two months ago.

The law does not pre­scribe a fixed pe­ri­od of time for their meet­ings but says it should be done fre­quent­ly.

Noth­ing from po­lice on in­ves­ti­ga­tion

Mean­while, Au­gus­tine said he has not heard any­thing from the po­lice on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­volv­ing him since his home was searched.

“I have not heard any­thing from the po­lice. The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty has been in con­tact with my lawyers. The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has al­so re­spond­ed to my lawyers and ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of our query and in­ves­ti­ga­tion, but we have not heard any­thing from the TTPS,” he said.

 “As far as I am aware, they don’t know what they are do­ing, I don’t know what they are do­ing and with my lawyers, I will be press­ing this mat­ter fur­ther. As you are aware, I did call for an in­de­pen­dent in­quiry of the mat­ters at hand.”