Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

All of To­ba­go must be giv­en the choice to de­cide on what type of po­lit­i­cal re­la­tion­ship it wants with Trinidad, says Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke.

“To­bag­o­ni­ans, once To­bag­o­ni­ans have made that choice via every­one hav­ing a vote, we must con­sid­er all three is­sues—our in­de­pen­dence, au­ton­o­my is one of the is­sues or an as­so­ci­a­tion with Trinidad as in­de­pen­dent coun­tries—so we have not been able to look at those three ar­eas, on­ly au­ton­o­my, au­ton­o­my, au­ton­o­my, and that is a mis­con­cep­tion that To­ba­go re­jects au­ton­o­my. To­ba­go need to hear about the oth­er two ar­eas. Un­til To­ba­go have had that full and fair dis­cus­sion among it­self and we de­cide for our­self,” Duke said yes­ter­day in ref­er­ence to the re­newed dis­cus­sion on self-au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go, sparked in the wake of the fail­ure of the Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment (Self-Gov­ern­ment) bill, one of two bills deal­ing with the is­sue in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day.

Speak­ing fol­low­ing the for­mal cer­e­mo­ny to launch the Lo­gos 2 Book Fair aboard the Lo­gos 2 at the Port of Scar­bor­ough, Duke said To­bag­o­ni­ans should be giv­en the choice to ful­ly dis­sect the au­ton­o­my bill and pro­vide feed­back.

“It would have been bet­ter for the en­tire thing to be sent to To­ba­go and al­low To­bag­o­ni­ans to tear it up, mash it up and put it back to­geth­er and send it back to Trinidad and then we would have had some­thing that To­ba­go re­al­ly de­sired,” he said.

Duke said every­one seems to think au­ton­o­my is what To­bag­o­ni­ans need. How­ev­er, he said To­bag­o­ni­ans do not need to be pushed in­to an au­tonomous re­la­tion­ship with Trinidad.

“What we need to have is to ex­er­cise our free­dom of choice among our­selves and un­til that hap­pens, the en­tire ex­er­cise would be a sham and con­tin­ue to be an ex­pen­sive sham ex­er­cise. It’s a To­ba­go is­sue and To­ba­go must de­cide. They must vote on it col­lec­tive­ly and not where you go in a room and talk with three of your friends and then say you kept a meet­ing. That’s wrong, it’s mis­lead­ing.

“I would just say the con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment bill was a good start­ing point for dis­cus­sion and it should have been thrown in the high­ways and by­ways of To­ba­go and al­lowed for the con­ver­sa­tion to de­vel­op from there. They nev­er al­low it to hap­pen, they try to push it along set lines for a par­tic­u­lar out­come, which is def­i­nite­ly seen as the out­come with a spoiled bal­lot.”