Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the col­lapse of the Drag­on gas deal is the re­sult of years of “mis­man­age­ment and poor plan­ning” by the PNM Gov­ern­ment, and a warn­ing sign that Trinidad and To­ba­go ur­gent­ly needs to di­ver­si­fy its econ­o­my.

“I heard the un­for­tu­nate news. And this is ab­solute­ly not news that we are go­ing to cel­e­brate,” Au­gus­tine said at a To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) meet­ing in Ply­mouth on Tues­day night.

The US gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly re­voked the li­cence that once al­lowed Trinidad and To­ba­go to de­vel­op the long-stalled nat­ur­al gas project with Venezuela. The deal was wide­ly seen as a way to ease the coun­try’s gas short­fall and boost its en­er­gy sec­tor.

In­stead, Au­gus­tine said, T&T is now back in a fa­mil­iar and pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion: “at the mer­cy of ex­ter­nal forces” and un­able to chart its own eco­nom­ic course.

“We live in a part of the world where oth­ers—oth­er coun­tries big­ger than we are—can ac­tu­al­ly de­ter­mine our pros­per­i­ty and our fu­ture,” he said. “In To­ba­go, we say, don­key said, it will not lev­el.”

He al­so drew com­par­isons to the po­lit­i­cal cli­mate lead­ing up to the 1986 gen­er­al elec­tion, when the PNM was swept out of of­fice amid eco­nom­ic cri­sis.

“In some ways, I'm start­ing to feel as though this has eerie sim­i­lar­i­ties to 1986,” he said. “Be­cause in 1986, when the coun­try rose up and vot­ed out the PNM, it was a lit­tle late.”

Au­gus­tine warned that with­out emer­gency di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and smarter pol­i­cy­mak­ing, his­to­ry could re­peat it­self. He said the next five years would be “crit­i­cal” for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“We are at the brink where­by we had a PNM gov­ern­ment, through poor man­age­ment, poor fis­cal man­age­ment, poor in­fra­struc­ture and in­vest­ment, has left us at the mer­cy of what is hap­pen­ing in the glob­al space,” he said.

“If ever as a coun­try it is abun­dant­ly clear that we need to di­ver­si­fy our econ­o­my, it is now.”

Au­gus­tine said the TPP would be field­ing can­di­dates to join their col­leagues in Par­lia­ment and help shape na­tion­al pol­i­cy to se­cure To­ba­go’s—and the coun­try’s—eco­nom­ic fu­ture.