Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says he is pre­pared to con­vince Par­lia­ment to sup­port and pass the To­ba­go Au­ton­o­my Bill, fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo’s call for au­ton­o­my for the is­land.

Speak­ing to the me­dia af­ter a short event for the Pres­i­dent’s in­au­gur­al vis­it on Wednes­day morn­ing, Au­gus­tine said he was pleas­ant­ly shocked by Kan­ga­loo’s bold state­ments.

He said the next move is to per­suade the Gov­ern­ment of the ben­e­fits of giv­ing To­ba­go au­ton­o­my.

“I am will­ing to try. The is­land’s gov­ern­ment is will­ing to try to con­vince the en­tire Par­lia­ment, all 41 elect­ed mem­bers or mem­bers of the Sen­ate, in­clud­ing the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, that hav­ing greater au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go is the way to go to per­fect the re­la­tion­ship that is Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“I was elat­ed to hear who posits such strong sup­port for greater au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go. I was sur­prised at how much of home­work that she did, and re­search that she did. It was ac­tu­al­ly quite thrilling. To hear her quote from lead pres­i­dent, His Ex­cel­len­cy Mr (ANR) Robin­son, from his mo­tion to move for in­ter­na­tion­al gov­ern­ment,” Au­gus­tine said.

He added, “Be­ing able to so clear­ly ar­tic­u­late that Trinidad, To­ba­go needs to treat with this, I think is not just a good sign ... but it’s al­so in­dica­tive of the fact that many peo­ple who are not To­bag­o­ni­ans are com­ing around to ap­pre­ci­at­ing what needs to be done. Be­cause the mat­ter of greater au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go is not so much about putting To­ba­go against Trinidad, but it’s about em­pow­er­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans to have com­mand over their own space.”

The Chief Sec­re­tary said the peo­ple of To­ba­go want to see some changes made to the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion.

“And once there is a bill that the peo­ple of To­ba­go wants, be­cause the chal­lenge with what is there is that there are some changes that the peo­ple of To­ba­go will like to see. And it did not to­tal­ly re­flect the bill that was sent down by for­mer chief sec­re­tary Mr (Orville) Lon­don and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly then. But, once we can get what is there amend­ed, edit­ed to the point where it re­flects the wish­es of the peo­ple of To­ba­go, cer­tain­ly I think as a THA, the re­spon­si­ble thing to do will be to move the ad­vo­ca­cy from not just the Gov­ern­ment or the ma­jor­i­ty side in the Par­lia­ment, but al­so to the Op­po­si­tion side in the Par­lia­ment,” he ex­plained.