Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the pro­posed changes to the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bill will not be twist­ed and used as a tool by politi­cians to cre­ate chaos among To­bag­o­ni­ans.

In fact, Au­gus­tine says it is not his and his ex­ec­u­tive’s place or job to pro­pose new amend­ments to the bill.

Speak­ing to the me­dia about the is­sue on Fri­day, Au­gus­tine ex­plained that the THA is not draft­ing its own amend­ments but rather prepar­ing a doc­u­ment high­light­ing the dif­fer­ences be­tween the orig­i­nal pro­pos­als from To­bag­o­ni­ans and the cur­rent bill in Par­lia­ment.

He said his re­cent com­ments on the com­plet­ed doc­u­ment, which was worked on by for­mer chief sec­re­tary Ho­choy Charles—who died on De­cem­ber 31—and him­self, were mis­con­strued.

He clar­i­fied, “I in­di­cat­ed that it will be dis­sem­i­nat­ed to par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans at large. That’s not the same thing as if we sat and came up with our own amend­ments that we are go­ing to send down Trinidad.

“The on­ly thing that we are pre­pared to dis­sem­i­nate at this time is re­al­ly a high­light of all the dif­fer­ences be­tween the bills sent down to Par­lia­ment and the cur­rent bills be­fore par­lia­ment.”

He added, “We have not come up with any­thing that To­bag­o­ni­ans have not al­ready said they want­ed, which came out of the ex­ten­sive process of con­sul­ta­tions that would have hap­pened pri­or to me be­com­ing a mem­ber of the THA.

“So, it is not that this gov­ern­ment sat and came up with some amend­ments to go to Par­lia­ment and will not bring them to the rest of To­ba­go. The on­ly thing that we are prepar­ing to dis­sem­i­nate at this time is re­al­ly that list of dif­fer­ences. That’s not the same thing as us mak­ing amend­ments … There is noth­ing new in that. We have not come up with any­thing new. That is not our place or job.”

On the con­trary, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in a meet­ing in Ma­son Hall last year, claimed that a let­ter, which was de­liv­ered to Par­lia­ment in 2021—signed by Charles and Au­gus­tine—gave the Gov­ern­ment an ul­ti­ma­tum to ei­ther make the changes or trash the bills.

Row­ley read, “They end­ed the let­ter say­ing, and these are their words, ‘Ac­cept these de­mands vig­or­ous­ly, un­scrupu­lous­ly, fail­ing which re­ject the two bills (To­ba­go Self-Gov­ern­ment Bill and the To­ba­go Is­land Ad­min­is­tra­tion Bill’.”

Row­ley had said some of the re­quests made were for the abil­i­ty to im­pose tax­es, con­trol of the pub­lic ser­vice in To­ba­go as an as­sem­bly item to form a To­ba­go Ser­vice com­mis­sion, eight per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get and the abil­i­ty to elect the chief sec­re­tary like a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Amer­i­ca.

Row­ley said those de­mands were “sep­a­rate and apart from the bills that came out of your (To­ba­go’s) con­sul­ta­tion.”

Au­gus­tine’s clar­i­fi­ca­tion on Fri­day came af­ter mem­bers of the In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA) threat­ened to protest over the pro­posed changes to the bills with­out prop­er con­sul­ta­tion dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence last week.

In re­sponse, Au­gus­tine said this mis­un­der­stand­ing isn’t an op­por­tu­ni­ty for po­lit­i­cal ben­e­fit.

He said, “Those who are anx­ious to protest, I’m sor­ry to al­lay your anx­i­ety, those that some­how see this as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to jump­start a po­lit­i­cal ca­reer they nev­er had and I’m sor­ry, this is not it.”

The doc­u­ment with the pro­posed changes will be shared this week but Au­gus­tine stressed it is not a new pro­pos­al.