Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the is­land re­mains open to ne­go­ti­a­tions with San­dals or any oth­er ma­jor ho­tel brand, but on­ly if they meet the stan­dards set by the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

His com­ments come amid re­newed dis­cus­sions about San­dals po­ten­tial­ly in­vest­ing in To­ba­go.

Dur­ing the open­ing of the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that he re-ap­proached San­dals’ own­er, ask­ing the com­pa­ny to re­con­sid­er its in­vest­ment af­ter the first deal fell apart. The ini­tial agree­ment faced crit­i­cism for al­leged­ly lack­ing trans­paren­cy and fail­ing to meet en­vi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic ex­pec­ta­tions.

“To­ba­go nev­er had a prob­lem with San­dals or any brand­ed ho­tel what­so­ev­er,” Au­gus­tine said. “It is un­fair to sug­gest that To­ba­go re­ject­ed San­dals just for the sake of re­ject­ing San­dals. That is un­true.”

Speak­ing at Rovanel’s Re­sort, Store Bay Lo­cal Road, Bon Ac­cord dur­ing the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty’s spe­cial con­ven­tion, Au­gus­tine stressed that the project was turned down be­cause it did not meet eco­nom­ic, en­vi­ron­men­tal, or de­mo­c­ra­t­ic stan­dards. “The MOU that was signed by the cur­rent MP for To­ba­go West did not meet the en­vi­ron­men­tal best prac­tices or stan­dards that we want­ed,” he said.

Au­gus­tine al­so made it clear that tourism de­ci­sions must be made by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, not the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

“For you to sit in Port-of-Spain and de­cide for us—this is what you want—I’m say­ing to you, there is a To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, and in the Fifth Sched­ule, tourism falls un­der To­ba­go,” he said.

He said he would not stand idly by and al­low de­ci­sions to be made sole­ly by out­side in­ter­fer­ence, adding, “If it is a mat­ter rel­a­tive to tourism, it starts and ends with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, not your ‘1 per cent’ Prime Min­is­ter that’s left be­hind.”

Au­gus­tine fur­ther ac­cused the for­mer prime min­is­ter of pri­ori­tis­ing his per­son­al busi­ness in­ter­ests over To­bag­o­ni­ans.

“Well, Mr prime min­is­ter, we know that you love your one-per­centers, and you will on­ly sup­port it if your one-per­centers are in con­trol of it. Be­cause this To­ba­go be­longs to all of us, and you might have been To­bag­on­ian by birth, but you have clear­ly be­come a Tri­ni by boat. And so we will lift that an­chor and sail you and your boat back to Trinidad.”