Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA) is de­mand­ing an­swers from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) about why its pro­posed is­land­wide con­ven­tion on au­ton­o­my — sched­uled for Au­gust 10 — nev­er took place.

Dur­ing the bud­get de­bate on June 25, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said To­ba­go would be shut down for the day to al­low var­i­ous po­lit­i­cal voic­es, re­li­gious groups, pro­fes­sion­als, non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions and the av­er­age cit­i­zen to give their per­spec­tives on what self-gov­er­nance means.

Nei­ther Au­gus­tine nor Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor re­spond­ed to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day about why the con­ven­tion was not held or whether a new date is be­ing pro­posed.

De­scrib­ing the THA Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil as lost, IDA leader Dr Denise Tsoiafatt An­gus said it has de­vel­oped a pen­chant for grand an­nounce­ments and emp­ty promis­es.

She added that the quest for au­ton­o­my has clear­ly stalled.

“A Gov­ern­ment can­not in­vite To­ba­go to a con­ven­tion and then dis­ap­pear from its own in­vi­ta­tion,” she said.

She said To­bag­o­ni­ans de­serve to be kept abreast on mat­ters con­cern­ing their fu­ture.

“If the date had to change, the re­spon­si­ble thing was to tell the peo­ple why, pro­vide a new timetable and ex­plain how the promised com­mu­ni­ty con­sul­ta­tions would pro­ceed. In­stead, we have the usu­al pat­tern: when this ex­ec­u­tive finds it­self in an un­com­fort­able po­si­tion, it goes silent.”

She queried whether the de­lay was de­lib­er­ate and whether Au­gus­tine’s ex­pec­ta­tion of leg­is­la­tion be­ing passed be­fore the end of 2026 was re­al­is­tic.

She said the move­ment to­wards self-gov­er­nance would on­ly suc­ceed if the pub­lic par­tic­i­pates in the process.

Tsoiafatt An­gus said the THA must be trans­par­ent and pub­lish the cur­rent sta­tus, the work com­plet­ed thus far, the re­vised con­sul­ta­tion sched­ule, the in­tend­ed leg­isla­tive timetable and any im­pli­ca­tions for the THA’s elec­toral term.

In March, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Hamid Ghany would help guide the THA’s au­ton­o­my process.

While not crit­i­cis­ing Ghany, the IDA leader said the pre­vi­ous work done un­der econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James “has so far been more ground­ed in the voic­es of or­di­nary To­bag­o­ni­ans than what we have seen from the present au­ton­o­my process.”

Ghany did not re­spond to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia for an up­date on what progress has been made in the quest for au­ton­o­my up to press time.