Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans re­main di­vid­ed on the is­sue of full au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go, with no na­tion­al con­sen­sus on the way for­ward.

This is re­flect­ed in the re­sults of a new pub­lic opin­ion poll com­mis­sioned by Guardian Me­dia and con­duct­ed by Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany.

The in­de­pen­dent sur­vey, con­duct­ed be­tween April 10 and 13, so­licit­ed the views of cit­i­zens in 11 mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies in Trinidad, as well as in To­ba­go.

Asked whether To­ba­go should be giv­en full au­ton­o­my, the ma­jor­i­ty of the 1,650 re­spon­dents in Trinidad (57 per cent) said “No,” com­pared to 22 per cent who said “yes.” The re­main­ing 21 per cent were un­de­cid­ed.

How­ev­er, when the same ques­tion was posed to 530 re­spon­dents in To­ba­go, most of those sur­veyed – 41 per cent – sup­port­ed such a move, while 32 per cent were against the is­land tak­ing full charge of its own af­fairs. The oth­er 28 per cent of re­spon­dents were non-com­mit­tal.

Au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go with­in the con­text of the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic has been a long­stand­ing is­sue, with the Con­sti­tu­tion­al (Amend­ment) (To­ba­go Self Gov­ern­ment) Bill 2020 and the To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment Bill 2021 on the or­der pa­per of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Par­lia­ment since 2021.

When the bills fi­nal­ly came up for de­bate last De­cem­ber, the To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment Bill 2021 was passed in­to law. How­ev­er, the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) used its num­bers to de­feat the Con­sti­tu­tion­al (Amend­ment) (To­ba­go Self Gov­ern­ment) Bill 2020, pre­vent­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment from push­ing ahead with that leg­is­la­tion.

Then-Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had sought to get ap­proval for the read­ing of leg­is­la­tion to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion “to ac­cord self-gov­ern­ment to To­ba­go and for re­lat­ed mat­ters to be forth­with read a third time and passed” af­ter the claus­es to the leg­is­la­tion had been ap­proved in the com­mit­tee stages.

How­ev­er, when the mat­ter, which re­quired a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty of the 41-mem­ber Par­lia­ment, was put to vote, 21 Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tors vot­ed in favour while 16 of the Op­po­si­tion mem­bers present vot­ed against the move.

The Op­po­si­tion, which was round­ly crit­i­cised at the time by the Gov­ern­ment, had cit­ed con­cerns over in­suf­fi­cient con­sul­ta­tion and the need for more sub­stan­tial re­forms.

The self-gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion, which is seen as a first step to au­ton­o­my, pro­pos­es to in­crease To­ba­go’s share of the na­tion­al bud­get from a min­i­mum of 4.03% to 6.8% and to grant the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly the au­thor­i­ty to pass laws on lo­cal mat­ters with­out cen­tral gov­ern­ment over­sight. It al­so seeks to es­tab­lish a more de­fined fed­er­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The poll was con­duct­ed in the mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies of Barataria/San Juan, Ch­agua­nas East, Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, Ma­yaro, Moru­ga/Table­land, Pointe-a-Pierre (now called Clax­ton Bay), San Fer­nan­do West, St Joseph, To­co/San­gre Grande and Tu­na­puna, as well as To­ba­go.

It has a mar­gin of er­ror of +/- 2.5 per cent for Trinidad and +/- 4.0 per cent based on re­cent po­lit­i­cal and bound­ary shifts.