Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has hit back at Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, ac­cus­ing him of mis­lead­ing the pub­lic and “tak­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans for fools” with his claims about To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my.

At a me­dia brief­ing at To­ba­go Plan­ta­tions yes­ter­day, Row­ley made it clear that the changes to the Con­sti­tu­tion, where Au­gus­tine is de­mand­ing greater au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go, re­quire a three-quar­ters ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment—some­thing the PNM, with on­ly 22 seats, can­not achieve on its own.

“I don’t want to be too harsh on the Chief Sec­re­tary, but I want to ask him to stop tak­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans for fools,” he said.

Row­ley crit­i­cised Au­gus­tine for fail­ing to un­der­stand the con­sti­tu­tion­al process. He said that al­though the PNM’s sup­port in­creased fund­ing and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), Op­po­si­tion votes are cru­cial to pass­ing such re­forms.

He said that the THA bills were vot­ed down be­cause of op­po­si­tion from the UNC but Au­gus­tine con­tin­ues to blame the PNM for not de­liv­er­ing au­ton­o­my. Au­gus­tine said the Bills in their cur­rent state don’t rep­re­sent the true de­sires of the is­land and its peo­ple.

“The PNM can­not give To­ba­go what it doesn’t have in Par­lia­ment,” said Row­ley who de­scribed Au­gus­tine’s rhetoric as pure pol­i­tics aimed at de­ceiv­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans for votes.

He urged Au­gus­tine to stop mak­ing per­son­al at­tacks and en­gage in mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions about the is­land’s fu­ture.

“If you’re so in­vest­ed in at­tack­ing peo­ple re­lent­less­ly and mak­ing per­son­al at­tacks, at least find out what you’re talk­ing about,” he said. In an ex­clu­sive, hours af­ter Row­ley an­nounced his in­tent to bow out of pol­i­tics, Au­gus­tine crit­i­cised his han­dling of To­ba­go’s push for au­ton­o­my.

“That does not stop To­ba­go’s quest for au­ton­o­my at all,” Au­gus­tine said. “It will hap­pen one day. It did not hap­pen dur­ing Dr Row­ley’s tenure, and per­haps it’s be­cause of how he han­dled it and his view­point and his de­sire to force on the is­land what he want­ed in terms of the gov­er­nance struc­ture as op­posed to what the peo­ple of To­ba­go want­ed.”

Au­gus­tine added that with or with­out Dr Row­ley, the quest for au­ton­o­my would con­tin­ue.

“It’s just not one of his lega­cies,” he said.