Sto­ries by

ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

In a move that has left To­bag­o­ni­ans talk­ing, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo sur­pris­ing­ly made a call for the au­ton­o­my To­ba­go has been clam­our­ing for, say­ing the time had come for it to be done once and for all.

Ef­forts to se­cure au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go have been on­go­ing for years. The next at­tempt will take place in the cur­rent par­lia­men­tary ses­sion, with dis­cus­sions on the Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment To­ba­go Self Gov­ern­ment Bill 2021 and the To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment Bill 2021.

But on Wednes­day, dur­ing her in­au­gur­al vis­it to To­ba­go, where she met with To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, Kan­ga­loo said it is time to push leg­is­la­tion for­ward to give To­ba­go au­ton­o­my.

“I be­lieve the time has come for there to be a new, and it is hoped, a fi­nal leg­isla­tive push to se­cure au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go. That time is now and his­to­ry will not ab­solve us if we, those who sit in this time in our na­tion’s his­to­ry, do not do that which is re­quired to se­cure To­ba­go au­ton­o­my once and for all,” the Pres­i­dent said.

The bills are cur­rent­ly at the com­mit­tee stage, and their pas­sage re­quires a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment.

Al­though Kan­ga­loo does not have the con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er to sup­port the bill, she re­mind­ed par­lia­men­tar­i­ans of their du­ty to make the leg­isla­tive in­ter­ven­tion so that To­bag­o­ni­ans’ iden­ti­ty and in­di­vid­ual as­pi­ra­tions would not on­ly be re­spect­ed but al­so sup­port­ed.

Kan­ga­loo lament­ed that the mat­ter of au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go has been a burn­ing is­sue for too long, and the Gov­ern­ment has recog­nised its sig­nif­i­cance by sav­ing the bills from the last par­lia­men­tary ses­sion and in­clud­ing them in the cur­rent one.

How­ev­er, she not­ed that ad­vo­ca­cy ef­forts need to in­ten­si­fy to en­sure the nec­es­sary leg­isla­tive in­ter­ven­tions are made.

“I be­lieve that at this junc­ture of our coun­try’s his­to­ry, our task, the sig­nal im­por­tance of which has es­caped nei­ther the Chief Sec­re­tary nor me, is to fight to keep the ques­tion of au­ton­o­my on the na­tion­al agen­da, and to strain every mus­cle in us to strug­gle for its achieve­ment and at­ten­tion un­til it is ad­vanced and achieved.

“At­tempts to do so have been more in­sis­tent, more con­sis­tent and more fever­ish than in re­cent times. One has on­ly to look at the re­cent his­to­ry of these at­tempts to recog­nise that the rhetor­i­cal ques­tions ... ‘If not now, when, and if not us, who’ have al­ready be­gun to be an­swered,” Kan­ga­loo added.

The Pres­i­dent stressed that fail­ure to se­cure au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go would re­flect poor­ly on the coun­try’s his­to­ry.

“That is why I said the time is now and that his­to­ry will not ab­solve us if at this junc­ture of our coun­try’s his­to­ry, we fail to se­cure au­ton­o­my, for us to be equal by leg­isla­tive means. Hav­ing ar­rived at where we are in this long and ar­du­ous strug­gle, what is now re­quired is for us to push our rep­re­sen­ta­tives both in the as­sem­bly in To­ba­go and in the Par­lia­ment,” Kan­ga­loo said.

“To­day, I give you the as­sur­ance that I will con­tin­ue to lend my own voice to the ris­ing cho­rus of all who see bet­ter con­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments for the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo al­so said the re­newed call for au­ton­o­my is not an at­tempt to break the union be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go. Rather, she in­sist­ed it is an ef­fort to im­prove it.

“It is im­por­tant to re­mem­ber what it is that we are strug­gling for. We are not strug­gling to break each oth­er down. And we are cer­tain­ly not strug­gling to break our union apart. Quite the op­po­site. What we are strug­gling for is to make our union bet­ter. And in the end, what we must al­ways re­mem­ber is that what we are strug­gling for is a bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said.

As she con­front­ed To­bag­o­ni­ans about the chal­lenges af­fect­ing them, such as the sea and air­bridge and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, she af­firmed these mat­ters are al­ways at the fore­front of her mind and heart.

“Be­cause I have not men­tioned these and oth­er mat­ters one by one does not mean that I do not care about them. I care about them all,” she said.