Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

There should be no rush­ing of the au­ton­o­my process for To­ba­go.

That’s the view of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) MPs Rush­ton Paray and Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, who were among the Op­po­si­tion MPs who vot­ed against the two To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bills on Mon­day.

Paray said he vot­ed against the bills “as they’re yet an­oth­er in­stance of this Gov­ern­ment sidelin­ing the voic­es of the very peo­ple they claim to serve. Au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go is far too im­por­tant to be rushed or treat­ed dis­mis­sive­ly.”

“For years, To­bag­o­ni­ans called for mean­ing­ful self-gov­er­nance. In­stead of en­gag­ing with them ful­ly, the Gov­ern­ment de­layed the process, then forced through bills that fail to ad­dress their core con­cerns. This isn’t about em­pow­er­ing To­ba­go—it’s about the Gov­ern­ment tick­ing a box to claim progress while ne­glect­ing the re­al work re­quired to meet To­ba­go’s needs.”

Paray added, “What is most dis­ap­point­ing is the bla­tant dis­re­gard for con­cerns raised by the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee’s Mi­nor­i­ty Re­port and the Op­po­si­tion ... rushed and poor­ly planned leg­is­la­tion leads to fail­ure.

“I can­not sup­port an ap­proach that treats To­ba­go as an af­ter­thought. My vote re­flects my un­wa­ver­ing be­lief that To­ba­go de­serves a gen­uine and re­spect­ful path to au­ton­o­my—not this flawed and in­ad­e­quate at­tempt.”

Ram­bal­ly, who’d long in­di­cat­ed he’d have re­ject­ed the bills, added, “Mean­ing­ful au­ton­o­my re­quires a process that’s fair, in­clu­sive, and trans­par­ent—not one that’s rushed and dis­mis­sive of key stake­hold­ers.

“For over three years, the Gov­ern­ment had am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage To­bag­o­ni­ans and the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion in gen­uine con­sul­ta­tions on this crit­i­cal bill. Yet, they chose to de­lay the process un­til the 11th hour, leav­ing lit­tle room for prop­er dis­course and col­lab­o­ra­tion. They al­so didn’t pro­vide the Op­po­si­tion with copies of cer­tain amend­ments of the amend­ed bill till min­utes be­fore the sit­ting...”

He al­so took is­sue with the Prime Min­is­ter’s fail­ure to con­sult the Op­po­si­tion on such crit­i­cal leg­is­la­tion, even fol­low­ing his Bud­get de­bate an­nounce­ment that he was re­turn­ing to the bills know­ing the UNC’s pre­vi­ous ob­jec­tions.

“If this Gov­ern­ment was se­ri­ous about achiev­ing bi­par­ti­san sup­port for the bill, they’d have en­gaged us in mean­ing­ful di­a­logue. Their fail­ure to do so isn’t just dis­re­spect­ful to the Op­po­si­tion but to the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process it­self.”

Ram­bal­ly added, “I can­not sup­port leg­is­la­tion that hasn’t been ad­e­quate­ly dis­cussed with the peo­ple it’s meant to serve. The bill failed to re­flect the true as­pi­ra­tions of To­bag­o­ni­ans and lacks the bal­ance nec­es­sary to en­sure its suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion. Even con­cerns raised in the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee’s Mi­nor­i­ty Re­port were dis­re­gard­ed ... while I sup­port To­ba­go’s right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion and greater au­ton­o­my, it must be done in a way that en­sures To­ba­go isn’t just grant­ed pow­ers in the­o­ry but has the tools, re­sources, and safe­guards to suc­ceed. The cur­rent bill doesn’t meet this stan­dard.”