The na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, To­ba­go and Trinidad, both col­lec­tive­ly and in­di­vid­u­al­ly, has and have been play­ing around for decades with the po­ten­tial of To­ba­go be­ing a se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic com­po­nent of the na­tion.

Par­ty pol­i­tics, in­di­vid­ual po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing in­abil­i­ty of politi­cians to hold to­geth­er and make the best of the is­land’s re­sources and po­ten­tial have blocked the way for­ward.

It’s been al­most 50 years since the re­birth of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing ob­jec­tive of every ad­min­is­tra­tion to achieve in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for the is­land as part of the na­tion.

The net re­sult has been no mat­ter which par­ty is in gov­ern­ment in Port-of-Spain and in the THA, the gen­er­a­tion of jobs, spend­ing, grants and the like con­tin­ue to be to­tal­ly de­pen­dent on ex­pen­di­ture by the As­sem­bly; which in turn is re­liant on al­lo­ca­tions by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment. Left wait­ing is mean­ing­ful spend­ing to spur and stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, growth and de­vel­op­ment by the pri­vate sec­tor.

At the same time this has been hap­pen­ing, suc­ceed­ing gov­ern­ments, THA lead­ers, tourism of­fi­cials, hote­liers and econ­o­mists in To­ba­go and Trinidad have writ­ten ex­ten­sive­ly about tourism and its po­ten­tial for at­tract­ing in­vest­ment to the is­land.

Yet, over the decades, both in terms of poli­cies and ac­tions to achieve the kind of suc­cess the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment holds, To­ba­go re­mains way be­hind what has been achieved by com­pa­ra­ble Caribbean des­ti­na­tions.

The lat­est at­tempt to stage a To­ba­go Car­ni­val sep­a­rate and apart from that of the Trinidad fes­ti­val got caught up in the usu­al back and forth be­tween Scar­bor­ough and Port-of-Spain.

It should al­ways be re­mem­bered that this po­lit­i­cal di­vide once pre­vent­ed the Ja­maican in­ter­na­tion­al re­sort chain, San­dals, from es­tab­lish­ing a beach­head for tourism in To­ba­go; the own­ers did not want their brand to be mud­died by po­lit­i­cal mud­sling­ing.

Since then, the is­sues sur­round­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a full, pro­duc­tive tourism in­dus­try, with links to agri­cul­ture, agro-in­dus­try, an en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre, hand­i­craft and du­ty-free shop­ping, among oth­er in­dus­tries, have all but died. In place have slid al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, po­lit­i­cal dog fights and ag­gra­vat­ed calls for fresh elec­tions one year af­ter they were held.

Ab­solute­ly need­ed is en­gage­ment with thor­ough-go­ing dis­cus­sion and par­tic­i­pa­tion by the peo­ple of both is­lands to achieve eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion and de­vel­op­ment of tourism and link­ages to cre­ate new sec­tors. Un­like many oth­er tourism des­ti­na­tions in the re­gion, To­ba­go has a man­u­fac­tur­ing base in Trinidad which can be ex­pand­ed to the sis­ter isle to pre­vent the leak­age of tourism earn­ings.

The very fo­cus on eco­nom­ic and hu­man de­vel­op­ment mat­ters will of it­self re­veal the po­lit­i­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive struc­tures which de­mand change. Dri­ven by the eco­nom­ics, peo­ple get­ting jobs, healthy re­turns to in­vestors, and con­tri­bu­tion to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, at­ten­tion will be di­vert­ed away from friv­o­lous po­lit­i­cal is­sues; it may even put emp­ty politi­cians and their rhetoric in con­text.

Not to be mis­un­der­stood, this news­pa­per is not say­ing that the call for in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment must fade; what is quite pos­si­ble is that with a fo­cus on eco­nom­ic and as a re­sult, hu­man de­vel­op­ment, the in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment be­ing sought will be­come a com­pul­sion to be achieved.