Dr Win­ford James

The Gov­ern­ment is pro­ceed­ing with its in­tent to re­form lo­cal gov­ern­ment and, as I re­port­ed in my pre­vi­ous col­umn, has amend­ed the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Act, Chap 25:04 via the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form) Act, 2022, which has been both as­sent­ed to and pro­claimed by Pres­i­dent Weekes. In crit­i­cal mea­sure, the new act mim­ics the THA Act and, if the in­ten­tion is to au­ton­o­mize lo­cal gov­ern­ment for ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance of the cor­po­ra­tions by col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the new Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cils and the peo­ple through the rule of law, it will fail just as gov­er­nance by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly has failed.

Yes, the var­i­ous THA Acts are a pre­scrip­tion for ad­min­is­tra­tive and eco­nom­ic fail­ure, as his­to­ry shows us.

For 42 years now, they have kept To­ba­go sub­or­di­nate to, and de­pen­dent on, Trinidad. They have re­quired the THA every fis­cal year to go cap in hand to the na­tion­al Min­is­ter of Fi­nance– that is to say, the na­tion­al Gov­ern­ment–for ex­pen­di­ture sums to fund the salaries of most work­ers in To­ba­go and for de­vel­op­ment sums that are far less than what the na­tion­al Gov­ern­ment spends in To­ba­go. They have per­mit­ted the peren­ni­al donor­ing of sums to To­ba­go on a for­mu­la el­e­vat­ed in­to law some 30 years but whose low­est rate they keep us­ing for their high-hand­ed neo­colo­nial cal­cu­la­tions–a for­mu­la that has nev­er been re­viewed, far less re­vised. They have not been able to pre­vent the na­tion­al Gov­ern­ment from tak­ing To­ba­go’s mar­itime wealth and giv­ing back to us crumbs.

They have spawned a state of af­fairs where pub­lic ser­vants in Trinidad, of­ten low-rank­ing ones, are in charge of, or car­ry out, func­tions that should be un­der the purview of the THA. They have co­erced the en­trench­ment of a small men­di­cant econ­o­my and dri­ven To­bag­on­ian chil­dren out of To­ba­go an­nu­al­ly for bet­ter oc­cu­pa­tion­al and busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Among their worst con­se­quences has been a cer­tain au­to­matic­i­ty of na­tion­al Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy be­ing tak­en as To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy–es­pe­cial­ly when the Trinidad Gov­ern­ment turns a blind eye to THA ‘en­croach­ment’, okays a THA ac­tion or in­ter­ven­tion by word of mouth, or en­ters in­to a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing. There’s no prac­tice in the To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment, or any law, that re­quires the mak­ing of pol­i­cy ei­ther by for­mal con­sul­ta­tion of the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil with the peo­ple or by the non-Ex­ec­u­tive arm of the As­sem­bly hav­ing over­sight of Ex­ec­u­tive de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

Sim­i­lar­ly, there is noth­ing in the new lo­cal gov­ern­ment law that forces for­mal con­sul­ta­tion be­tween the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cils and the peo­ple or the non-Ex­ec­u­tive arm on mat­ters such as the Cor­po­ra­tion bud­get and in­vest­ments by the Coun­cil. There is no for­mal mech­a­nism in the law. So Coun­cil plans will be ef­fect­ed apart from the peo­ple ex­cept per­haps through in­for­mal con­sul­ta­tion.

The Cor­po­ra­tions will there­fore have the same prob­lems as the THA in mat­ters such as the an­nu­al bud­get, ar­eas of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and pol­i­cy­mak­ing. They will sub­mit their bud­get to the Fi­nance Min­is­ter and come up against Gov­ern­ment cuts in line with Gov­ern­ment pri­or­i­ties and al­lo­ca­tion for­mu­lae. They will find that what they think are ar­eas with­in their ju­ris­dic­tion are tak­en up by the Gov­ern­ment. And they will find that they will have to fol­low Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy where dis­agree­ments arise.

It is clear that the new leg­is­la­tion was not put to­geth­er with any over­ar­ch­ing in­tent to em­pow­er cit­i­zens res­i­dent in the Cor­po­ra­tions and en­able their prac­tice of democ­ra­cy in pur­suit of their de­vel­op­ment goals. Ab­sent such em­pow­er­ment, the Cor­po­ra­tions will on­ly de­liv­er a mod­icum of progress by pure luck and chance.

So where will their au­ton­o­my come from if these mat­ters are not spec­i­fied in the law and are not in our prac­tice of gov­ern­ment?

The Cor­po­ra­tions might well tell us that they are not af­ter full au­ton­o­my as To­ba­go is, and that they are con­tent with the changes now en­shrined in law–like ad­min­is­tra­tive Di­vi­sions for dif­fer­ent (sets of) re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil, and the Au­dit Com­mit­tee. But the trou­ble is, we don’t know what they want.

What is it that they want?

A ma­jor per­spec­tive on what To­ba­go wants is a fed­er­al gov­ern­ment span­ning two self-gov­ern­ing states–To­ba­go and Trinidad. An­oth­er is one na­tion-state with two sub­or­di­nate provinces on equal ad­min­is­tra­tive foot­ing de­rived from a Sen­ate where To­ba­go has equal rep­re­sen­ta­tion with Trinidad.

What do the Cor­po­ra­tions want?