Dr Win­ford James

Max Al­bert and I con­tin­ue our dis­cus­sions on the To­ba­go Au­ton­o­my Ques­tion.

Last Sun­day, we asked what To­ba­go gained when Joel Samp­son and David Thomas said YES to LESS. We re­turn to that ques­tion be­cause its im­pli­ca­tions ex­tend be­yond one Bud­get. Their de­ci­sion must be mea­sured against the her­itage of those who car­ried To­ba­go’s torch be­fore them. What stan­dard of rep­re­sen­ta­tion have they in­her­it­ed, and what stan­dard are they now es­tab­lish­ing?

ANR Robin­son, Win­ston Mur­ray, Nathaniel Moore, Agnes Williams, Pamela Nichol­son and James Ogiste be­long to that his­to­ry. They dif­fered in per­son­al­i­ty, cir­cum­stance and po­lit­i­cal judge­ment. We need not pre­tend oth­er­wise. Nor must we man­u­fac­ture per­fec­tion to recog­nise the de­mand­ing tra­di­tion they rep­re­sent. To­ba­go’s par­lia­men­tary pres­ence must serve To­ba­go’s ad­vance­ment, in­clud­ing when do­ing so makes the gov­ern­ment of the day un­com­fort­able.

Robin­son and Mur­ray pur­sued in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment through Par­lia­ment. Their 1977 ini­tia­tive placed a de­fined To­ba­go de­mand be­fore the na­tion­al leg­is­la­ture. They un­der­stood that rep­re­sen­ta­tion re­quired more than oc­cu­py­ing seats or en­joy­ing ac­cess to those ex­er­cis­ing ex­ec­u­tive pow­er. A par­lia­men­tary voice had to ar­tic­u­late a claim, press it, and es­tab­lish pub­licly what To­ba­go was seek­ing.

What they did to Nathaniel Moore should be par­tic­u­lar­ly un­com­fort­able for the present rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Par­lia­ment’s own bi­og­ra­phy records that his ap­point­ment as a Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor was re­voked on the Prime Min­is­ter’s ad­vice af­ter he re­fused to vote with the Gov­ern­ment on a Bill con­cern­ing tourism in To­ba­go. This was in­de­pen­dence with con­se­quences. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of los­ing his po­si­tion did not en­sure his com­pli­ance.

Moore and Agnes Williams al­so be­long to the his­to­ry of To­ba­go’s trou­bled re­la­tion­ship with Bas­deo Pan­day’s UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion. That his­to­ry should dis­cour­age the as­sump­tion that po­lit­i­cal friend­ship guar­an­tees To­ba­go’s pro­tec­tion. The present re­la­tion­ship must be judged on its own record, but To­ba­go has en­coun­tered this dilem­ma be­fore. Its rep­re­sen­ta­tives should un­der­stand the warn­ing con­tained in that ex­pe­ri­ence.

Against that in­her­i­tance, what did Samp­son and Thomas of­fer? They ac­knowl­edged dis­sat­is­fac­tion with To­ba­go’s fi­nan­cial treat­ment yet sup­port­ed the na­tion­al Bud­get con­tain­ing it. Sup­port for a whole Bud­get does not nec­es­sar­i­ly en­dorse every pro­vi­sion. But that fa­mil­iar ex­pla­na­tion can­not dis­charge their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. They must show what made their af­fir­ma­tive votes a bet­ter in­stru­ment for To­ba­go than with­hold­ing sup­port.

Did they se­cure ad­di­tion­al re­sources? Were par­tic­u­lar de­vel­op­ment com­mit­ments pro­tect­ed? Was there an un­der­tak­ing to re­con­sid­er the al­lo­ca­tion? We do not as­sert that such as­sur­ances ex­ist­ed. We ask, be­cause co­op­er­a­tion with­out an iden­ti­fi­able re­turn leaves To­ba­go car­ry­ing the loss while its rep­re­sen­ta­tives ex­plain the virtues of the re­la­tion­ship.

Con­sul­ta­tion can­not close the ar­gu­ment ei­ther. Were they con­sult­ed be­fore the al­lo­ca­tion was de­ter­mined, or mere­ly be­fore the vote? Did the Chief Sec­re­tary and Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil agree with their po­si­tion? If ob­jec­tions re­mained un­re­solved, why did sup­port fol­low? A con­ver­sa­tion is not an agree­ment. Say­ing that con­sul­ta­tion oc­curred tells To­ba­go lit­tle un­less the po­si­tion reached and its jus­ti­fi­ca­tion are ex­plained. Shame­less!

They could have reg­is­tered dis­sat­is­fac­tion through ab­sten­tion, al­though that would not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly have pro­duced more mon­ey, and we make no such claim. But it would have made a bound­ary un­mis­tak­ably vis­i­ble, ab­sent the fear of ret­ri­bu­tion. Their cho­sen course al­so car­ried a mes­sage: weak­ness when To­ba­go need­ed to stand firm for more.

They must now as­sure us that the Gov­ern­ment should ex­pect a dif­fer­ent re­sponse if To­ba­go re­ceives an­oth­er in­ad­e­quate set­tle­ment on any oth­er mat­ter as well!

Notwith­stand­ing, next year’s dan­ger sub­sists. A re­peat­ed short­fall would test whether this year’s vote was an ex­cep­tion­al cal­cu­la­tion or the be­gin­ning of a habit To­ba­go can­not af­ford po­lit­i­cal­ly. Will To­ba­go again hear dis­ap­point­ment from its Chief Sec­re­tary, con­cern from its MPs, and an af­fir­ma­tive vote when Par­lia­ment di­vides? What should its peo­ple ex­pect? Be­fore an­oth­er al­lo­ca­tion ar­rives, Samp­son and Thomas must state what they will de­mand, what un­der­tak­ings they will re­quire, and what will cause them to with­hold their sup­port. Oth­er­wise, To­ba­go will be asked to hope with­out know­ing their lim­its.

One can al­most imag­ine Robin­son turn­ing in his grave, won­der­ing what has be­come of the cause he helped car­ry. Samp­son and Thomas should vis­it his tomb and re­flect on that in­her­i­tance. Then they should sit be­fore Pamela Nichol­son and ex­plain their de­ci­sion in dust and ash­es!

What would they say to those who un­der­stood that de­fend­ing To­ba­go could ex­act a po­lit­i­cal price? Per­haps they should be­gin by ask­ing for­give­ness.

But the peo­ple of To­ba­go re­quire more than a pil­grim­age. In our judge­ment, en­dors­ing an in­ad­e­quate set­tle­ment with­out demon­strat­ing a com­pen­sat­ing gain be­trays the stan­dard of rep­re­sen­ta­tion To­ba­go de­serves. That is a judge­ment about their pub­lic de­ci­sion. They owe their con­stituents an ex­pla­na­tion; if they can­not jus­ti­fy it, they owe them a pub­lic apol­o­gy.

How­ev­er, that apol­o­gy must be ac­com­pa­nied by ac­tion. Let them bring a sub­stan­tive par­lia­men­tary ini­tia­tive set­ting out To­ba­go’s fi­nan­cial and de­vel­op­men­tal re­quire­ments. Let them pub­lish their de­mands and pur­sue a re­sponse. A mo­tion alone would not re­store con­fi­dence, but a clear po­si­tion, stout­ly de­fend­ed, would give To­ba­go some­thing against which to judge them. Par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure must be­come an in­stru­ment of ad­vo­ca­cy, rather than an ex­cuse for ac­com­mo­da­tion.

If they are un­will­ing to ex­er­cise that in­de­pen­dence, they should re­sign. To­ba­go did not elect rep­re­sen­ta­tives mere­ly to make its dis­ap­point­ment eas­i­er for the na­tion­al Gov­ern­ment to man­age. Friend­ship does not can­cel their du­ty, and friend­ship with the gov­ern­ing side can­not be­come a per­ma­nent de­fence for de­ci­sions they can­not jus­ti­fy to their con­stituents.

Must To­ba­go con­tin­ue hold­ing its bel­ly in its hands, won­der­ing whether its rep­re­sen­ta­tives will stand firm? Its stan­dard-bear­ers left a torch and Samp­son and Thomas must de­cide whether they will car­ry it or step aside for al­low­ing its flame to di­min­ish.

Dr Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment and pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean on ra­dio and TV since the 1970s. He has al­so writ­ten thou­sands of columns for all ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try.