It con­tin­ues to be a source of se­ri­ous re­tar­da­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment when politi­cians, their par­ties and the pop­u­la­tion of this small twin-is­land state, fail and/or refuse to har­monise their ef­forts to sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly ar­rive at the con­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments to al­low for a qual­i­ty of gov­er­nance ben­e­fi­cial to all. 

In­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment with­in T&T was first raised in mod­ern times by ANR Robin­son and Dr Win­ston Mur­ray in the 1970s, when the two rep­re­sent­ed To­ba­go East and West un­der the flag of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Ac­tion Con­gress.

Af­ter the 1970 fall­out be­tween Mr Robin­son and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams, ANR, who was Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) deputy po­lit­i­cal leader and deputy prime min­is­ter to Dr Williams, re­cal­i­brat­ed his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer in To­ba­go and suc­cess­ful­ly mount­ed an ef­fort to have the 18th-cen­tu­ry To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) re-es­tab­lished.

From then to the present, there have been ne­go­ti­a­tions, re-as­sess­ments of what was agreed up­on, fur­ther con­sul­ta­tions, pro­pos­als and a num­ber of con­sti­tu­tion­al changes which led to the es­tab­lish­ment of the 1996 THA Act in the Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion of T&T.

Fur­ther ad­just­ments were made af­ter po­lit­i­cal par­ties op­posed to the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment in Port-of-Spain be­ing in charge of the THA, de­mand­ed greater au­ton­o­my, pow­er and larg­er por­tions of the na­tion­al bud­get et al.

There­after, and in­deed through­out the life of the THA-Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment re­la­tion­ship, marked by de­bates and con­tes­ta­tions —of­ten filled with name-call­ing, char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion and nu­mer­ous al­le­ga­tions of who loves To­ba­go and who doesn’t—there have been two stand­out is­sues: one, the claim by the THA that the bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for To­ba­go’s re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture does not meet those needs, and that the de­vel­op­ment al­lo­ca­tion for projects and pro­grammes to ex­pand and en­hance the econ­o­my, leave To­ba­go de­pen­dent with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty for eco­nom­ic ad­vance­ment. 

It should be not­ed here that on two oc­ca­sions, two prime min­is­ters sit­ting in the Par­lia­ment have been To­bag­o­ni­ans, ANR Robin­son and the in­cum­bent, Dr Kei­th Row­ley. At the time, ANR was head of the now-de­funct To­ba­go-based De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Ac­tion Con­gress, which was op­posed to the PNM. 

In be­tween them, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning claimed a mid­dle, but de­cid­ed­ly PNM ground, and Bas­deo Pan­day and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, com­plete­ly with­out a po­lit­i­cal base in To­ba­go, aimed through proxy arrange­ments to play the game of in­cit­ing con­flict, and reach­ing agree­ments with the THA when it suit­ed their pur­pos­es.

The lead­er­ship of the THA has ranged from the mild-man­nered Lennox De­noon, to the abra­sive yet pa­tri­ot­ic Ho­choy Charles, to the de­vot­ed Orville Lon­don and the present con­tentious Far­ley Au­gus­tine, who is not on­ly ul­tra-ag­gres­sive in re­la­tion to the Prime Min­is­ter and Gov­ern­ment, but is in­tent on whip­ping up a To­ba­go-Trinidad fight for his elec­toral-po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es. 

What shines through the con­tentions around con­sti­tu­tion­al shifts to grant greater or few­er pow­ers to the As­sem­bly, is the de­sire to play po­lit­i­cal games, rather than a fo­cus on what is best for the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Is it too much to ask of the Gov­ern­ment and the THA to fo­cus on the ab­solute needs of the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic? Such an ap­proach may, in fact, ad­vance their po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions.