The fail­ure of the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bills in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day war­rants deep re­flec­tion from all sides of the di­vide.

The idea of au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go is not a new one and dates back to the Ho­choy Charles era as Chief Sec­re­tary. Giv­en the longevi­ty of the is­sue, it is pre­cise­ly for this rea­son Gov­ern­ment's dis­or­gan­i­sa­tion on Mon­day was met with an apt re­sponse.

Dur­ing the de­bate, the Op­po­si­tion com­plained of a short­er time to ex­am­ine amend­ments made by the Gov­ern­ment. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley mean­while de­nied there was any last-minute rush, ar­gu­ing the is­sues have been in dis­cus­sion in Par­lia­ment and pub­lic do­main for years and it was Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine seek­ing to bring new con­sid­er­a­tions to the ta­ble. Ear­li­er on Mon­day, Au­gus­tine had called for more con­sul­ta­tion, stat­ing that the bills still do not meet the needs of To­ba­go and its peo­ple. It is un­for­tu­nate, there­fore, that this im­por­tant leg­is­la­tion for the is­land re­mains a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball.

In re­al­i­ty, there have been sev­er­al con­sul­ta­tions and meet­ings on To­ba­go's self-gov­er­nance over the last 10 years lead­ing up to the first de­bate on To­ba­go au­ton­o­my three years ago. How then can the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives ar­rive at Par­lia­ment to vote for leg­is­la­tion that To­bag­o­ni­ans are still not sat­is­fied with? It is ap­par­ent the con­sul­ta­tions not on­ly need to be broad­ened but al­so to be es­ca­lat­ed to the lev­el where of­fi­cials from both the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment must meet and find com­mon ground on the range of is­sues hin­der­ing the pas­sage of the bills.

What doesn't help is the height­ened rhetoric as­so­ci­at­ed with Mon­day's sit­ting. Au­gus­tine's "house slave" ref­er­ence in re­la­tion to the Prime Min­is­ter af­ter the bills' fail­ure, there­fore, is un­for­tu­nate, as it serves on­ly to cre­ate fur­ther an­i­mos­i­ty be­tween two of the ma­jor play­ers in the dis­cus­sions, who, iron­i­cal­ly, are born and bred To­bag­o­ni­ans.

The dra­ma in Par­lia­ment high­light­ed the huge dis­con­nect be­tween the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leg­is­la­tors on the mat­ter- ul­ti­mate­ly re­sult­ing in the bills' fail­ure. It is not, how­ev­er, enough for any Gov­ern­ment, where the ma­jor­i­ty of mem­bers rep­re­sent con­stituen­cies in Trinidad, to sim­ply craft leg­is­la­tion that de­cides the fate of To­ba­go with­out giv­ing se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to the con­cerns of those who live on the is­land.

Among the changes Au­gus­tine would like to see are in­creased mar­itime bound­aries; a larg­er share of the na­tion­al bud­get from a cur­rent max­i­mum of 6.9 per cent to eight per cent; to have au­ton­o­my in ac­cess­ing loans on its own and to im­pose tax­es and grant con­ces­sions. Oth­er To­ba­go of­fi­cials have gone fur­ther in their calls for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form which would give the THA the right to re­view laws made in Trinidad and to de­ter­mine whether they are ap­plic­a­ble to To­ba­go.

Ide­al­ly, the process un­der­tak­en should be gen­uine. To­bag­o­ni­ans are not cur­rent­ly con­vinced that Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment wants to al­low them self-dter­mi­na­tion in any se­ri­ous way. They want re­al changes, not cos­met­ic ones. On that note, Au­gus­tine and the THA will al­so have to com­pro­mise on some ar­eas which Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment will not be able to of­fer but such con­sen­sus can on­ly be reached if there is au­then­tic di­a­logue be­tween the par­ties.