Dr Win­ford James

Max Al­bert and I con­tin­ue our dis­cus­sions on the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my ques­tion.

For sev­er­al weeks now, we have been ex­plor­ing To­ba­go’s con­sti­tu­tion­al jour­ney from the Union of 1889 through the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Acts No. 8 of 1988 and Act No 40 of 1996. We have ex­am­ined au­thor­i­ty, gov­er­nance, and the con­tin­u­ing search for an au­ton­o­my arrange­ment that bet­ter re­flects To­ba­go’s as­pi­ra­tions with­in the Re­pub­lic.

To­day, how­ev­er, we pause to ask a dif­fer­ent ques­tion. Not what To­ba­go should re­ceive, but what kind of Re­pub­lic we would build if we were found­ing it to­day. Econ­o­mists, con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ars, and his­to­ri­ans fre­quent­ly em­ploy what may be called the coun­ter­fac­tu­al method. They ask “What if?”, not to rewrite his­to­ry, but to iden­ti­fy pos­si­bil­i­ties that ex­ist­ing in­sti­tu­tions may have over­looked.

In de­vel­op­ing the an­swer to this ques­tion, we will be op­er­at­ing with the fol­low­ing broad de­f­i­n­i­tion of de­vel­op­ment: “the op­ti­mi­sa­tion of re­sources and op­por­tu­ni­ties for good, healthy liv­ing for all wher­ev­er they are lo­cat­ed and can be sus­tained in the Re­pub­lic.”

Sup­pose the Re­pub­lic were be­ing de­signed in 2026 rather than in­her­it­ed from 1962 or shaped by arrange­ments dat­ing back to 1889. How would we or­gan­ise it? Would we au­to­mat­i­cal­ly con­cen­trate near­ly every ma­jor in­sti­tu­tion on one is­land? Or would we de­lib­er­ate­ly dis­trib­ute na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions so that de­vel­op­ment it­self be­came more bal­anced?

His­to­ry demon­strates that in­sti­tu­tions are not mere­ly ad­min­is­tra­tive con­ve­niences but al­so eco­nom­ic en­gines. Wher­ev­er courts are es­tab­lished, lawyers, ac­coun­tants, me­di­a­tors, con­sul­tants, con­fer­ence fa­cil­i­ties, ho­tels, and restau­rants fol­low. Wher­ev­er uni­ver­si­ties are es­tab­lished, re­search, in­no­va­tion, hous­ing, and com­merce fol­low. Wher­ev­er gov­ern­ment min­istries are lo­cat­ed, em­ploy­ment fol­lows. Wher­ev­er pub­lic in­vest­ment is con­cen­trat­ed, pri­vate in­vest­ment is sel­dom far be­hind.

In­sti­tu­tions cre­ate economies. Could the Re­pub­lic be­come stronger if its in­sti­tu­tions were more strate­gi­cal­ly dis­trib­uted? Imag­ine a Scar­bor­ough that evolves in­to the con­sti­tu­tion­al and ju­di­cial cen­tre of the Re­pub­lic. Imag­ine re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al courts con­duct­ing busi­ness from To­ba­go. Imag­ine the Na­tion­al Teach­ers’ Col­leges lo­cat­ed in To­ba­go. Imag­ine the Na­tion­al Po­lice Acad­e­my prepar­ing every po­lice re­cruit in To­ba­go.

Imag­ine a Na­tion­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment In­sti­tute serv­ing the wider Caribbean from Scar­bor­ough.

Go­ing fur­ther afield, imag­ine a Caribbean Cen­tre for Ma­rine Sci­ence and Ocean Tech­nol­o­gy over­look­ing the At­lantic from a site in To­ba­go.

Each in­sti­tu­tion would cre­ate em­ploy­ment, stim­u­late hous­ing, sup­port trans­port, re­tail, hos­pi­tal­i­ty, and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices, and cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for young To­bag­o­ni­ans while con­tribut­ing to the na­tion­al econ­o­my.

The sea it­self in­vites sim­i­lar re­flec­tion. For gen­er­a­tions, we have viewed To­ba­go prin­ci­pal­ly as a tourism des­ti­na­tion. Yet To­ba­go is al­so a mar­itime ter­ri­to­ry. Its wa­ters em­body fish­eries, ma­rine bio­di­ver­si­ty, ship­ping op­por­tu­ni­ties, sci­en­tif­ic re­search, blue-car­bon ecosys­tems, and, po­ten­tial­ly, off­shore en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment. Across the world, coun­tries in­creas­ing­ly recog­nise that the sea is not sim­ply a bound­ary but al­so a set of economies.

What con­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments might al­low To­ba­go to par­tic­i­pate more di­rect­ly in the stew­ard­ship and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits aris­ing from the is­land’s ma­rine space, eq­ui­tably de­ter­mined? How might rev­enues as­so­ci­at­ed with off­shore ac­tiv­i­ty, fish­eries, ma­rine con­ser­va­tion, blue-car­bon ini­tia­tives and fu­ture ocean in­dus­tries con­tribute to To­ba­go’s long-term de­vel­op­ment while strength­en­ing the Re­pub­lic as a whole?

These are not ques­tions of di­vi­sion. They are ques­tions of na­tion­al op­ti­mi­sa­tion.

Even sym­bol­ism de­serves con­sid­er­a­tion. The names na­tions adopt, the cap­i­tals they es­tab­lish, and the in­sti­tu­tions they cre­ate all com­mu­ni­cate how they un­der­stand them­selves.

Could a fu­ture Re­pub­lic em­brace a more ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly bal­anced con­sti­tu­tion­al iden­ti­ty? Could Scar­bor­ough be­come the seat of cer­tain na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions while Port-of-Spain con­tin­ues to per­form oth­ers, each city con­tribut­ing unique­ly to the suc­cess of the Re­pub­lic?

Per­haps the Re­pub­lic’s next con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion should ex­tend be­yond au­ton­o­my? Per­haps it should ask how the na­tion it­self can be re-imag­ined? Not by weak­en­ing and di­min­ish­ing one is­land. Not by ex­pand­ing the for­tunes of the oth­er. But rather, by recog­nis­ing that the fullest de­vel­op­ment of To­ba­go strength­ens Trinidad, just as the suc­cess of Trinidad strength­ens To­ba­go.

Au­ton­o­my, viewed through this lens, is not an end in it­self. It is one in­stru­ment through which a more bal­anced, re­silient, and pros­per­ous Re­pub­lic may emerge.

If we pos­sess the courage to re-imag­ine our in­sti­tu­tions, our econ­o­my, our re­la­tion­ship with the sea, and even the sym­bols through which we de­fine our­selves, we may dis­cov­er that the great­est op­por­tu­ni­ty be­fore us is not mere­ly to per­fect To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my but to reimag­ine the Re­pub­lic it­self.

To be con­tin­ued...

Dr Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment and pol­i­tics in T&T 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.