Guest column: Understanding the Tobago row - by Dr Hamid Ghany

The row that erupted last weekend between Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and the Chief Secretary of the Tobago House of Assembly (THA), Orville London must be understood in the context of a long struggle over a period of 35 years for greater autonomy for Tobago and the neglect of the Central Government. 

Following the 1976 general election, the PNM lost both parliamentary seats in Tobago to the DAC led by ANR Robinson. 

That led to a hostile response from the then prime minister, Dr Eric Williams insofar as the Ministry of Tobago Affairs was disbanded and Tobago was essentially punished for not supporting the PNM. 

The response of Robinson to being elected as the MP for Tobago East was to introduce a motion in the House of Representatives that was laid on January 14, 1977. 

The motion read: “Be it resolved: That this honourable House is of the opinion that all proper and necessary steps should be taken to accord the people of Tobago internal self-government in 1977.” (Hansard—House of Representatives January 1977, pp. 1149 –1206).

The motion was seconded by Dr Winston Murray, the other DAC MP. In the debate, Robinson spoke about Tobago’s neglect at the hands of the Central Government and made the case for an elected body to handle the administrative and political affairs of the island. 

The response of the PNM was to amend the motion to preserve the concept of a unitary state. 

During the debate, Murray made the case for the preservation of Tobagonian culture, while Overand Padmore (Minister in the Ministry of Finance) insisted that Murray was advocating secession and this became the PNM line against the Robinson/Murray proposal. 

It is in this context that the political schism between Trinidad and Tobago must be understood. 

A deep-seated Tobagonian desire for self-government based on a history of colonial and post-colonial neglect and disadvantage alongside a Central Government that punished the island after the 1976 general election and further sought to stymie the self-government movement by raising the spectre of secession.

After the establishment of the THA in 1980, the PNM was defeated in the elections that followed and Robinson became the first chairman of the THA. He built a movement for further autonomy for Tobago on the momentum created by the PNM-controlled Central Government in Port-of-Spain of neglect for the island and the frustration of its legitimate right to self-determination. 

Up to the time of his death, Dr Williams had no answer for this political movement that was given sustenance by his policy of punishment for the island. 

George Chambers, as prime minister, continued the same approach and Robinson was handed a political gift that helped him to become the leader of a new political party that would challenge the PNM on the national stage and win—that party was the NAR.

Robinson had to manage tensions within the NAR in Tobago as the secessionist argument was suppressed by him while sitting in the national chair as Prime Minister. 

No meaningful reform took place to advance the cause of autonomy for Tobago between 1986 and 1991 when the NAR demitted office after losing the general election that year (1991). However, Robinson’s return to government in the UNC-NAR coalition as Minister Extraordinarie in 1995 led to more significant change for Tobago in 1996.

However, his elevation to the presidency of the country in 1997 led to the decline of the NAR as a political force in Tobago to the extent that they lost both parliamentary seats in Tobago in the December 2001 general election. 

This had been preceded by the loss of the THA in the Assembly elections in January 2001 to the PNM. Nothing tangible happened on the constitutional reform front in respect of advancing the cause of autonomy for Tobago during the watch of the PNM from December 2001 to May 2010 when the party lost control of the Central Government in the general election.

The current government has re-ignited the issue of the role of the Central Government in Tobago by behaving in exactly the opposite way to the PNM in the 1976–1986 period. 

Whereas back then autonomy was being stymied, now the Central Government is making moves to enhance the autonomy of the island in relation to Trinidad. At the same time, the Central Government is seeking to embrace the island in a manner opposite to what occurred between 1976 and 1986.

The establishment of an Office of the Prime Minister in Tobago in 2011 is diametrically opposed to the actions of Eric Williams and the PNM in 1976 when the Ministry of Tobago Affairs was disbanded. 

Words such as “unitary state” and “CAST” (Central Administrative Services Tobago) have acquired a negative image in Tobago over the last 35 years because they have come to represent obstacles to the movement for greater autonomy and self-determination. 

The Central Government must now make its position clear if only to avoid putting fear into the hearts of Tobagonians that the advances made to date on the autonomy front remain safe.

The above column by Dr Hamid Ghany has been reproduced from the Guardian with the permission of the author.