Dr Winford James
trinicenter.com

Where is Tobago going?

By Dr. Winford James
September 06, 2004


The pressures of work and travel obliged me, for more than a month, to take a respite from this column. But I am back, hopefully with my usual rhythm, and the question on my mind, especially with political independence from Britain having just been celebrated or, more accurately, marked, is 'Where is Tobago going?'

It is a question all of us must ask ourselves, especially those of us who have been actively concerned about Tobago's development, have contributed to it in very clear ways, and, in particular, have put our ideas out in the public in the continuing search to engage the citizenry in the best understandings of Tobago's conditions and what needs to be done to structurally improve them.

The question came forcefully to me at the Chief Secretary's reception last Monday night at Shaw Park. The reception took the form of people dressing up, drinking spirits and juices, eating finger foods, and listening to live steelband music as they circulated and exchanged notes of whatever kind. It was most definitely not an occasion for formal reminiscence of the gains, problems, and challenges of independence as the latter is played out either in Trinidad or Tobago. It was a ritual marking of the acquisition of political independence in 1962, nothing more serious, nothing deeper.

But in some conversations the quality of independence did arise and, inevitably, the quality of Tobago's development - under the present administration and past ones. The consensus was that it had gone nowhere. All things continued as they had in essence gone before. The more things changed, the more they were remaining the same.

The PNM administration, like others before it, was minding the store with funds donored from the central government. It was doing development work in the areas under its legal jurisdiction, especially in education, tourism, culture, and public works, and jobs had been created for most employable people. London and his colleagues could claim that they were spending more carefully, that there was better accountability in their practices, and that Tobago enjoyed a far more harmonious relationship with the PNM administration in Port of Spain.

But the essential problems of Tobago remained the same. The politics was a serious disservice to Tobago. It was still a politics negotiated and executed at the level of things like roads, bridges, health centres, school places, tourist arrivals, interisland planes and ferries, and jobs created - things which are basic and should be taken for granted. And it was a politics, unlike that of the Hochoy Charles years, conducted as if what was being run was, not an island state of human beings wanting and needing to self-actualize as much as the best match between great policy and the environment would allow, not an island state of human beings wanting and needing to have their human potential and performance maximised, but a private company or the public service.

The public business was to be conducted quietly, and matters of critical public importance, like Tobago-oriented constitutional reform, was to be shelved for the rest of the administration's current term and the next hustings, which is to say, for all of the four years of the next Assembly term. The hard but necessary work of meaningful consultation with Tobago residents and emigrants on the constitutional, economic, and ideological directions the island needs to take to maximise its human performance was being shied away from - was not even in the conceptions and active thinking of the London administration.

Public challenge by the Assembly of the continuing hegemony of the central government over the conditions for effective autonomous policy making and execution in Tobago was a no-no. The matter was for the backroom, the party caucus, and private cocktails. And so, the man in the street does not have his mind exercised on far higher considerations than roads and bridges and school places and reliable interisland transport and so on.

Shouldn't the politics be more public and noisier? Shouldn't it be focused on matters like: stemming of the perennial debilitating tide of emigration of Tobagonian talent and expertise, expansion of the resident population for economic development and competitiveness, creation of a resident tertiary sector for research and development and, as a result, for the adaptation of imported technologies and the creation of new ones aimed at the export market? Shouldn't it seek to delink Tobago's development from Trinidad's to the extent of enabling a less cluttered focus on Tobago's educational and social problems? Shouldn't it be seeking to lift the quality of public conversation?

There is absolutely no sense of this kind of politics in Tobago; this, in the face of problems that continue to deny the island the quality of human performance and living that should be easily possible in a tiny island state.

Charles started the kind of politics Tobago needs but perished in the folly of doctor politics. London has chosen to be a PNM conventionalist - a minder of the store.

When will this useless politics end?


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