Augustine defends Tobago’s neutrality amid US aircraft, radar row

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Chief Sec­re­tary and To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty po­lit­i­cal leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine has dis­missed pub­lic con­cern over the use of To­ba­go’s air­ports by US mil­i­tary air­craft as fear mon­ger­ing, in­sist­ing the is­land re­mains neu­tral ahead of the Jan­u­ary 12 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion.

Speak­ing at a TPP po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Mt St George/Good­wood late Sat­ur­day night, Au­gus­tine said he on­ly be­came aware US mil­i­tary air­craft had been au­tho­rised to use To­ba­go’s air­port through a re­lease is­sued by the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, which in­formed his of­fice be­fore it was made pub­lic.

He told sup­port­ers the dis­clo­sure had trig­gered un­nec­es­sary alarm and sought to re­as­sure To­bag­o­ni­ans To­ba­go was not be­ing drawn in­to any in­ter­na­tion­al con­flict.

“We ain’t in no war. We ain’t sup­port­ing no war. To­ba­go is not go­ing to be used to fight war against any­body,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said To­ba­go was not choos­ing sides be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela and had no in­ter­est in for­eign geopo­lit­i­cal dis­putes, adding the is­land’s fo­cus re­mained on its own fu­ture and the Jan­u­ary 12 elec­tion.

Au­gus­tine said re­cent con­ver­sa­tions with young men in Cas­tara re­in­forced why neu­tral­i­ty re­mained the safest po­si­tion. They asked what To­ba­go’s place would be if ei­ther the US or Venezuela pre­vailed in a con­flict, a ques­tion he said un­der­scored the dan­ger of align­ing with any side.

“To­ba­go is not go­ing to be used to fight war against any­body,” he told the meet­ing, adding To­bag­o­ni­ans were fo­cused on their own busi­ness and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic choice at the polls.

He re­ject­ed claims To­ba­go could be­come a mil­i­tary tar­get, ar­gu­ing the Unit­ed States did not need To­ba­go, or Trinidad and To­ba­go more broad­ly, to con­duct any mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion. He said US forces could op­er­ate from in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters with­out us­ing lo­cal ter­ri­to­ry.

“The Unit­ed States have a ship with more ca­pa­bil­i­ties, more tech­no­log­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ties than the whole of To­ba­go com­bined,” Au­gus­tine said. “As a mat­ter of fact, the U.S., with that ship, they don’t even need to come in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go wa­ters. They could stay in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters and do what­ev­er they want to do against who­ev­er they want to do. They don’t need us to do that.”

Any con­flict, he added, would af­fect the wider Caribbean, not To­ba­go alone, and he ac­cused po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents of seek­ing to ex­ploit fear dur­ing the elec­tion sea­son.

Au­gus­tine al­so ad­dressed grow­ing ques­tions about the radar in­stal­la­tion at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, as­sur­ing sup­port­ers it posed no threat to To­ba­go while ad­mit­ting he was still seek­ing clar­i­ty on key as­pects of the sys­tem.

“The re­al ques­tions are who is col­lect­ing the da­ta, what are they do­ing with the da­ta and how will the da­ta be used,” he said, adding the me­dia should be press­ing for an­swers.

Ques­tions about radar da­ta ac­cess were raised with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar more than two weeks ago by Guardian Me­dia. Asked who was re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion from the radar in­stalled in To­ba­go, she replied: “You may want to ask the Min­is­ter of De­fence, Min­is­ter Sturge.”

Au­gus­tine has pre­vi­ous­ly ac­knowl­edged Sturge is hard to reach say­ing in a press con­fer­ence, that Sturge “true to his na­ture, did not re­spond” to his queries.

When pressed on who had ac­cess to the da­ta, she said: “Of course, our own mil­i­tary per­son­nel, some of them would have ac­cess to that da­ta,” adding, “I think the ques­tion you al­ready want to know who else.”

Asked whether Unit­ed States per­son­nel al­so had ac­cess, she said: “We’ll have to ask Min­is­ter Sturge,” ex­plain­ing she did not have the in­for­ma­tion with her and adding: “You have na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sues some­times that are too sen­si­tive to put in the pub­lic do­main.”

Au­gus­tine said while na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty de­ci­sions rest­ed with the Prime Min­is­ter as head of Cab­i­net and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, To­ba­go must be con­sult­ed when mat­ters di­rect­ly af­fect­ed the is­land.

“If it con­cerns our 116 square miles, the peo­ple of To­ba­go should be con­sult­ed through a leader,” he said.

He cred­it­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar with shar­ing his po­si­tion on neu­tral­i­ty, say­ing she had made it clear Trinidad and To­ba­go’s land and wa­ters would not be used to wage war against an­oth­er coun­try.

Au­gus­tine said the re­la­tion­ship be­tween To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly lead­ers and cen­tral gov­ern­ment had shift­ed, con­trast­ing past ex­pe­ri­ences with the present.

He said when he could not get re­spons­es pri­vate­ly un­der pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions, he re­sort­ed to pub­lic pres­sure. Now, he said, is­sues could be ad­dressed di­rect­ly.

“ I would take up the mi­cro­phone and speak to them through the mi­cro­phone pub­licly and em­bar­rass them in­to ac­tion But you see once I could take this up and make a call and get a re­sponse I would con­tin­ue to use this And that’s a dif­fer­ence and that shows re­spect from dis­re­spect” he said.

He al­so in­voked for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning’s oft-quot­ed ap­proach to for­eign re­la­tions, say­ing do­ing busi­ness with “who­ev­er an­swers the phone” re­mained a prac­ti­cal pol­i­cy.