Farley vows Tobago referendum on autonomy in mid 2026

Akash Sama­roo

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says that if re-elect­ed on Jan­u­ary 12, his ad­min­is­tra­tion will take the is­sue of To­ba­go au­ton­o­my to an is­land-wide ref­er­en­dum ear­ly in the new year.

Au­gus­tine al­so called on cen­tral gov­ern­ment to re­spect and im­ple­ment the out­come of that vote, warn­ing that fail­ure to do so would lead to To­bag­o­ni­ans mo­bil­is­ing and march­ing to Port of Spain to de­mand that the will of the is­land be ho­n­oured.

Speak­ing in Buc­coo on Thurs­day evening at a To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty po­lit­i­cal meet­ing, Au­gus­tine said his par­ty has a “blue­print” for To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment, with a ref­er­en­dum on au­ton­o­my as a cen­tral el­e­ment.

“One of the things you will see when our blue­print is launched is that we are go­ing to con­tain in there pro­pos­als for a ref­er­en­dum here in To­ba­go be­cause we will be ask­ing the cen­tral gov­ern­ment to au­tho­rise through law that we have a ref­er­en­dum so that the en­tire is­land can come out and vote and let us set­tle the is­sue of our au­ton­o­my and what we want in it once and for all. Every adult To­bag­on­ian, one vote on the mat­ter. You vote and what­ev­er you de­cide that we go with,” Au­gus­tine said.

He warned though that if cen­tral gov­ern­ment does not act on the out­come, fur­ther ac­tion would fol­low.

“And if the cen­tral gov­ern­ment is re­luc­tant to make le­gal pro­vi­sions for a as­sem­bly, we will hold a non-bind­ing ref­er­en­dum and we will take the da­ta or the re­sults from that ref­er­en­dum and we are go­ing to march for­ward to Port of Spain and say to Port of Spain this is what the peo­ple of To­ba­go want and we want noth­ing less than that.”

Au­gus­tine said To­ba­go cur­rent­ly has no au­thor­i­ty to cre­ate laws gov­ern­ing its mar­itime space and in­sist­ed that any au­ton­o­my leg­is­la­tion must ad­dress that is­sue.

“When we talk about our au­ton­o­my, we are not ac­cept­ing any Au­ton­o­my Bills, where we can't pass laws for our ocean. That is ours, that don't be­long to no­body else but us. That’s we own, that’s not them own.”

He said To­ba­go should have au­thor­i­ty over its wa­ters be­yond the me­di­an line.

“Let them pass laws for the Gulf of Paria, let them pass laws to the port in Port of Spain, let them pass laws to To­co. But as you cross the me­di­an line, let the au­thor­i­ty rest with the peo­ple of To­ba­go. That is ours, To­ba­go is we, and we are not giv­ing it up to any­body what­so­ev­er. That is ours. And so I'm telling you tonight, that this par­ty, un­der my lead­er­ship, will nev­er ac­cept any bill that will not give us au­thor­i­ty over our mar­itime space. We are not ac­cept­ing it.”

Au­gus­tine said he wants the ref­er­en­dum held by at least the mid­dle of the new cal­en­dar year.

He added that the two au­ton­o­my bills brought by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2024 would not have giv­en To­ba­go any rights or de­ci­sion-mak­ing pow­er in re­la­tion to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty or in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions mat­ters.

Au­gus­tine did ac­knowl­edge how­ev­er, speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia,  that noth­ing in the Con­sti­tu­tion al­lows for a ref­er­en­dum to be legal­ly bind­ing.