TPP claps back at Camille over Farley’s St Kitts mission

The To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) says a com­par­i­son be­tween for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) au­ton­o­my bills and the con­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ment in St Kitts and Nevis is “fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed.”

The TPP made the com­ment via a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to com­ments on the is­sue from PNM MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is.

In de­fend­ing his de­ci­sion to go to St Kitts, on the in­vi­ta­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Au­gus­tine had said that twin is­land fea­tured a sim­i­lar type of gov­er­nance struc­ture and talks with of­fi­cials there could help To­ba­go in build­ing out its own frame­work for au­ton­o­my

How­ev­er, Robin­son-Reg­is had ques­tioned Au­gus­tine’s rea­son­ing, sug­gest­ing the vis­it was a “re­vi­sion” of his­to­ry be­cause Au­gus­tine had pre­vi­ous­ly re­ject­ed the same St Kitts/Nevis mod­el dur­ing Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee con­sid­er­a­tions un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the TPP stat­ed that Nevis gov­erns it­self un­der con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed au­thor­i­ty, where­as un­der the PNM pro­pos­als, “To­ba­go would still have been gov­erned from Port-of-Spain.”

The par­ty ar­gued that the PNM bills left Par­lia­ment with the pow­er to over­ride To­ba­go laws, con­trol fi­nanc­ing and al­ter arrange­ments with­out the con­sent of To­ba­go.

“That is ad­min­is­tra­tive de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion, not au­ton­o­my. Re­al au­ton­o­my is not about man­ag­ing pro­grammes; it is about who holds fi­nal de­ci­sion-mak­ing pow­er,” the TPP stat­ed.

The TPP claimed the peo­ple of To­ba­go re­peat­ed­ly called for pro­tect­ed au­thor­i­ty and a guar­an­teed fi­nan­cial frame­work, but these re­quests did not ap­pear in the fi­nal leg­is­la­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the TPP, the elec­toral record shows the peo­ple of To­ba­go “sound­ly re­ject­ed” the PNM’s of­fer­ings in De­cem­ber 2021, the Gen­er­al Elec­tions of 2025 and the THA elec­tions of 2026.

The Chief Sec­re­tary has al­ready stat­ed the THA will in­clude the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the le­git­i­mate Op­po­si­tion Leader in new rounds of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions on au­ton­o­my to en­sure the voice of To­ba­go is rep­re­sent­ed broad­ly.

The TPP said the re­sponse was not a mat­ter of rewrit­ing his­to­ry but clar­i­fy­ing the truth.

“To­ba­go is not seek­ing bet­ter man­age­ment from afar. To­ba­go is seek­ing the right to gov­ern its own af­fairs,” the TPP stat­ed.