Tobago wants to reinforce its balance of power

THE EDITOR: It is clear that the resolution passed in the THA was acting on proxy from and inspired by its political partners in the mainland calling for Tobago to be afforded an adequate “level and ratio of representation” in Parliament. The initiative is being engineered to strengthen the crucial balance of power currently exercised by the two Tobago seats in the House that is qualitatively and politically superior to the 1966 situation. And this while the Orville London administration continues to be a law unto itself infringing all the tenets of accountability and transparency in administering its own exclusive autonomy under the THA Act.

Post-1966, the THA has been allocated more than one-tenth of the National Budget in direct and indirect allocations. THA Secretary/CEO London empowered with the perks and power of Ministerial and Cabinet ranks respectively, believes that Trinis and the EBC are na?ve enough to fall for his arguments that the extra seat the THA desires is non-politically partisan and is based on rationality. Rationality for him is the need to accord Tobago greater political impact over and above its THA autonomy and self-governance and the largesse it now dispenses in the sister-isle. The two current Tobago parliamentary seats now exercise a power and clout in national politics that is way out of proportion to the size of its electorate/population and fundamentally more enhanced than the “ratio and level” of 1966.

For Secretary London the 1966 political scenario is the benchmark year for his arguments supportive of an additional seat. That is the “arithmetic of the geography of Tobago.” Tobago is allowed to practice geographic discrimination against mainland Trinidadians in the disbursement of funds from the Treasury and is afforded preferential status at UWI both in student enrolment and admission criteria. That will be entrenched in the UTT. In 1956 Tobago was allocated one seat. In 1966 it was increased to two with each seat averaging an 8,113 electorate. At present there is a total electorate of 37,863 with each seat averaging 18,932 (17,836 in East and 20,027 in the West). That electoral figure is 15 percent below the average for Trinidad where the average per seat is 22,327.

It is to be noted that, irrespective of the size of the electorate, Tobago under Article 70(2) the 1976 Constitution is entitled to a minimum of two seats. Any back door, anti-EBC one seat increase effected by a Cabinet politically motivated strategic intervention is a dangerous precedent at manipulation and politicisation of the EBC Report. It will be a prescription for the tail to wag the dog, to give more to those who hath already and further empower Tobagonians, while flaunting their political and legal autonomy post-1966 to increase their control over and determine the political affairs in the ethnically diversified mainland.

STEPHEN KANGAL
Caroni