By Stephen Kangal
March 19, 2018
While being a student of Geography at Hillview College in 1959 I was taught by Mr Trevor Spenser that a sedimentary rock is a conglomerate of layers of alluvial deposits. This lesson flashed upon my inward eye when I studied the draft provisions of the current Bill 5 of 2018 that is geared to confer the long-awaited advanced state of internal self- governance to the 40,000 people living within 116 square miles of mountainous terrain but also enjoying unrestricted mobility including residence in Trinidad.
Accordingly the only concept in the English Language that can succinctly capture and encapsulate the concatenation and intensification of the proposed layers and layers of internal self- governance structures in the Bill is what I term sedimentary governance. I seem to want to believe that after the proposed internal governance new infrastructure is fully in place in Tobago few will be left to be classified as the governed.
If this over-kill is what Tobagonians worked long and hard to achieve and call it self-governance then there is little change from the THA that employed and controlled more than 60% of resident Tobagonians that will now exceed 80% under the new Tobago Legislature.
Let us examine the hierarchical entities that will now govern and exercise jurisdiction over Tobago. Tobago incidentally will be the equal counter-part of Trinidad having consigned the geo-politics behind the unitary statehood to the dustbin of power-seeking, adversarial political history.
They sedimentary layers I refer to are:
1. The House of Representatives
2. The Senate
3. The Cabinet
4. The Presidency
5. The Tobago Legislature
6. The Tobago Island Government
7. House of Assembly
8. The People’s House
9. The Tobago Executive Council
10. The Fiscal Review Commission
This is a plea for a return to sanity to reduce the penchant for make-work governance. Please free -up the few people left from the bloated bureaucracy to become involved in the real private sector -driven socio-economic development and self-reliance of Tobago. This is what matters right now- not illusions of false grandeur/importance, jacket and tie self- governance and dependency.
But more on the other dubious aspects of the Bill Anon!
Like the conniving Zealot you are Mr KANGAL, it would be a joyful day for you, the making difference of the two National Tobago electoral seats is all that’t needed, if you know what i mean.Temptation have always been in the air where Tobago is concerned, i bet that you are willing to wage your last dollar to get rid of the only political obstacle. Your end days are closer to ending, than seeing your hope into fruition.
Cooper
It would be nice and quite surprising if you were to try to see what I wrote with the same care that I wrote it I do not go with the flow. Tobagonian matters are not out of bounds for them to make a mess and for us to say nothing analytical. You are carrying a lot of unnecessary baggage that prevents you from seeing things dispassionately with a tunnel vision et al. I am not into the vice of seat politics Brother Man
I wish anyone who has read the Bill can say for sure that it proposes a fundamental change in real self-governance for Tobago or just some superficial cosmetic changes that will fester in the minds of Tobagonians and generate pockets of resistance and utter despair by being a ward of Trinidad and persistent dependency like the Lotus Eaters. The fact that Tobago and Trinidad now enjoy equality of status is a huge con-job foisted on the people of Tobago from which they will never recover.
Giving Tobago Legislature 11 miles of maritime frontage/archipelagic waters over which it can legislate rules out the possibility of controlling/administering the exploitation of oil and gas since the fields are outside /seawards of this zone and there is also a zone of non-production according to the Energy Ministry. And this is equality of status for both islands.
Gimme a break!
The likes of Kangal, who appears as the perfect melanin African, but dheres to a philosophy that would without hesitation relegate him with despatch to the dustbin of social lines of demarcation (caste, if you know what I mean), wishes to re-enact the recalcitrance of the opponents to WI Federation that would have seen a totally different region.With the demise of WI Federation, and the failure of CARICOM and the CSME to greater union, a kind of deflected attack on the Union of T&T inorder to get hold completely of Trinidad ethnically, is starting to vent. Off course the main point here is that neither Kangal, nor any of his religio-ideological leanings shoud be heeded by Tobagonians and he should be placed under the periscope of examination for attempting to resusitate racially fossilised ideas as modern theory of governance based on his own interpretation of geopolitics to divide the union for political spoils.