CLYDE WEATHERHEAD
WHEN A friend sent me a graphic on Thursday announcing a media conference by the Prime Minister at 1 pm the next day, I was a bit sceptical. For one thing the time was a bit unusual. Also, I recalled receiving a similar graphic a few weeks ago which turned out to be from 2020.
There was no topic and it wasn't a regular covid19 media conference day. So I asked my friend what was this about. I also checked the PM's Office website and Facebook page. But it was only when I heard the same announcement in the news on more than one radio station was I sure it was happening.
By 1 o'clock I was on my way to Port of Spain and party of a captive audience. I was lost for a while as to the purpose of the immediate post-lunch media engagement.
Essentially, the PM/PNM political leader was grasping 'the first opportunity' to vent his feelings about what he described as an attempt to scandalise him for political purposes related to the THA elections the following Monday. Naturally, his claim was against the UNC.
He then proceeded to tell us that he had passed documents to his lawyers to see if another defamation suit like those he boasted he had won was to be pursued.
He went on to present a campaign speech in support of his party's candidates in the elections, suggesting that the issue in the was the possibility of separation of Tobago from Trinidad if the Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP) won the majority in the THA.
He also claimed that secession was that party's manifesto position and that fitted into the UNC's position. Well that it what he had said the weekend before when he gave a similar campaign speech in Tobago.
For good measure, like his candidates in Tobago, he warned that separation was not in the best interest of Tobago because it doesn't have the economic wherewithal to survive without Trinidad.
At the same time he announced that the Government was putting four hydrocarbon blocks off Tobago up for bid by the oil barons of the hydrocarbon multinationals. Those resources would be Tobago's to benefit Tobago.
But he warned that Tobago needed to be aware of the 'pain of a dry hole' with which he, as a geologist, is wary.
Well this became the centrepiece of the PNM campaign of fear and denigration in Tobago with the holdover Chief Secretary who was never a PNM political leader or candidate for chief secretary and his leader.
Do so playing they eh like so?
In any case, the PNM in control of the THA for 21 years did not have the authority to even grant Tobago autonomy simply because the THA cannot touch the Constitution no matter who controls it.
So all that alarmist fearmongering by both the Tobago and Trinidad political leaders of the PNM was just hot air.
The PDP, even if it had won all 15 seats in the elections, could not implement secession any more than the PNM could give Tobago self-government even when it held all 12 seats in the THA.
Only the Par
