"Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies,
Society even when perfect, is but a jungle.
This is why all authentic creation is a gift to the future."
-          Albert Camus

​Over the past 14 months, COVID restricted our socialisation and at the same time allowed many to get back in touch with our own space as escaping the borders to jaunt abroad became restricted by global restriction.
Many more families have been able to take a drive in the countryside or to places much less travelled allowing for exploration of several locations that are repositories of historical record and natural wonders.
We have come to appreciate more deeply our ‘land of fairest beauty’ hopefully.
Opportunities for similar expeditions have become more prominent with the online ‘know your country’ style virtual journeys facilitated by sites like the Angelo Bissessarsingh Virtual Museum of TT FB page or just being reminded by the posts of cultural activists like Rubadiri Victor’s recent reminder of the Artists Coalition tadjah project display at the National Museum.
This week, I happened to have a chat with a school friend who lives and spreads Trini culture in Denmark. We shared the days of the last train rides to Tunapuna when we began high school in the capital in 1967.
As we chatted, we had to lament how a void has been allowed to develop in our collective memory as a society.
He mentioned that he saw plaques on street corners in London honouring Winnifred Atwell, but there is nowhere in Tunapuna (our hometown) named after or recording the history of this world-renowned piano virtuoso who came from this community.
He also shared his experience of lining up in Vienna, climbing a hot staircase among an enthusiastic crowd and paying $5US to enter a little room to see where Mozart resided.
But sadly, we have no such ‘attractions’ for ourselves and tourists to visit the birthplaces or living spaces of our own cultural and other icons and achievers.
Instead, the home of CLR James, for example, another Tunapuna gift to the nation, crumbles in dereliction and neglect. Similarly, the birthplaces or residents or Sir Learie Constantine, Choy Aming, MP Alladin, A A Thompson, Lloyd Best and so many others just in this town remain obscure to the collective awareness of its present generations.
The failure to record our own history or to even read and share it when efforts are made to document it is so sad.
This virtual museum and the chronicling work of Angelo Bissessarsingh and so many others cannot be overstated in its importance to the formation of a real Trinbagonian nation and People with our distinct personality.
Perhaps one benefit of COVID is that it has slowed us down and allowed us to explore this collective past and present.
This moment of reflection and contemplation, its potential value to our future is threatened by those consumed by their fixation with office and power and self-serving agendas or perpetuating the narrative that Trinis are only about fete and lime.
In 1962, at a moment of great enthusiasm for almost every man, woman and child on our twin islands as the moment of taking responsibility for our own future and destiny had arrived.
In that moment, the appearance and work of Pegasus, founded by Geddes Granger (later Makandal Daaga) was “an attempt to move beyond the formalities and trappings of Independence. The recognition that the country “was not Independent in spirit” and the desire to create “Nationhood driven by inner spirit” motivated its founding”. (Pegasus and the Making of Project Independence, Clyde Weatherhead, 2020,  ISBN: 9798647268457)
Let us, those in the family of Angelo’s virtual museum, in the Artists Coalition and among all concerned with the National Purpose and expanding a positive and uplifting culture to recapture the notion of infusing spirit in our Independence, let us all do our best to not allow this moment to go to waste.
Let us think about how we can continue this sharing once we are again to interact up close and personal.
Let us develop what kinds of activities and interactions we can make possible to facilitate this introspection to be a contribution to our shared future and create our Trinbago, the possibilities of which we were reawakened to by the energising and motivating strivings of the ’70 Revo.
Let us all embrace this fortuitous opportunity to get back on the road of ”the unshakeable belief that our choice of destiny is our own: the quest to liberate ourselves out of enslavement to inherited cultural divisiveness into a seamless aesthetic mosaic brought to life in the spirit of one nation, one people, one destiny ... from whence cometh our dream of Independence and Nationhood: aspiring and achieving together” – (Foreword, Pegasus and the Making of Project Independence, op cit).
COVID is a paradox which in its confining restriction has provided us the liberating opportunity to move beyond the definitions, cultural and otherwise, of ourselves imposed on us and to define ourselves for ourselves.
 
Clyde Weatherhead
A Citizen Fighting for the
Realisation of Trinbago.
22 May 2021

The Executive Director (ED) of WASA has written to the President of the PSA threatening to “the termination of your (the President’s) employment” with WASA.
The ED complains of:
1. “ the untenable nature of the indefinite time-off for Union’s business”
2. “Your continued employment with the ...PSA... is not in the best interest of the Authority”
3. “your current portfolio as Minority Leader of the... THA... is a conflict of interest based on the Civil Service Act ... section (10) (1)”.
I have just a discussion on radio about this letter and threat that was full of incorrect information based largely on the misinformation contained the ED’s threatening letter.
1. WASA is not part of the Civil Service and the Civil Service Act has no relevance to WASA.
WASA is a statutory organization governed by the WASA Act.
WASA’s employees are not appointed by ANY Service Commission and do not hold any public office. Not even the ED is a Civil Servant or Public Officer.
WASA monthly paid employees are pensionable under the Pension Extension Act, not the Civil Service Act.
WASA is the employer within the meaning of the Industrial Relations Act Ch 88:01 ( not the CPO) and the PSA is a recognized majority union (RMU) for the bargaining unit of monthly paid employees of WASA.
2. The terms and conditions of employment of those employees are contained in a Collective Agreement agreed through collective bargaining between the employer (WASA) and the union (PSA).
The WASA-PSA Collective Agreement provides for No-pay leave for any PSA member who is elected to the national executive of the PSA.
Article 37 of the Collective Agreement which states at 2 (a):
 “An employee (of WASA) who is certified by the Association as an elected member of the executive of the Association SHALL on making an application BE GRANTED leave of absence WITHOUT PAY for the PERIOD OF TERM OF OFFICE”.
The only time limit on such leave in the Agreement is “for the PERIOD OF TERM OF OFFICE”. THERE IS NO INDEFINITE TIME-OFF FOR UNION’S BUSINESS’ as the ED says in his letter.
An employee shall be granted such leave once elected to the PSA executive.
The last PSA executive elections were in December 2020 and the leave for the President was last granted by WASA; the same month that the ED was appointed Chairman of the Board of Commissioners of WASA.
IF WASA granted leave required by the Agreement 6 months ago, the ED needs to explain how and why is the President being full time with the PSA suddenly ‘not in the best interest of the Authority’?
The President is not the only WASA employee to have had such leave to serve on the PSA executive over its history.
If WASA is not happy with the provision for leave to serve on the PSA executive for its employees, it must engage in Collective Bargaining with the RMU, the PSA, to change the terms of the Agreement. WASA cannot UNILATERALLY change ANYTHING in that Agreement without negotiation and agreement with the PSA.
When the Chairman was also appointed as ED, the Minister of Public Utilities (himself an Attorney at Law) made heavy noise about the ED’s qualifications and experience as a management consultant and public and private sector change management expert.
Surely, such an expert will know the difference between the Civil Service and WASA and the legal position of an RMU and Collective Agreement.
The Minister, having been a Head, Legal Services in a Ministry of the Civil Service up to the time he became a candidate and got elected as an MP and appointed a Minister.
Even if some of the callers and hosts discussing the ED’s threatening letter are not aware or confuse the provisions of the Civil Service Act and Regulations or other Agreements on the Port etc with what the WASA Agreement provides, the very experienced and qualified cannot claim to be unaware.
As a Secretary/ Treasurer then President of the PSA and an employee of the Agricultural Development Bank, with similar provisions in the ADB Collective Agreement was in such no-pay leave for the 7 years I served on the PSA Executive.
When I returned to the ADB, the bank refused to give no-pay leave to go to Law School the next year and forced me to resign my job. The HR Manager said I was out with the union for 7 years and the Bank couldn’t guarantee me a job as an Attorney at Law.
My immediate successor Ms. Baptiste-Primus was a Civil Servant and was similarly on no-pay leave from the Civil Service for over 20 years as a member of the PSA Executive in various posts.
The threats by the ED to terminate the employment of the PSA President is a most flagrant attempt at anti-union assault and a dangerous violation of industrial relations law and practice and trade union and Constitutional rights.

Clyde Weatherhead
A Citizen Fighting for the
Rights of All
 
20 April 2021 

Coming out of the meeting between the Prime Minister and the 12 elected Assemblymen in Tobago – 6 PNM and 6 PDP – there is an attempt to negotiate the establishment of an interim arrangement of the THA structure.
The concept of interim arose out of the meeting preferring one of two options outlined by the Prime Minister as possible election scenarios :

1. Proceeding to have fresh elections for 15 Assemblymen (based on the provisions of the THA Amendment Act which was passed in the Senate close to midnight on Tuesday night) or
2. Proceeding to elections under the Constitution (Tobago Self-Government) Amendment Bill now before a Joint Select Committee of Parliament).

The Prime Minister added that if option 2 was utilised then for the administration of Tobago, an interim arrangement would have to be worked out to allow the functions of the THA to fulfil its responsibilities. 
Such interim structure would also break the deadlock resulting from the 6-6 tied outcome of the January 25 THA elections.  
To achieve that interim arrangement, negotiations among the 12 Assemblymen have to be conducted to arrive an agreed distribution of position in both the Assembly (legislate body) and the Executive Council (executive body) of the THA.
Given the strictures of party politics, these negotiations take on the form of  negotiations between the two parties, the symbols of which the Assemblymen were elected under.
To be successful, these negotiations must be conducted with the objective of facilitating the administration of Tobago by the THA while the self-government of the island via the passage of the Self-Government Bill is brought to conclusion.
These negotiations are not about advancing the narrow interests of either the PNM or PDP and seeking to have an advantage in ‘wielding power’ or decision-making in the Assembly.
Negotiations based on such narrow partisan interest will inevitably be zero-sum or win-lose negotiations and about winner and loser, and be conducted in the customary adversarial style.
Such an approach sets aside the most important goal of facilitating the governance of the island and working collectively to advance the self-government cause.
Those larger and most critical goals MUST be at the forefront and party positioning MUST be set aside.
To understand, the ‘mathematics’ of these negotiations the structure of the THA must be understood.
 
THE THA STRUCTURE
THE ASSEMBLY
(s. 5 Tobago House of Assembly Act, Ch. 25:03
Assemblymen (elected at primary election)      -        TWELVE (12)
Councillors (appointed under s. 9 THA Act)    -        FOUR (4)
Presiding Officer (elected under s.7 THA Act) -       ONE (1)
Deputy Presiding Officer (elected under s.10)  -        ZERO (0)
The Deputy Presiding Officer must be a member of the Assembly and does not add to total number of the composition of the Assembly.
The total composition is SEVENTEEEN (17), IF  the Presiding Officer is NOT an Assemblyman or Councillor.
The total composition is SIXTEEN (16), IF the Presiding Officer is either an Assemblyman or Councillor or, if No Minority Leader is appointed and a 4th Councillor is therefore not appointed.
 
THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
(s.33 Tobago House of Assembly Act, Ch. 25:03)
Chief Secretary (Assembly member)
Deputy Chief Secretary (Assembly member)
Secretaries - No more than 7 (Assembly members or not)
The maximum total composition of the Executive Council is therefore, NINE (9).
However, since the members may all come out of the Assembly (either Assemblymen or Councillors) there is not necessarily a numerical addition to the number of the membership of the Assembly.
So, the grand total of persons to hold the offices of both the ASSEMBLY (legislature) and EXECUTIVE COUNCIL (executive) may be the exact same number as the membership of the  Assembly.
So, the negotiations are for a Presiding Officer and 3 or 4 Councillors on the Assembly, depending on whether there is a Minority Leader. That is a total 4 or 5 positions.
On the Executive Council, the negotiations are for Chief Secretary and Deputy Chief Secretary and up to 7 Secretaries., That is for a maximum of 9 positions.
Currently, there are only 4 holdover Secretaries. So, the size of the Executive Council is also a negotiable item.
Therefore, it is entirely possible to achieve a 50:50 split in both the Assembly and Executive Council as the outcome of these negotiations.
These ARE negotiations and the POSITIONS  of either party at any point in time are just that – Positions.
So, the noise being made about the PDP in its opening gambit saying 3 positions spread between the Assembly (Deputy Presiding Officer) and the Executive Council (Deputy Chief Secretary and Secretary of Finance) does not present any advantage to that party in the legislative arm of the THA.
Equally, it presents no numerical advantage to the PDP in the Executive Council if the number of Secretaries is fixed at an even number (4 or 6 for example).
So, all the noise by the PNM about the PDP not negotiating or negotiating in bad faith by its position on those 3 offices is a red herring.
Similarly, the argument advanced by the PL of the PNM Tobago Council and other PNM supporters about incumbency is nothing but a position.
The real issue is: if both parties are serious about achieving the broader goals of these negotiations, they will realise that it is in their own best interest and in the interest of the people of Tobago, to arrive at a negotiated settlement on a WIN-WIN basis (which can be achieved with a 50:50 split in both the Assembly and Executive Council.
This is a real test of the politicians on both sides and the sincerity of each and everyone of them when they say they are for Tobago and its autonomy first and above narrow party interests.
Let’s see what they are really for.
 
Clyde Weatherhead
A Citizen Advocating for a
Free and Equal Union between
Tobago and Trinidad since the 1970’s.
05 March 2021