Click to view full size

A heat­ed row erupt­ed in yes­ter­day’s To­ba­go ple­nary sit­ting af­ter Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris ac­cused Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine of us­ing of­fen­sive lan­guage dur­ing the de­bate. He said Au­gus­tine’s “don­key log­ic” re­mark was un­fit for the cham­ber, es­pe­cial­ly with school­child­ren watch­ing the live broad­cast.

Mor­ris moved the fi­nal pri­vate mo­tion of the leg­isla­tive term, call­ing on the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to work with the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment a guar­an­teed 6.8 per cent share of the na­tion­al bud­get for To­ba­go. He ar­gued that re­ject­ing the for­mu­la—con­tained in the lat­est To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment Bill—had de­nied the is­land much-need­ed re­sources and deep­ened so­cial and eco­nom­ic hard­ship.

He said the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil’s “reck­less pol­i­cy and fis­cal de­ci­sions” had un­der­mined growth, pub­lic trust, and stalled crit­i­cal projects. List­ing an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tions since 2022, Mor­ris said the as­sem­bly had re­ceived more than $13 bil­lion in less than four years, yet “or­di­nary To­bag­o­ni­ans” were still ask­ing where the mon­ey went.