Renu­ka Singh Camille McEach­nie

Who is it go­ing to be?

The on­ly way to break the dead­lock in To­ba­go is if one per­son breaks ranks and votes against their own par­ty.

That vote will be done in se­cret when the As­sem­bly meets to­mor­row and no one will know who de­ter­mined the vote for the tem­po­rary pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer.

Two po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts, Dr Hamid Ghany and Dr Win­ford James both agree that on­ly a de­fec­tion could now break the dead­lock.

James said that one par­ty could give way and agree to be­come the mi­nor­i­ty par­ty as a way to break the dead­lock, but ad­mit­ted that he did not see that hap­pen­ing.

“We have a cri­sis,” James said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

“There are no pro­ce­dures laid out in the THA Act for this event that we are fac­ing,” he said.

“This can on­ly be re­solved by de­fec­tion, which I doubt would be tol­er­at­ed or a re-elec­tion,” James said.

A de­fec­tion, he said, will have con­se­quences.

“The par­ty that com­mands the ma­jor­i­ty can ap­point three coun­cil­lors and the mi­nor­i­ty leader ap­points one coun­cil­lor. So if you give way, by some kind of arrange­ment, there are these con­se­quences and I can­not imag­ine any par­ty will give way,” he said.

Ghany was part of a com­mit­tee that draft­ed the THA Act back in the 1980’s and yes­ter­day said that there are no pro­vi­sions in the ex­ist­ing Act to end the cur­rent stale­mate.

Dr Winford James

On Mon­day, his­to­ry was writ­ten when the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) cap­tured four seats from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) to for a 6-6 THA dead­lock.

It is the first time in the his­to­ry of the THA that a re­sult has end­ed in a tie.

The PNM had pre­vi­ous­ly en­joyed a 20-year reign in To­ba­go.

“The 12 As­sem­bly­men have to be sworn in by the Pres­i­dent and af­ter that the 12 As­sem­bly­men have to elect the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, ei­ther from among them­selves or from out­side,” Ghany said.

“The dead­lock will come in the vote be­cause it will come up 6-6,” he said.

“What is go­ing to hap­pen is there is go­ing to be a stale­mate that un­less some­body breaks rank in the se­cret bal­lot, they are go­ing to get a num­ber of re­peat­ed votes,” he said.

The Pres­i­dent, Ghany said, has no au­thor­i­ty in this mat­ter and can on­ly watch on.

In 2001 there was an 18-18 tie in the re­sults of the gen­er­al elec­tions and the then Pres­i­dent, Arthur NR Robin­son broke it by ap­point­ing then PNM leader Patrick Man­ning as prime min­is­ter over the in­cum­bent prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day.

How­ev­er, the ex­perts in­sist that this THA mat­ter is not a con­sti­tu­tion­al one and as such the Pres­i­dent has no au­thor­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to the THA Act Sec­tion 6-8, the as­sem­bly­men are sworn in by the Pres­i­dent and then the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer is se­lect­ed from among those 12 as­sem­bly­men, ei­ther from with­in or ex­ter­nal­ly.

“If they get past the elec­tion of a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, then the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer will re­ceive nom­i­na­tions for the post of Chief Sec­re­tary. When they put it to the vote it may come back 6-6,” Ghany said.

Prof Hamid Ghany

“Un­der the Act, the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer is re­quired to have an­oth­er vote and re­ceive nom­i­na­tions again,” he said.

If that sec­ond vote comes back tied, then the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer holds a “cast­ing vote” to de­ter­mine the Chief Sec­re­tary.

“So that is why the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer po­si­tion is so im­por­tant be­cause that per­son is go­ing to be em­pow­ered with a cast­ing vote to de­cide who the Chief Sec­re­tary of To­ba­go will be,” he said.

Ghany said that in or­der to even get to the elec­tion of a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, some­one had to break ranks in the se­cret vote.

“Any­thing could hap­pen be­cause this will not play out in the open with a show of hands, it is se­cret bal­lot,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to at­tor­neys Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj and Mar­tin Daly but both men re­quest­ed more time be­fore com­ment­ing.

To­ba­go lawyer: Fresh elec­tions on­ly so­lu­tion to THA tie

Mean­while, To­ba­go lawyer Chris­to Gift said yes­ter­day the on­ly way to re­solve the 6-6 tie is to go back to the polls.

“As it is, it seems to me that what you will have to do is have a re­match. I do not know how you can go for­ward from here. We got here be­cause the As­sem­bly was pro­rogued and in dis­cus­sions with the Prime Min­is­ter and the then Chief Sec­re­tary, an elec­tion was called.”

He con­tin­ued:” The prob­lem is you don’t have a new Chief Sec­re­tary as the As­sem­bly has not met as yet to have any ap­point­ments, and you are not like­ly to get to that point giv­en equal­i­ty in num­bers. The on­ly way now is to con­sult with the for­mer Chief Sec­re­tary on a new date for elec­tions.”

He said Par­lia­ment must ad­dress this is­sue soon and change the THA Act to pre­vent a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion from oc­cur­ring.

Christo Gift