Camille McEach­nie

For­mer To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Ho­choy Charles has called on To­bag­o­ni­ans to re­ject the two draft bills pre­sent­ed for pub­lic dis­cus­sion by Par­lia­ment’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on To­ba­go self-gov­ern­ment.

At the JSC’s vir­tu­al con­sul­ta­tion for some stake­hold­ers at the Vic­tor E.Bruce Fi­nan­cial Com­plex, Scar­bor­ough, yes­ter­day, Charles said To­bag­o­ni­ans spent count­less hours on con­sul­ta­tions to for­mu­late the orig­i­nal bills sent to Cab­i­net, but many of the is­sues high­light­ed then are not in the two draft bills.

He al­so said the two draft bills - Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment (To­ba­go Self-Gov­ern­ment) Bill 2021 and To­ba­go Is­land Gov­ern­ment Bill 2021, do not even con­tain the ba­sic prin­ci­ples of gov­er­nance set by the Fo­rum of Po­lit­i­cal Par­ties.

Af­ter the 2013 THA elec­tions, Charles in­vit­ed then Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don to talks about greater au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go.

The fo­rum was formed out of the talks. It com­prised Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s - Lon­don and Neil Wil­son, The Plat­form of Truth-Charles, and in the ear­ly stage - To­ba­go Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Peo­ple- Ash­worth Jacks.

At the JSC meet­ing yes­ter­day, Charles not­ed that is­sues such as To­ba­go’s equal­i­ty with Trinidad and To­ba­go’s phys­i­cal bound­aries were not in the drafts.

The JSC’s chair­man Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said claus­es four and five of one bill spoke to the is­lands’ equal­i­ty.

She then asked Charles which claus­es he pre­ferred to with­draw from the bill.

“Madame, the en­tire bill must be re­ject­ed by the peo­ple of To­ba­go hav­ing re­gard to the con­ver­sa­tion we are hav­ing. There is no struc­ture in the bill. There is no pro­vi­sion in the bill to de­liv­er the state­ment that you are say­ing are in claus­es four and five. There is no pro­vi­sion. That is just a state­ment,” he replied.

JSC mem­ber To­bag­on­ian Nigel De Fre­itas pressed Charles for fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion on what Charles want­ed to see in the drafts.

The for­mer Chief Sec­re­tary re­it­er­at­ed that the en­tire bill should be with­drawn.

“The first thing that we need to do is that we did that be­fore, is that we need to know what is To­ba­go so that when we pass a law what is the ju­ris­dic­tion on, over what area should that law be ap­plied,” the for­mer Chief Sec­re­tary replied.

Charles al­so point­ed to one of the bill’s Fourth Sched­ule claus­es that gave law-mak­ing pow­ers to the As­sem­bly.

He ob­ject­ed to the clause giv­ing Par­lia­ment pow­er to over­ride laws made in To­ba­go.

Robin­son-Reg­is re­mind­ed Charles that Par­lia­ment re­mains the supreme law-mak­ing body of both is­lands as the is­lands are a uni­tary state.

JSC mem­ber Faris Al-Rawi, who ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly at the meet­ing, told Charles that if the draft bills had pro­posed a fed­er­al sys­tem of gov­ern­ment, on­ly then there would be two sep­a­rate par­lia­ments.

The new draft bills give law-mak­ing pow­ers to the THA.

It al­so pro­pos­es a 26-mem­ber leg­is­la­ture, which in­cludes the pres­i­dent, 15 as­sem­bly­men, and 10 coun­cil­lors.