JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, February 22, 2025

Duke vows to take down Farley

by

28 days ago
20250125
PDP Leader Watson Duke shows a copy of the THA’s standing orders during a media conference yesterday.

PDP Leader Watson Duke shows a copy of the THA’s standing orders during a media conference yesterday.

VINDRA GOPAUL

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Af­ter he was re­moved from a To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly ple­nary sit­ting on Thurs­day, Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke has vowed to en­sure the po­lit­i­cal death of the Far­ley Au­gus­tine-led ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Duke ac­cused THA pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer Ab­by Tay­lor of act­ing out­side of the Stand­ing Or­ders af­ter he com­plained of in­sults by an as­sem­bly­man dur­ing Thurs­day’s de­bate.

Duke ac­cused as­sem­bly­man Ter­rence Baynes of breach­ing the stand­ing or­ders when he de­scribed some con­tri­bu­tions made in the cham­ber as “la­trine-at­ed” talk.

From his seat, Duke loud­ly voiced his com­plaints, dis­rupt­ing the pro­ceed­ings. Tay­lor paused the de­bate to cau­tion Duke, but he per­sist­ed, re­peat­ed­ly shout­ing, “This is not a Mick­ey Mouse house.”

As a re­sult, Tay­lor in­struct­ed po­lice of­fi­cers with­in the cham­ber to es­cort him out­side. Duke yes­ter­day said he posed no threat and the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer had no pow­er to in­struct po­lice to re­move him.

He called on Tay­lor to ei­ther learn the stand­ing or­ders or re­sign.

“I want to ask Ab­by Tay­lor to do To­ba­go a ser­vice and re­sign. You’re poor at it. You may not have even read this book at all. Re­fer­ring to a mem­ber in the house by wrong ti­tle. You seem not to care and there is no em­pha­sis on you get­ting it right,” he said.

He ac­cused Tay­lor of ne­glect­ing her du­ties, not­ing there had been no meet­ings of the Pub­lic Ac­counts or Reg­u­la­tions Com­mit­tees un­der her lead­er­ship. He went on to call To­bag­o­ni­ans dis­sat­is­fied by the Far­ley Au­gus­tine-led THA to be ready to treat mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive the same way they have been treat­ed over the past three years when they seek sup­port in the up­com­ing elec­tions.

“I’m say­ing to all To­bag­o­ni­ans, gath­er up the lit­tle bit of fight in your bel­ly and get ready to vote them out. Get rid of the en­tire slate. They must not win one sin­gle seat and none of them must get more than 100 votes,” Duke said.

Duke vowed to right the wrong he cre­at­ed when he se­lect­ed the group to deal with To­ba­go af­fairs in the 2021 THA elec­tion.

For­mer pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers: Tay­lor was wrong

Mean­while, for­mer THA pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer Kelvin Charles agreed that prop­er pro­ce­dures were not fol­lowed dur­ing the forced re­moval of Duke.

He told Guardian Me­dia, “A pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer is em­pow­ered un­der the stand­ing or­ders to main­tain or­der dur­ing any sit­ting of the As­sem­bly.”

Charles went on to ex­plain, “How­ev­er, as­sum­ing the clip is a fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what tran­spired, the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer did not fol­low the ac­cept­ed or ap­proved path or pro­to­col.”

He elab­o­rat­ed on the prop­er steps that should have been tak­en.

“The pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer should have first asked the mem­ber to with­draw the re­marks, as­sum­ing they were of­fen­sive,” he said. “If that didn’t work, she could have di­rect­ed the mem­ber to apol­o­gise to the House. I didn’t see any ev­i­dence of this in the video.”

Charles added that if the mem­ber re­fused to com­ply, fur­ther mea­sures should have been em­ployed.

“If the mem­ber re­fused to apol­o­gise, the next step would have been to di­rect him to ex­it the cham­ber for a short pe­ri­od, pre­sum­ably to cool off. Again, if he re­fused, there are some pre­de­ces­sor steps to be ex­e­cut­ed be­fore seek­ing to en­force re­moval by force.”

He al­so called for cau­tion in han­dling such mat­ters.

An­oth­er for­mer pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus, agreed prop­er pro­ce­dures were not fol­lowed. Tsoiafatt-An­gus ex­plained that the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer’s pri­ma­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was to main­tain or­der in the cham­ber. And while they had the au­thor­i­ty to ask a dis­rup­tive mem­ber to leave or take a break and re­turn, they did not have the pow­er to forcibly re­move a mem­ber. She said in in­stances of un­con­trol­lable dis­rup­tion, the pro­ce­dure re­quired the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer to in­form the house of the mem­ber’s dis­obe­di­ence and call on a sec­re­tary to move a mo­tion for their re­moval.

She said such sit­u­a­tions were rare, re­call­ing the last in­stance when coun­cil­lor Hughvon DesVi­gnes was sus­pend­ed un­der the lead­er­ship of then-mi­nor­i­ty leader Ash­worth Jack. At that time, the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer was Ann Mitchel Gift, and chief sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don led the THA.

Dr Tsoiafatt-An­gus crit­i­cised the re­cent ac­tions of the cur­rent pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, la­belling them as re­flec­tive of the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s “poor judge­ment, ar­ro­gance, and in­com­pe­tence.”


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored