Chester Sam­bra­no

Fol­low­ing the ver­bal pub­lic and writ­ten res­ig­na­tion of Wat­son Duke as Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) last Thurs­day, it was made of­fi­cial in the House by pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer Ab­by Tay­lor at a spe­cial sit­ting at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex on Mon­day.

“In cir­cum­stances, I an­nounce that there is a va­can­cy in the of­fice of the Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly,” Tay­lor said.

Tay­lor then in­vit­ed the house to elect a new Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary.

“I wish to nom­i­nate for the po­si­tion of Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary As­sem­bly­man Dr Faith B Yis­rael,” Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said.

His nom­i­nee was then sec­ond­ed by As­sem­bly­man Megan Mor­ri­son. But the process took a sud­den twist when Tay­lor asked if there are any oth­er nom­i­nees for the post.

Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris got to his feet.

“Madam pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, I wish to nom­i­nate Mr Wat­son Solomon Duke,” he said.

Con­fu­sion could be seen on the faces of some of the As­sem­bly­men and even Tay­lor was forced to con­sult the clerk for guid­ance.

The pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer then asked for a sec­on­der to the mo­tion and this was done by PNM (Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment) Coun­cil­lor Petal Daniel-Benoit.

How­ev­er, an ob­jec­tion raised by Au­gus­tine was up­held by the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer as Daniel-Benoit is not an elect­ed mem­ber of the house.

“With there be­ing no oth­er nom­i­na­tion I now de­clare Dr Faith B Yis­rael the du­ly elect­ed Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary,” Tay­lor said.

But that was not the end of it.

As soon as the house ad­journed, Duke spoke to re­porters to ex­press his dis­plea­sure.

“One of the most I would say ridicu­lous mutiny that is tak­ing place,” he said.

“ I won’t say they have hi­jacked the par­ty be­cause the par­ty is em­bod­ied in Wat­son Solomon Duke hence the name spar­tans come about. They are not spar­tans, they are jel­ly­fish,” he added.

Duke al­so said that Au­gus­tine moved a mo­tion in the PDP (Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots) in 2020 ask­ing that Duke not con­test the Jan­u­ary 2021 elec­tions, how­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to Duke that mo­tion failed.

“I said to him, my friend, don’t be a fool, you and me have to run and you will be Chief Sec­re­tary,” he said.

Duke said what will hap­pen go­ing for­ward is what he called tak­ing off the mask.

As it re­lat­ed to a pos­si­ble le­gal chal­lenge against the ap­point­ment of a new Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary amid ques­tions that Duke’s res­ig­na­tion may not have been done prop­er­ly, he said the le­gal process should be al­lowed to take its course.

“There is a law and there is the ap­pli­ca­tion of law so let’s see how that would go be­fore a judge, but for now I would say there is a house and there is a house with­in a house,” Duke said.

He al­so said he is not a par­ty to the le­gal chal­lenge as far as he is aware.

How­ev­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty of le­gal ac­tion has not fazed Au­gus­tine.

At a news con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the elec­tion of Dr B Yis­rael as, he ru­bished the le­gal chal­lenge.

“All lawyers with sense and any knowl­edge of the law have dis­missed as a nui­sance the let­ter that came in the dead of night seek­ing to stop the sit­ting to­day. If those lawyers had grounds to stand on they would have gone to court bright and ear­ly this morn­ing (Sun­day) to seek in­junc­tive re­lief and the fact that did not hap­pen tells you that they are mak­ing an ar­gu­ment for form over sub­stance which holds no wa­ter when it comes to law,” Au­gus­tine said.

Act­ing on be­half of Krys­tal Fordyce, a reg­is­tered elec­tor from the Dar­rel Spring/Whim dis­trict–at­tor­ney Vishaal Siewsaran of the Free­dom Law Cham­bers, San Fer­nan­do, despatched a three-page let­ter ad­dressed to the THA’s Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer Ab­by Tay­lor; Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour late on Sun­day—in which he in­di­cat­ed the sched­uled move to elect a new Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary would be “il­le­gal and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al” as, “the pur­port­ed res­ig­na­tion of Mr Wat­son Duke as Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary is in­valid and in­ef­fec­tive in law.”

Siewsaran had giv­en the THA up to 12 o’clock on Sun­day night to re­spond to the mo­tion, fail­ing which, he would have sought an im­me­di­ate in­junc­tion to re­strain the THA from con­tin­u­ing with the pro­posed elec­tion.