Samp­son Nan­ton

Deputy Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor

samp­son.nan­ton@cnc3.co.tt

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said yes­ter­day that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has been spout­ing “hog­wash” in his ac­count to the na­tion for the de­lay in ap­point­ing a Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor.

In a near 40-minute ad­dress dur­ing a sit­ting of the THA at the As­sem­bly Cham­ber in Scar­bor­ough, Au­gus­tine said he is con­fi­dent that crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings will be brought against “friends of the Prime Min­is­ter” based on the find­ings of a THA fi­nan­cial au­dit.

“I brought to this House an au­dit re­port and did not call the names of any con­trac­tors in­volved in the au­dit. In fact, those con­trac­tors called them­selves out,” he said, re­veal­ing that the full re­port was now in the hands of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Fraud Squad, Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit, An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau and Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

He told the THA that hav­ing learnt his­tor­i­cal lessons from the Scott Drug Re­port, he will not make the re­port pub­lic or lay it in the THA, nor will he give it to the THA Mi­nor­i­ty Leader and the Prime Min­is­ter.

“They will want to warn their friends and have the re­port thrown out,” Au­gus­tine charged.

He said based on sound le­gal ad­vice, he be­lieves the con­tents of the re­port will lead to civ­il and crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion against sev­er­al peo­ple.

The Chief Sec­re­tary be­lieves the au­dit re­port is linked to the pub­lic feud he and the PM have been hav­ing over the ap­point­ment of the Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor.

In his view, the PM was de­lib­er­ate­ly seek­ing to have his choice ap­point­ed to the post of Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor in an at­tempt to cov­er up the find­ings of the re­port.

“I be­lieve this is a firm plot to save the friends of the Prime Min­is­ter,” he said, adding that Dr Row­ley “has been de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing the na­tion.”

He then re­ferred to the PM as “the dead­ly de­ceit­ful leader of the Gov­ern­ment of this coun­try.”

Ac­cord­ing to Au­gus­tine, on April 17, the out­go­ing of­fice hold­er, Eth­leyn John, wrote to the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary (PS) in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Mau­rice Suite, in­form­ing him that the va­can­cy was im­mi­nent as she was due to re­tire on May 18.

Au­gus­tine said John asked the PS for an or­der of mer­it list for the Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor po­si­tion to al­low the Chief Sec­re­tary to view it pri­or to con­sul­ta­tion with the PM.

The list, he said, was nev­er pro­vid­ed.

Au­gus­tine said with the re­tire­ment of the Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor ap­proach­ing, he wrote Dr Row­ley on May 15 seek­ing a meet­ing.

The let­ter stat­ed, “At this junc­ture, two days away from the re­tire­ment of the cur­rent Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor, no such con­sul­ta­tion has hap­pened be­tween your good self and me. This let­ter, there­fore, serves as both a re­minder of the le­gal re­quire­ment and an av­enue through which I will share my rec­om­men­da­tion for the ap­point­ment of a new Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor. In this re­gard, I wish to have (name redact­ed) con­sid­ered for ap­point­ment of Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor.”

Au­gus­tine said he and the PM met on May 22 for the first of­fi­cial con­sul­ta­tion on the mat­ter, which was a re­quire­ment un­der Sec­tion 71.4 of the THA Act.

That sec­tion states, “Pri­or to con­sul­ta­tion with the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion on the ap­point­ment of the Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor, the Prime Min­is­ter shall con­sult with the Chief Sec­re­tary.”

Au­gus­tine told the As­sem­bly, “The on­ly name dis­cussed in that meet­ing was that of the rec­om­men­da­tion made by the Chief Sec­re­tary. No oth­er names were brought up, no bad re­port was giv­en about any pub­lic ser­vant in To­ba­go. I just re-pro­posed the name that I had writ­ten about the week be­fore. Dur­ing that meet­ing, no in­di­ca­tion was giv­en by the Prime Min­is­ter nor the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) that they were con­sid­er­ing names.”

He told the THA that as a re­sult, he was shocked when the PM re­turned to the coun­try from The Ba­hamas “and led the coun­try to be­lieve through his in­sin­u­a­tions and part­ly vac­u­ous state­ment that we might have dis­cussed the name of a se­nior pub­lic ser­vant and that I did not in­form him that there were dis­ci­pli­nary is­sues with said pub­lic ser­vant.”

“Let me be very clear, at no point and up to this point, the Prime Min­is­ter and my­self have dis­cussed any oth­er pub­lic ser­vant save and ex­cept for the one I rec­om­mend­ed,” Au­gus­tine said.

Au­gus­tine said he reached out to the PM one week lat­er, on May 29.

“At 7.40 pm, he re­spond­ed by say­ing, ‘Good evening, could you send me the name of the per­son you sug­gest­ed and who we agreed up­on? I was busy in Par­lia­ment to­day. I will di­rect the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary on Wednes­day’,” Au­gus­tine said.

“I again reached out to the Prime Min­is­ter one week lat­er, on June 5, 2023. The Prime Min­is­ter re­spond­ed ear­ly in the morn­ing on June 6 2023, at 12.29 am: ‘I have been beg­ging to have the PSC make the ap­point­ment that we agreed on. On­ly to­day (Mon­day), I checked on it. Hope­ful­ly, very soon.”

Au­gus­tine said up to that point, he was not blam­ing the PM for the non-ap­point­ment of the Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor.

“I was blam­ing the PSC. I was led to be­lieve that the PM did what he was sup­posed to do and that we were wait­ing on the PSC.”

He said it was on­ly when the THA’s at­tor­neys wrote the PSC on June 9 that the di­rec­tor of per­son­nel ad­min­is­tra­tion at the PSC re­spond­ed on June 15.

He read a por­tion of that let­ter: “The com­mis­sion had pre­vi­ous­ly ap­point­ed an of­fi­cer to act as Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor from May 17, 2023, sub­ject to con­sul­ta­tion as pro­vid­ed for in the Con­sti­tu­tion. There­after, the com­mis­sion was no­ti­fied by the then Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor of the THA by let­ter dat­ed May 17, 2023, of a re­port of al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct against the of­fice des­ig­nat­ed for the ap­point­ment. Up­on con­sid­er­ing the no­ti­fi­ca­tion, the com­mis­sion, on May 24, 2023, de­cid­ed that the des­ig­nat­ed of­fi­cer cease to re­port for du­ty.”

Au­gus­tine said he was alarmed to learn that some­one had been cho­sen and ap­point­ed to act with­out pri­or con­sul­ta­tion with him.

Not­ing that all this tran­spired five days pri­or to his meet­ing with the PM, he won­dered why it wasn’t raised then.

“It was the PSC’s du­ty to in­form the PM, not mine. So, this talk about me not giv­ing the PM a re­port is hog­wash.”

Au­gus­tine said on the ba­sis of the at­tack against him, he is left to won­der whether “the PM and his friends” want­ed to have their pick in­stalled as Chief Ad­min­is­tra­tor with­out con­sult­ing him and if there was an agen­da to “thwart” the find­ings of the au­dit re­port.

Au­gus­tine told the THA that re­gard­less of ef­forts to “in­tim­i­date and de­fame my char­ac­ter, those re­spon­si­ble for steal­ing from the THA will be held re­spon­si­ble in the same way those re­spon­si­ble for the air­port fi­as­co are be­ing held ac­count­able now.”

“I re­call as a child in Sun­day School that I was taught that the most de­ceit­ful char­ac­ter in the uni­verse is a man called Sa­tan. And then I got to al­most the age of 38 and I en­coun­tered the Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Christo­pher Row­ley,” he said.

Bud­get Day June 26

Dur­ing the sit­ting, Au­gus­tine, in his ca­pac­i­ty as Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance, Trade and the Econ­o­my, an­nounced that Bud­get Day for To­ba­go is June 26.

He said the 2023-2024 THA fis­cal pack­age will be pre­sent­ed in the As­sem­bly Leg­is­la­ture from 10 am and the de­bate will take place on take place on June 29 from the same time.

The THA is re­quired to present its draft es­ti­mates to Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment by June 30 an­nu­al­ly.