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Saturday, March 15, 2025

Morris mulls over contesting PNM Tobago Council internal elections

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1121 days ago
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Minority Leader Kelvon Morris addresses members of the media during the press conference at the Office of the Minority Leader, Scarborough, Tobago, yesterday.

Minority Leader Kelvon Morris addresses members of the media during the press conference at the Office of the Minority Leader, Scarborough, Tobago, yesterday.

VINDRA GOPAUL-BOODAN

Mi­nor­i­ty Leader in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Kelvon Mor­ris says he is not sure yet whether he will con­test the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) in­ter­nal elec­tions for a To­ba­go coun­cil.

The par­ty will hold an in­ter­nal elec­tion on April 24 to fill all 17 ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions in the To­ba­go coun­cil. This comes af­ter a num­ber of its ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers re­signed fol­low­ing the par­ty’s 14-1 de­feat in the De­cem­ber 6 THA elec­tions.

Cur­rent po­lit­i­cal leader, Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine has said she does not in­tend to con­test the elec­tion, while for­mer Chief Sec­re­tary, An­cil Den­nis has said he will now con­test the post.

As ru­mours cir­cu­late about whether Mor­ris, who is now the lone-PNM rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the As­sem­bly, will al­so seek the po­lit­i­cal leader’s of­fice, he sought to give some an­swers dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Thurs­day.

“I am hon­est­ly not in a po­si­tion to give an an­swer to­day, in fact com­ing out of the prayer ser­vice, I be­lieve I want some time to hon­est­ly take this mat­ter on a spir­i­tu­al lev­el where I would be able to seek the Almighty’s guid­ance, I’ll be do­ing some se­ri­ous pray­ing and fast­ing and I will al­low God to lead the way,” Mor­ris said.

Asked when he would be able to pro­vide a re­sponse, Mor­ris promised it would be be­fore the par­ty’s nom­i­na­tion day.

He urged par­ty mem­bers and To­bag­o­ni­ans alike to think about of­fer­ing them­selves for of­fice.

He al­so of­fered some ad­vice to those who do con­test the elec­tion.

“I al­so want to cau­tion the mem­bers of the PNM at this time as well, for us to un­der­stand the im­por­tance of uni­ty, un­der­stand the im­por­tance of to­geth­er­ness, un­der­stand the im­por­tance of team­work, un­der­stand the im­por­tance of ma­tu­ri­ty and al­so un­der­stand the im­por­tance of fam­i­ly.”

Mor­ris said while there will be com­pe­ti­tion for the po­si­tions, mem­bers should show re­spect, hon­esty and dig­ni­ty through­out the elec­tion.

Mor­ris al­so out­lined his plans to en­sure the PDP-led As­sem­bly was held ac­count­able by his of­fice.

He said he will be set­ting up a whistle­blow­er pro­gramme on the is­land.

“We want to launch some­thing called I-TELL­—a whistle­blow­er pro­gramme that would al­low per­sons anony­mous­ly and safe­ly log any con­cerns of mis­con­duct, malfea­sance and any is­sues with pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion,” he said.

Mor­ris said these com­plaints can be made both vir­tu­al­ly and by use of a drop­box at the front of his of­fice. He urged To­bag­o­ni­ans to make use of ei­ther plat­form to air their con­cerns.

“It mat­ters not who the in­for­ma­tion af­fects, we will con­tin­ue to up­hold the high­est stan­dards of in­tegri­ty, ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in pub­lic af­fairs and we en­cour­age all of To­ba­go to al­so hold true to those ideals, not be­cause you are a sup­port­er of red or a sup­port­er of black, we are say­ing to you come for­ward wher­ev­er wrong­do­ing lies, come for­ward with the in­for­ma­tion and we would en­sure it gets the rel­e­vant at­ten­tion,” Mor­ris said.

His of­fice will al­so con­tain a So­cial Sup­port and In­dus­tri­als Re­la­tions help desk to as­sist those who need fi­nan­cial sup­port or have dis­putes with their em­ploy­er.

“This will bring to bear both pub­lic and pri­vate re­sources to en­sure that we can give sup­port to the most vul­ner­a­ble in To­ba­go. There will be a phys­i­cal desk where you can come to the of­fice of the Mi­nor­i­ty leader and we will have an of­fi­cer specif­i­cal­ly to deal with those per­sons com­ing for sup­port and with is­sues re­lat­ing to in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions,” Mor­ris said.

Like the whistle­blow­er pro­gramme, there will al­so be a vir­tu­al plat­form to log com­plaints.

And Mor­ris does not plan to stop there.

He said, “We are launch­ing our 24-hour hot­line for all of To­ba­go to treat with any is­sue, it could be from your roads, all is­sues re­lat­ing to ser­vice and to en­sur­ing that the ad­min­is­tra­tion is held ac­count­able this 24 (hour) hot­line will be avail­able to you, this is where you can log is­sues and we will take it up with the ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

He an­nounced that he would be ask­ing the As­sem­bly to for­mu­late a work­force work-from-home pol­i­cy that can be used through­out the THA when the coun­cil meets on Feb­ru­ary 24.

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