Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

A new To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary is ex­pect­ed to be elect­ed to­day dur­ing a spe­cial Sit­ting called by Clerk of the As­sem­bly Cher­ry Anne Ed­wards-Louis.

In a memo to all THA mem­bers yes­ter­day, Ed­wards-Louis said, "I have been di­rect­ed by the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to in­form you that, in ac­cor­dance with Stand­ing Or­ders (16) 4 of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, a meet­ing of the As­sem­bly shall be con­vened on May 6, 2020, at 3 pm. The busi­ness to be trans­act­ed at the Meet­ing is the Elec­tion of a Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly"

The process was trig­gered af­ter for­mer THA Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion last week.

Al­though the new Chief Sec­re­tary has not been an­nounced, sources yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary for Health, Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment and Buc­coo/Mt. Pleas­ant rep­re­sen­ta­tive An­cil Den­nis is tipped for the po­si­tion. At 33 years, Den­nis could be­come the youngest ever Chief Sec­re­tary if elect­ed.

Charles agreed to re­sign af­ter los­ing a con­tentious in­ter­nal elec­tion with­in the To­ba­go Coun­cil of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment to Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine in Jan­u­ary. David­son-Ce­les­tine was sub­se­quent­ly in­stalled as a coun­cil­lor and ap­point­ed Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment but can­not be­come Chief Sec­re­tary as she does not hold a seat in the THA.

Mean­while, Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Wat­son Duke has knocked the PNM's the ill-treat­ment of Charles will not be for­giv­en

"What has hap­pened with the for­mer Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles is ir­rec­on­cil­able. Those per­sons who claim to be seek­ing of­fice, they have done an in­jus­tice to Mr Charles that will not be for­giv­en by To­ba­go peo­ple," Duke said.

"No one should be forced out of of­fice and then hu­mil­i­at­ed, so as not to serve ei­ther as a Sec­re­tary. Is it that Mr Charles is so in­ca­pable that he has failed all of his per­for­mance ap­praisals that he could do noth­ing in the THA, but to sit down as an As­sem­bly­man, that's hu­mil­i­a­tion and per­son­al­ly, when I got in­to pol­i­tics it was to fight for all To­bag­o­ni­ans, even in­clud­ing PNM and as the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots I in­tend to fight for Mr Charles. He is not my friend, but he is a To­bag­on­ian and I will do any­thing to en­sure he is be­ing giv­en fair­ness and jus­tice in all of this."

He said he will take the mat­ter to court if he has to.