Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Al­though To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Far­ley Au­gus­tine was ad­vised by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (AG) that ap­point­ing for­mer Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke as THA Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary was a breach of the law, Au­gus­tine still went ahead and made the ap­point­ment.

This was dis­closed in a let­ter by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to Au­gus­tine’s at­tor­ney Kiel Tak­lals­ingh dat­ed Jan­u­ary 7, 2022 ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian.

The AG’s of­fice had sent a let­ter pre­vi­ous­ly dat­ed Jan­u­ary 4 and this was in re­sponse to a let­ter from Au­gus­tine dat­ed Jan­u­ary 3.

On De­cem­ber 6, Au­gus­tine’s par­ty, the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) swept the THA elec­tions win­ning 14 out of 15 elec­toral dis­tricts.

Af­ter heavy crit­i­cism, Duke de­cid­ed to re­sign as leader of the PSA to fo­cus on the work of the THA.

Breach of the Act

Au­gus­tine’s at­tor­ney had writ­ten to the AG’s of­fice on Jan­u­ary 3 in which he ar­gued that be­cause of Duke’s res­ig­na­tions as Pres­i­dent of the PSA and as a mem­ber of the Reg­is­tra­tion, Recog­ni­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Board (RRCB) that the is­sues be­fore the Court re­lat­ing to the po­ten­tial in­frac­tion of sec­tion 16 of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act (THA Act) were now “aca­d­e­m­ic.”

The AG’s let­ter on Jan­u­ary 7 said: “In ours of Jan­u­ary 4th 2022, we ex­plained to you that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al com­menced pro­ceed­ings in the High Court for an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of sec­tion 16(8) of the THA Act so that clar­i­fi­ca­tion could be pro­vid­ed on the is­sue as to whether there is a breach of sec­tion 16(8). More­so, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was in­ter­est­ed in the spir­it of trans­paren­cy to clar­i­fy the law on the is­sue, so as to pro­vide much need­ed guid­ance not on­ly to your client’s new ad­min­is­tra­tion but to oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tions which might suc­ceed it.”

The Of­fice of the AG in its Jan­u­ary 7 let­ter re­mind­ed Au­gus­tine that in its Jan­u­ary 4 let­ter they took pains to point out fur­ther ar­eas of con­flict re­lat­ing to Duke’s em­ploy­ment with the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (WASA) and two oth­er As­sis­tant Sec­re­taries of the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil, THA who are now iden­ti­fied as Joel Samp­son and Nigel Taitt. These two per­sons are still em­ployed with WASA and the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT) re­spec­tive­ly.

“It has now been con­firmed that Mr Duke, whilst the Pres­i­dent of the PSA, on De­cem­ber 30th 2021 pur­port­ed to write a let­ter to WASA of­fer­ing his res­ig­na­tion on Jan­u­ary 3rd 2022.

“Fur­ther­more, both Mr Taitt and Mr Samp­son are still en­gaged in an oc­cu­pa­tion for re­mu­ner­a­tion. In fact, Mr Joel Samp­son is the Deputy Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer of the As­sem­bly,” the AG’s Jan­u­ary 7 let­ter stat­ed.

The AG’s let­ter to Au­gus­tine’s at­tor­ney al­so said that his client Au­gus­tine has so far re­fused to re­spond to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s let­ters dat­ed De­cem­ber 9 and 13, 2021 re­spec­tive­ly in which the AG sought to prof­fer ad­vice to Au­gus­tine so that the new­ly ap­point­ed ad­min­is­tra­tion would not fall in­to er­ror and would be able to meet the oblig­a­tions re­quired of it in these pro­ceed­ings.

The AG al­so said that the res­ig­na­tion of Duke from the RRCB, WASA and the PSA oc­curred on­ly af­ter he was ad­vised about it by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s cor­re­spon­dence to Au­gus­tine and af­ter he was sworn in as Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary.

The AG’s let­ter said in re­sponse to his of­fice’s many cor­re­spon­dence and in the face of a con­tin­u­ing breach, Au­gus­tine had “mis­led” the Court in his af­fi­davit and not made full and frank dis­clo­sure re­lat­ing to the sta­tus of the per­sons iden­ti­fied above who are on the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil of the THA.

The AG’s Of­fice let­ter con­clud­ed by say­ing that it gives no­tice that it pro­pos­es to bring these mat­ters to the at­ten­tion of the court and to point out Au­gus­tine’s con­tin­u­ing fail­ure to as­sist the court and to be forth­right and trans­par­ent in his af­fi­davit.