Gail Alexan­der

Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Wat­son Duke is be­ing told he has to choose be­tween his new role as deputy Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and his pres­i­den­cy of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA).

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi main­tains that the law doesn’t al­low Duke to do both jobs and he has writ­ten to new THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine on the mat­ter.

In the let­ter dat­ed De­cem­ber 9, Al-Rawi said, “I note that Mr Wat­son Duke has now been ap­point­ed as a Sec­re­tary and mem­ber of the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil, to wit, the Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary of the THA, and I al­so con­grat­u­late him in this re­gard.

“I have not­ed with deep con­cern, how­ev­er, the pub­lic state­ments is­sued by the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (the ‘PSA’) to the ef­fect that Mr Duke, its pres­i­dent, does not pro­pose to re­lin­quish that of­fice fol­low­ing his ap­point­ment as Sec­re­tary but that he ‘would con­tin­ue to car­ry out his con­sti­tu­tion­al du­ties in keep­ing with the PSA con­sti­tu­tion; though he would forego ben­e­fits and re­mu­ner­a­tion from the PSA.”

Al-Rawi added, “It is clear from a prop­er un­der­stand­ing of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act Ch. 25:03 in com­bi­na­tion with oth­er laws and in­deed from our long-stand­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tions, that the as­sump­tion of ex­ec­u­tive of­fice pre­cludes the con­tin­u­a­tion of em­ploy­ment or oc­cu­pa­tion else­where.

“As a con­se­quence, it is clear that Mr Duke must make an un­equiv­o­cal elec­tion as to, in which of these two po­si­tions he will com­mit him­self to serve, as he can­not law­ful­ly do both.”

Al-Rawi re­quest­ed Au­gus­tine to ad­vise him (AG) on the mat­ter.

“As a mat­ter of ut­most ur­gency and im­me­di­a­cy as to what this choice will be, as this will have se­ri­ous con­sti­tu­tion­al im­pli­ca­tions for the Coun­cil which it may well be I will be oblig­ed to act up­on in the prop­er dis­charge of my du­ties as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Duke did not re­turn calls yes­ter­day but Au­gus­tine main­tained, while ad­dress­ing the me­dia out­side the THA Cham­ber in Scar­bor­ough yes­ter­day, that Duke does not run afoul of the law.

He promised to speak more on the mat­ter at a news con­fer­ence fol­low­ing a sit­ting of the As­sem­bly to­day, which will be ad­dressed by Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes.

Both Duke and Au­gus­tine were sworn in yes­ter­day by Pres­i­dent Weekes, in the pres­ence of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie.