Renu­ka Singh

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi is not let­ting go of the Wat­son Duke le­gal mat­ter and yes­ter­day pre­sent­ed ten rea­sons to keep the mat­ter alive.

Just three days ago, Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Far­ley Au­gus­tine said that when Duke emit­ted of­fice as pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), the law­suit be­came in­valid. The two THA ex­ec­u­tives are rep­re­sent­ed by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh.

In a ten-point re­sponse, the AG said that the dead­line for the fil­ing of af­fi­davits was yes­ter­day “which sug­gests that the is­sues raised by your let­ter re­al­ly con­sti­tute an abu­sive at­tempt to de­rail the strict time frames im­posed by the Court for the de­ter­mi­na­tion of this mat­ter.”

“We must re­spect­ful­ly dis­agree with your as­ser­tion that the is­sue be­fore the Court is aca­d­e­m­ic and we must now en­cour­age you to com­ply with the Court’s di­rec­tions with­in the time frames which were or­dered by the Court, with your in­put, and against which di­rec­tions and time frames you have not ap­pealed,” the AG said.

“First­ly, the al­le­ga­tion of Mr. Duke’s res­ig­na­tion from the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) is not an is­sue to which he has de­posed and is de­pen­dent for its vi­a­bil­i­ty sole­ly up­on the as­ser­tions made in your let­ter. In ad­di­tion, Mr. Duke has not de­posed to the fact that he re­signed from the Reg­is­tra­tion, Recog­ni­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Board (RRCB) by a let­ter which, al­though dat­ed De­cem­ber 09, 2021, was not de­liv­ered to the RRCB un­til De­cem­ber 16, 2021. We have had to de­pend on the RRCB to pro­vide that in­for­ma­tion,” Al-Rawi said.

Al-Rawi said that the is­sue of the case was the ap­point­ment of Duke as deputy chief sec­re­tary of the THA de­spite the fact that at the time of his ap­point­ment he was both a mem­ber of the Reg­is­tra­tion, Recog­ni­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Board (RRCB) and had of­fered his res­ig­na­tion to the PSA but it had not yet been ac­cept­ed.

“It ap­pears to be the case that, at the very least, your client took the po­si­tion when mak­ing the ap­point­ments that he com­plied with the pro­vi­sions of sec­tion 16 (8) of the THA Act. This re­mains so, notwith­stand­ing the let­ters from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al dat­ed De­cem­ber 9 and 13, 2021,” he said.

“These let­ters were in­tend­ed to fore­warn your client of the po­ten­tial of his statu­to­ry breach. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, your client stu­dious­ly ig­nored these let­ters and has so far not re­spond­ed to them,” Al-Rawi said.

Al-Rawi said that Duke’s sub­se­quent “al­leged res­ig­na­tion” in­di­cates that it must be ei­ther that your client has had a change of heart and now ac­cepts that the po­si­tion he orig­i­nal­ly took, that there was no in­frac­tion of sec­tion 16 (8) was wrong, or al­ter­na­tive­ly, that the is­sue was al­ways (and still is) in doubt. Whichev­er in­ter­pre­ta­tion is ad­vanced, pro­vides fer­tile ground on which a Court would be oblig­ed to rule. This is­sue is a mat­ter not on­ly of pub­lic in­ter­est but al­so of ac­count­abil­i­ty of elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the State and their ca­pac­i­ty to make de­ci­sions that are not in con­flict with the law.

The AG said that even on the facts of Duke’s res­ig­na­tion, there was at least some pe­ri­od of time when he might have been of the THA Act.

“This ar­gu­ment ap­plies, not to his ap­point­ment ei­ther as an As­sem­bly­man or Sec­re­tary, but to his ca­pac­i­ty to func­tion in that role,” the AG said.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Tak­lals­ingh for a re­sponse to the AG but he said it was “not like­ly” to hap­pen at the mo­ment.