Camille McEach­nie

As­sem­bly­man An­cil Den­nis re­ceived his Oath of Of­fice from Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weeks on Tues­day, May 12, six days af­ter he was elect­ed in­to of­fice at a spe­cial Ple­nary Sit­ting in To­ba­go, on May 6.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the Pres­i­dent’s Of­fice, Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary, As­sem­bly­man Joel Jack and Coun­cil­lor Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine were at Pres­i­dent’s House, Trinidad, to wit­ness the cer­e­mo­ny.

Com­ment­ing on his swear­ing-in at Pres­i­dent’s House, Den­nis said he is “hum­bled and heart­ened to be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

“I know it is a her­culean task, but I be­lieve I have been pre­pared for such a time like this. I am not daunt­ed, and I be­lieve that with the help of my col­leagues and the peo­ple of To­ba­go, we will move To­ba­go in the di­rec­tion we want it to go,” he said.

Den­nis, who turned 33 on Jan­u­ary 14, is the youngest ever as­sem­bly­man man and Chief Sec­re­tary.

He is ex­pect­ed to serve un­til Jan­u­ary 2021 when the cur­rent THA term ends. He will name his sec­re­taries and as­sis­tant sec­re­taries soon. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on the is­sue on Fri­day, he said dis­cus­sions were al­ready tak­ing place.

His ap­point­ment as Chief Sec­re­tary is be­ing chal­lenged by To­ba­go’s op­po­si­tion par­ty, the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP).

Mi­nor­i­ty Leader, Wat­son Duke, who al­so leads the PDP, is tak­ing le­gal ac­tion against his ap­point­ment.

Hours be­fore the spe­cial Ple­nary Sit­ting on May 6, Duke wrote THA’s Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer Vanes­sa Cut­ting-Thomas ask­ing her on whose au­thor­i­ty she was al­low­ing the ap­point­ment of the Chief Sec­re­tary to take place.

Not­ing that the THA’s Act #40 of 1996 was silent on the is­sue, he said she could not take it up­on her­self to in­ter­pret the Act.

He said it was based on that he was ask­ing her to present le­gal ad­vice on the mat­ter or al­low a de­bate to take place to iron out the is­sue.

How­ev­er, Den­nis’ ap­point­ment went off with­out a hitch. The PDP had al­so writ­ten Pres­i­dent Weekes about the is­sue.

Den­nis was elect­ed Chief Sec­re­tary as the post be­came va­cant be­cause the sit­ting Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles re­signed on April 28.

Charles stepped away from the post fol­low­ing his de­feat as the leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment To­ba­go Chap­ter, dur­ing the par­ty’s in­ter­nal elec­tions based on the one-man-one-vote sys­tem.

David­son -Ce­les­tine beat Charles by over 1,000 votes.