Sto­ry by CAMILLE McEACH­NIE

An­cil Den­nis is the new Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

He was elect­ed on May 6 at the spe­cial sit­ting of the As­sem­bly Leg­is­la­ture, at Jern­ing­ham Street, Scar­bor­ough, by nine as­sem­bly­men from the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM).

The for­mer Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles, who re­mains a mem­ber of the As­sem­bly, was ab­sent from the Sit­ting.

The new head of the THA Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil will run To­ba­go's af­fairs un­til the end of the cur­rent THA Ses­sion in Jan­u­ary 2021.

The new ap­point­ment took place de­spite Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Wat­son Duke's le­gal chal­lenge to sus­pend the Sit­ting.

Duke sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer Vanes­sa Cut­ting-Thomas ask­ing her to ex­plain her le­gal au­thor­i­ty to elect a new Chief Sec­re­tary.

The post of Chief Sec­re­tary be­came va­cant af­ter Charles re­signed on April 28.

He made that de­ci­sion af­ter los­ing as leader of the PNM's To­ba­go Coun­cil to Tra­cy David­son- Ce­les­tine, in the par­ty's in­ter­nal elec­tion on Jan­u­ary 26, 2020.

WHO IS AN­CIL DEN­NIS?

An­cil Den­nis, the as­sis­tant sec­re­tary in the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness, and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment from March this year, is the THA's youngest Deputy Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer; ap­point­ed at age 27.  Be­fore this ap­point­ment, he was the As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary in the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary from Feb­ru­ary 2017.

On Jan­u­ary 21st, 2013, at age 26, he faced the To­ba­go elec­torate and won the Buc­coo/Mt. Pleas­ant elec­toral dis­trict for the PNM.

He holds a Busi­ness Man­age­ment Cer­tifi­cate from the As­so­ci­a­tion of Busi­ness Ex­ec­u­tives and a Mas­ter of Sci­ence De­gree in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Man­age­ment from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don.

Born on Jan­u­ary 14th, 1987, he orig­i­nates from Buc­coo, To­ba­go.

Af­ter com­plet­ing sec­ondary school, he was em­ployed at the Bethel Cred­it Union in Jan­u­ary 2005, be­fore mov­ing on to Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed in Sep­tem­ber of the same year. He then tran­si­tioned in­to pol­i­tics in 2013.