Loyse Vin­cent

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) To­ba­go Coun­cil leader Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine says sev­er­al To­bag­o­ni­ans have raised con­cerns over the con­di­tions of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots’ (PDP) pow­er-shar­ing pro­pos­al to man­age the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly. In par­tic­u­lar, they fear the prospect of Wat­son Duke be­com­ing Fi­nance Sec­re­tary.

How­ev­er, in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to the con­cern, Duke says he is not in­ter­est­ed in the role in the pow­er-shar­ing arrange­ment.

David­son-Ce­les­tine ad­dressed the is­sue af­ter a walk­through at the site of the Ba­co­let In­door Sport­ing Fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, where she con­firmed that the PDP’s for­mal pro­pos­al was re­ceived and the PNM ex­ec­u­tive will meet for dis­cus­sions on the mat­ter on Mon­day.

The PDP of­fered the pow­er-shar­ing pro­pos­al dur­ing a meet­ing in­volv­ing all twelve As­sem­bly­men and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ear­li­er this week.

Called the “One To­ba­go Unit­ed” Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil, the pro­pos­al al­lows for the PNM to ap­point the Chief Sec­re­tary and Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer and one of the three coun­cil­lors al­lo­cat­ed on the ex­ec­u­tive. The PDP, mean­while, is seek­ing to fill the Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary, Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance and two coun­cil­lor po­si­tions, with the re­main­ing sec­re­tar­i­al po­si­tions to be equal­ly di­vid­ed be­tween the par­ties.

How­ev­er, David­son-Ce­les­tine yes­ter­day con­firmed she had re­ceived con­cerns cen­tred around the role of PDP leader Wat­son Duke in the arrange­ment.

“Most per­sons that have con­tact­ed me have said that we would not want to be in­ter­est­ed in the Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance po­si­tion go­ing to the PDP, es­pe­cial­ly if the Sec­re­tary would be Wat­son Duke and that has been the con­cern raised by mem­bers of the pub­lic at this point in time,” David­son-Ce­les­tine said.

David­son-Ce­les­tine was eva­sive when asked to ex­press how she felt per­son­al­ly about the pro­pos­al, opt­ing in­stead to ad­dress suit­abil­i­ty.

“It is rea­son­able that they have come to dis­cuss some sort of an arrange­ment but I am not ready to go in­to if they should get Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance. For me, it is about plac­ing peo­ple where they would be able to per­form the role and en­sure that we man­age our re­sources, lim­it­ed or oth­er­wise, in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

Duke re­spond­ed to the con­cern raised by David­son Ce­les­tine on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day. Claim­ing he had no in­ter­est in the Fi­nance po­si­tion, Duke said the con­cerns and fears ex­pressed are from “the head of Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine.”

“I have no in­ter­est in be­com­ing the Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance nor an As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance. My in­ter­est is serv­ing the peo­ple of To­ba­go and be­ing a part of the team that will pre­side over ush­er­ing in of To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my,” Duke said.

PDP deputy leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine al­so ad­dressed the is­sue on his so­cial me­dia page by ask­ing for open de­lib­er­a­tions.

“At no point has the PDP of­fered Mr Duke as Sec­re­tary for Fi­nance, nor does it in­tend to make such an of­fer. Al­low the PNM to pro­vide a re­sponse (counter-pro­pos­al) be­fore mak­ing as­sump­tions. Stop try­ing to mud­dy the wa­ters,” Au­gus­tine said.

Duke al­so used the fo­rum to re­spond to promi­nent To­ba­go at­tor­ney Mar­tin George, who pub­licly stat­ed that the PDP’s pow­er-shar­ing pro­pos­al is il­le­gal, as the THA Act does not pro­vide for any such arrange­ment. George al­so de­scribed the pro­pos­al as “al­tru­is­tic and naive,” as lo­cal pol­i­tics is “com­bat­ive and op­po­si­tion­al” in na­ture, adding, “Any at­tempt to force the back­yard mar­riage will not on­ly be il­le­gal but will al­so end in dis­as­ter.”

George cau­tioned the PDP against be­ing “suck­ered” in­to an il­le­gal arrange­ment with the Gov­ern­ment that can be chal­lenged by any cit­i­zen, es­pe­cial­ly since the Gov­ern­ment had al­ready amend­ed to Con­sti­tu­tion to in­crease the num­ber of elec­toral dis­tricts on the is­land from 12 to 15.

In his re­sponse to George, Duke said the pro­pos­al is not il­le­gal and ac­cused the at­tor­ney of pro­vid­ing the PNM with a means of es­cap­ing the pro­pos­al.

“Mar­tin George can­not show where in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act that work­ing to­geth­er is il­le­gal. He should se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er whether he wants to be a lawyer or po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor, such com­ments speak di­rect­ly to a par­tic­u­lar group of peo­ple who are look­ing for a way to wig­gle out.”

Duke said George should ob­serve the law in­stead of try­ing ad­vance his own base de­sires which do not co­in­cide with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act.