DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has de­nied strik­ing a deal with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) for the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day, as he de­fend­ed his 2021 let­ter sent to par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and dou­bled down on his cri­tique of the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al for the is­land’s au­ton­o­my.

Au­gus­tine was re­spond­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s re­cent com­ments dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) meet­ing in Ma­son Hall, where he de­scribed Au­gus­tine’s rec­om­men­da­tions, which were cosigned by for­mer THA chief sec­re­tary Ho­choy Charles, as “the bread the dev­il is knead­ing”.

Au­gus­tine was crit­i­cised by Dr Row­ley for his pro­pos­al of a bi­cam­er­al sys­tem for the THA that re­sem­bles what ex­ists in the Unit­ed States.

Ac­cord­ing to Au­gus­tine, the cur­rent uni­cam­er­al sys­tem is prob­lem­at­ic and he wants two sep­a­rate as­sem­blies. One as­sem­bly would have 15 mem­bers, four coun­cil­lors, a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer and a pres­i­dent, all of whom will be elect­ed by the To­ba­go pop­u­la­tion. The sec­ond as­sem­bly will see a chief sec­re­tary elect­ed from a na­tion­al vote. An ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil of un­elect­ed mem­bers will then be es­tab­lished by that of­fice­hold­er. This sug­ges­tion means the is­land can be gov­erned by two dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

How­ev­er, with Dr Row­ley in­sin­u­at­ing that the move was an at­tempt at a dic­ta­tor­ship, Au­gus­tine coun­tered that it would pro­vide more trans­paren­cy than what cur­rent­ly ex­ists.

“Our ar­gu­ment is that a uni­cam­er­al sys­tem with­out sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers is prob­lem­at­ic and doesn’t pro­vide suf­fi­cient checks and bal­ances. There­fore, if there is go­ing to be a uni­cam­er­al sys­tem, there should be a sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers, which means that the Chief Sec­re­tary and his/her ex­ec­u­tive would op­er­ate un­der the checks of the par­lia­ment and the par­lia­ment would not be a par­lia­ment dom­i­nat­ed by the ex­ec­u­tive,” Au­gus­tine said.

Au­gus­tine fur­ther not­ed that the let­ter sent to par­lia­men­tar­i­ans in 2021 fol­lowed thor­ough dis­cus­sions and meet­ings among all the po­lit­i­cal par­ties and en­ti­ties in To­ba­go. He said those meet­ings were chaired by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Maria Dil­lon-Re­my. How­ev­er, he said af­ter the talks con­clud­ed, the PNM’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives re­fused to sign.

“It was not a Far­ley let­ter, but a re­flec­tion of gaps in what the Gov­ern­ment was propos­ing. As a mat­ter of fact, we ar­gued that the pro­posed bill sent down to Par­lia­ment by Mr Orville Lon­don (PNM THA chief sec­re­tary from 2001 to 2017) was vast­ly dif­fer­ent from the one that made its way to the Par­lia­ment’s floor. That let­ter from Mr Charles and my­self re­flect­ed on those gaps, such as the ab­sence of a prop­er ge­o­graph­i­cal de­f­i­n­i­tion of To­ba­go in the bill,” he said.

The Chief Sec­re­tary al­so said he was not sat­is­fied with Row­ley’s pro­posed bill, which per­mits a chief sec­re­tary to make as­sem­bly of­fi­cials mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive.

“What Charles and I pro­posed is that there be sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers. It means that sec­re­taries have to be con­firmed or ap­proved by the Par­lia­ment (as­sem­bly) be­fore se­lec­tion (as in the US sys­tem). This means that the par­lia­ment (as­sem­bly) has to sit and ap­prove all the pol­i­cy di­rec­tives of the ex­ec­u­tive. This al­so means that mem­bers of the par­lia­ment are re­spon­si­ble on­ly for their dis­tricts and are there­fore more mind­ful of the ideas and de­sires of their dis­tricts as op­posed to the par­ties they rep­re­sent,” he said.

‘To­ba­go is my on­ly con­cern at this mo­ment’

Au­gus­tine al­so de­nied Dr Row­ley’s al­le­ga­tion that he struck a deal with the Op­po­si­tion to fa­cil­i­tate this de­sired arrange­ment.

“I have nev­er had any con­ver­sa­tion with the UNC about the To­ba­go bills or about any up­com­ing elec­tions. To­ba­go stands alone when it comes to elec­tions. With re­gards to the To­ba­go bills, we have to have con­ver­sa­tions with both the PNM and the UNC in Trinidad as any bill will re­quire a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty. What con­cerns me is that the PM is sug­gest­ing that To­ba­go shouldn’t care about what is in the bill as long as we are get­ting more mon­ey. To­bag­o­ni­ans will be care­ful to en­sure that it gets what it wants and that the bill stays true to what was ac­tu­al­ly sent down by To­bag­o­ni­ans to the Par­lia­ment,” he said.

“I re­al­ly don’t care about the pol­i­tics in Trinidad. I don’t care about the PNM-UNC di­vide. To­ba­go is my on­ly con­cern at this mo­ment,” he con­tin­ued.

We want a Ser­vice Com­mis­sion like Trinidad’s

Mean­while, re­spond­ing to Dr Row­ley’s con­dem­na­tion of his pro­pos­al to have a To­ba­go Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, Au­gus­tine said the is­land de­serves to have a struc­ture that’s equiv­a­lent to Trinidad. He said at the mo­ment, THA ad­min­is­tra­tors who, by law, are ac­count­ing of­fi­cers, man­age more mon­ey than deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­taries in Trinidad and run larg­er di­vi­sions than a few min­istries but are paid low­er.

Au­gus­tine al­so hit back at the Prime Min­is­ter’s claim that To­bag­o­ni­ans will no longer be able to get pro­mo­tions to Trinidad if the com­mis­sion is es­tab­lished. The THA Chief said this may not be a bad thing be­cause a well-func­tion­ing com­mis­sion means res­i­dents will not need to ven­ture to Trinidad for bet­ter jobs.

“We keep los­ing the top brass of our pub­lic ser­vice to Trinidad. This means that To­ba­go los­es the tal­ent and To­ba­go los­es. More than that, we are left in a po­si­tion where we have to re­ly on ju­nior in­ex­pe­ri­enced of­fi­cers to run the pub­lic ser­vice in To­ba­go,” he said.