Clay­ton Clarke

To­ba­go cor­re­spon­dent

Al­most a week af­ter an au­dio clip pur­port­ing to be two To­ba­go House As­sem­bly (THA) ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers dis­cussing plans to hire peo­ple in the THA to pro­mote po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da sur­faced, and still no re­sponse from Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine on the mat­ter.

Re­tired head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Regi­nald Du­mas has said if the di­a­logue did take place then the peo­ple in­volved should demit of­fice.

Leader of the Peo­ples Na­tion­al Move­ment To­ba­go Coun­cil, An­cil Den­nis, has called on Au­gus­tine and Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion Zor­isha Hack­ett to re­sign. Den­nis al­so wants fresh THA elec­tions to be called as well.

“So there was a need for an elec­tion even be­fore now, but at this time there is a need for an elec­tion and there is a need for a new Chief Sec­re­tary in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly,” he said.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence by the PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil on Fri­day, Den­nis added that his par­ty is ready for an elec­tion.

“The PNM is ready for any, even­tu­al­ly, but it mat­ters not whether we are ready or not. We had said be­fore, even be­fore this de­vel­op­ment, that there was a need for an elec­tion. So, yes, there is a need for an elec­tion, not nec­es­sar­i­ly for this rea­son but for rea­sons we have al­ready dis­closed.

The for­mer chief sec­re­tary al­so said: “The fact that you vot­ed PDP as To­bagoians and with­in one year you had PDP chang­ing to in­de­pen­dents and now they have the gall to talk about form­ing a new par­ty then, of course, that sig­nals the need for an elec­tion.”