Akash Sama­roo

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she will “con­sid­er” giv­ing the Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) a per­ma­nent seat on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC).

The is­sue of the Chief Sec­re­tary’s role in se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters sur­faced af­ter Far­ley Au­gus­tine was ini­tial­ly ex­clud­ed from in­for­ma­tion on the To­ba­go radar in­stal­la­tion, with the Prime Min­is­ter not­ing this was so be­cause he is not part of the NSC.

On a To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) plat­form on De­cem­ber 1, Au­gus­tine ad­dressed the is­sue, say­ing, “Make no mis­take, I be­lieve that the Chief Sec­re­tary should be part and par­cel of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. That’s where the con­ver­sa­tion should go, and that is a mat­ter for the cab­i­net to ad­dress. That’s not even a mat­ter of law. That’s a cab­i­net pol­i­cy to be ad­dressed. Fur­ther­more, I be­lieve that for any na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions is­sue for which To­ba­go is a di­rect part of the arrange­ment, we should know.”

Au­gus­tine al­so said he is not in sup­port of “out­siders” mak­ing de­ci­sions that af­fect To­ba­go.

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia asked the Prime Min­is­ter if she would ad­dress the Chief Sec­re­tary’s sug­ges­tion.

The Prime Min­is­ter said, “In the full­ness of time, all things can be con­sid­ered and we will make a de­ci­sion at some fu­ture point. How­ev­er, as it stands, the Chief Sec­re­tary is al­ready en­gaged and in­volved with re­spect to se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters on a case-by-case ba­sis. So yes, we will con­sid­er it.”

Last week, for­mer pub­lic ser­vice head Reynold Coop­er and for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia there is no law that would man­date that Chief Sec­re­tary Au­gus­tine be part of the NSC.

Coop­er said, “There is no law gov­ern­ing the NSC. It is chaired by the PM, or in her ab­sence, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. The PM can in­vite the Chief Sec­re­tary, but there is no law to change.”

Grif­fith agreed, say­ing the Chief Sec­re­tary, like the heads of pro­tec­tive ser­vices, can be in­vit­ed to join meet­ings, adding that the NSC fol­lows the British par­lia­men­tary mod­el.

“The British mod­el states em­phat­i­cal­ly that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil is com­prised of a com­mit­tee from Cab­i­net, so the on­ly peo­ple who could be in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil could on­ly be Cab­i­net mem­bers. The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil is a Cab­i­net com­mit­tee, so un­for­tu­nate­ly, Mr Au­gus­tine, he prob­a­bly did not un­der­stand that.”

He added that apart from the Prime Min­is­ter and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, the NSC al­so in­cludes the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and “a few oth­ers,” not­ing that some min­is­ters may be in­vit­ed de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stances. “For ex­am­ple,” he said, “the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture, dur­ing Car­ni­val, may be in­vit­ed to a NSC meet­ing.”