Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris says he in­tends to take Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine be­fore the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee for al­leged­ly abus­ing his par­lia­men­tary priv­i­leges and mis­lead­ing Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer Ab­by Tay­lor.

Mor­ris has al­so called for a na­tion­wide protest against Au­gus­tine, claim­ing the THA leader is a clear and present dan­ger to Trinidad and To­ba­go, as well as him­self.

He said the lat­est ex­am­ple of Au­gus­tine’s dan­ger is his dis­re­gard for what was on the or­der pa­per dur­ing the THA ple­nary ses­sion on Thurs­day.

“For some rea­son, the ad­min­is­tra­tion de­cid­ed to for­go the mo­tions that al­low them to present their mo­tion for de­bat­ing, so that we can re­spond and re­but and come to the house and we were told that what was ap­proved as the sub­ject of the state­ment was for them to come and dis­cuss the achieve­ments of the As­sem­bly for the pe­ri­od—fis­cal 2022 to 2023,” Mor­ris said yes­ter­day on I95.5 FM.

“How­ev­er, with­out pri­or knowl­edge and I sus­pect pri­or ap­proval —what we in­stead got was a dis­cus­sion, a sub­ject dis­cus­sion, on au­dits and the ap­point­ment of a chief ad­min­is­tra­tor, which was con­trary to what was stat­ed on the or­der pa­per. The Chief Sec­re­tary would have dis­re­gard­ed what was on the or­der pa­per and it ap­pears that he would have hood­winked the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer.”

Ac­cord­ing to Mor­ris, Au­gus­tine dis­re­gard­ed stand­ing or­der 29:1, which states that the Chief Sec­re­tary ought to in­form the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer of his in­ten­tion to make a state­ment, must put for­ward the sub­ject of the state­ment and pro­vide a copy to the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer be­fore mak­ing the state­ment.

“I can­not for the life of me un­der­stand that a man who is al­ready chal­lenged with is­sues in front of the po­lice and In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion would mis­use the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly leg­is­la­ture in the way he did on Thurs­day.

“When I tried to en­quire from the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer if she had a copy, I was ig­nored, and this al­lowed the Chief Sec­re­tary to come to speak about a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sub­ject, and that again shows how dan­ger­ous this Chief Sec­re­tary is, how disin­gen­u­ous this Chief Sec­re­tary is, and how de­cep­tive this Chief Sec­re­tary is. I don’t know how for the life of me, we can trust a man like that. It’s clear that this Chief Sec­re­tary can­not be trust­ed,” Mor­ris said.

He al­so ac­cused Au­gus­tine of at­tempt­ing to in­stil an au­to­crat­ic and creep­ing dic­ta­tor­ship style in the As­sem­bly.

Ear­li­er in the week, Au­gus­tine said a THA au­dit re­port which had un­cov­ered sev­er­al al­leged of­fences was for­ward­ed to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, as well as the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, but said he will not make it pub­lic.

Be­fore that, Au­gus­tine, in a record­ed video speech, ad­mit­ted to be­ing one of the voic­es heard in a con­tro­ver­sial au­dio clip in which two peo­ple spoke about hir­ing peo­ple to pro­mote po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da for the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty. He al­so ac­cused a con­trac­tor of at­tempt­ing to use the au­dio clip to get the THA to pay out mon­ey owed to the con­trac­tor’s com­pa­ny.

The THA will present its bud­get to­mor­row.