Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is call­ing for a fresh To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion if Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine’s new par­ty ‘takes its place with­in the walls of the THA.’

The Prime Min­is­ter made the claim in an opin­ion piece pub­lished on his Face­book page yes­ter­day, ti­tled ‘The Re­la­tion­ship, Au­thor­i­ties and Ad­min­is­tra­tion of these Arch­i­pel­ag­ic Is­lands.’

“Should this oc­cur with­out an elec­tion, this re­sul­tant Ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­i­ty with­out ref­er­ence to the To­ba­go elec­torate would run counter to the es­poused lofty “prin­ci­ples” be­ing es­poused, of nur­tur­ing democ­ra­cy from the ground up when it is time to form a par­ty but dis­pense with the ba­sic tenets “for the peo­ple by the peo­ple” democ­ra­cy when it is time to hold on to the of­fice to the ex­clu­sion of the elec­torate,” Row­ley wrote.

“If the in­de­pen­dent po­lit­i­cal as­pi­rants of the dis­in­te­grat­ed PDP wish to be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the peo­ple of To­ba­go, then the Chief Sec­re­tary would do well to make arrange­ments for an ear­ly elec­tion with­in the same time frame that he is mak­ing to reg­is­ter a NEW po­lit­i­cal par­ty with the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion.”

Au­gus­tine and his in­de­pen­dents re­signed from the PDP last De­cem­ber amid a pub­lic spat in­volv­ing him­self and PDP leader Wat­son Duke. Au­gus­tine is now the in­ter­im leader of the new To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty, which was set up last week but is still go­ing through a process of for­mal­is­ing it­self.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the for­mer Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots mem­bers who won the 2022 THA elec­tion 14-1 have no le­gal re­quire­ment to re­sign, Row­ley said the PDP’s col­lapse has cre­at­ed a sit­u­a­tion where the THA ex­ec­u­tive is in the hands of “self-serv­ing in­de­pen­dents.”

He said the be­hav­iour of the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive should be of great con­cern to the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion.

He al­so list­ed the Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture’s fla­grant dis­re­gard of the EMA Act, which he said was be­ing sup­port­ed by the Chief Sec­re­tary and the re­cent at­tack on Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers as ar­eas of con­cern, but not­ed there were oth­er sim­i­lar de­vel­op­ments which “laid the ground­work for an an­tic­i­pat­ed pe­ri­od of un­nec­es­sary, un­pro­duc­tive dis­cord and nu­mer­ous ex­pen­sive and de­struc­tive out­ings to the Court for ad­ju­di­ca­tion, clar­i­fi­ca­tion and more.”

“Whilst we have been do­ing and will con­tin­ue to do every­thing with­in our means to make sure that at the lev­el of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, every­thing is done to give To­ba­go every op­por­tu­ni­ty to ben­e­fit from good or­der and good gov­er­nance, it is al­so to be ex­pect­ed that the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to per­suade the THA to re­spect the lim­its of its au­thor­i­ty and act with­in the con­fines of the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“The po­lit­i­cal as­pi­rants would do well to be­gin this hum­bling process by sub­ject­ing them­selves to the elec­torate be­fore it is too late. The peace, good or­der and con­tin­ued progress of the peo­ple of To­ba­go are at stake and de­mand no less.”

Mean­while, PDP leader and for­mer THA deputy chief sec­re­tary Wat­son Duke al­so called for fresh THA elec­tions yes­ter­day.

He said To­ba­go is now in a po­si­tion where Au­gus­tine and his gang had ‘hi­jacked’ the THA.

“Both the in­de­pen­dents and the par­ty (PTP) have no man­date at any elec­tion cam­paign sea­son to present to you what they are vot­ing for. It meant what the man came in­to, he has aban­doned, and he’s not pre­sent­ing any­thing to you and say­ing sup­port him,” Duke said in a live stream aired be­fore the PM shared his op-ed.

He al­so ac­cused the PM of be­ing too weak to do what is nec­es­sary to get Au­gus­tine out of the THA hot seat.

“The Prime Min­is­ter is too weak to rule on this. He’s too weak to with­hold the cash and force the elec­tion. He’s play­ing a game where he hopes every Mon­day morn­ing, I will come out and fight Far­ley. I want to say to To­ba­go that I will not be fight­ing Far­ley,” Duke said.

“Let Far­ley run. Let him con­tin­ue to deal with To­ba­go un­just­ly. It’s up to To­bag­o­ni­ans again to ac­cept it or re­ject it. If they ac­cept it, that would sig­nal to me and the rest of the Caribbean that To­b­go­ni­ans are dotish.” Guardian Me­dia ap­proached Au­gus­tine at last night’s To­ba­go Jazz Fes­ti­val fi­nale at the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um in Ba­co­let. How­ev­er, through his pro­to­col of­fi­cer, he said he would pre­fer not to com­ment on the mat­ter.

How­ev­er, deputy THA Chief Sec­re­tary Faith B Yis­rael, in a re­sponse to Row­ley on her Face­book page yes­ter­day, said the elec­tions would be called when it was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due.

Calls have no mer­it - po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist

Com­ment­ing on calls for fresh elec­tions in To­ba­go, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Shane Mo­hammed said they were ir­rel­e­vant and with­out mer­it.

He said the for­ma­tion of the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty does not af­fect the func­tion­ing of the THA.

“The Act (To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act) al­so makes pro­vi­sion where the ad­min­is­tra­tion is not recog­nised whether it’s a PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion or a PDP ad­min­is­tra­tion. In fact, it al­lows for the ad­min­is­tra­tion to be recog­nised as an in­sti­tu­tion on its own stand­ing.

“There­fore, even though the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty has been formed and the in­ter­im po­lit­i­cal leader is the Chief Sec­re­tary, they are not stand­ing up in the leg­isla­tive cham­ber and iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as PTP mem­bers,” Dr Mo­hammed said.

The po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist said the calls are part of what is an ex­pect­ed and ob­vi­ous po­lit­i­cal back­lash from the for­ma­tion of the PTP.

How­ev­er, he said he would have ad­vised the Chief Sec­re­tary that there was no need for the for­ma­tion of the PTP. Pri­or­i­ty should be placed on pro­vid­ing To­ba­go with good gov­er­nance, Mo­hammed said.