Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) in­ten­si­fied yes­ter­day with the Op­po­si­tion de­mand­ing a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Gov­ern­ment’s in­volve­ment in an al­leged ex­tor­tion plot.

In re­sponse to al­le­ga­tions made by THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark called for the probe dur­ing the reg­u­lar Sun­day me­dia con­fer­ence host­ed at the Of­fice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion at Charles Street, Port-of-Spain.

Mark said Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, for­mer Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and To­ba­go West MP Sham­fa Cud­joe all have ques­tions to an­swer about their in­volve­ment in the mat­ter.

He pre­sent­ed doc­u­ments that con­firmed Dr Row­ley’s re­la­tion­ship with Al­lan Warn­er, chair­man of the Warn­er Group of Com­pa­nies and fa­ther of Keon Warn­er of Warn­er Con­struc­tion and San­i­ta­tion Lim­it­ed (WC­SL).

Mark claimed the el­der Warn­er and Dr Row­ley are di­rec­tors of a farm­ing com­pa­ny, Al­ma Rivers Ven­tures Lim­it­ed. He said that re­la­tion­ship is enough to trig­ger a probe in­to a po­ten­tial ex­tor­tion plot as Au­gus­tine, in a live streamed video on Fri­day, al­leged that he was asked by se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to pay WC­SL $60 mil­lion. The ju­nior Warn­er ad­mit­ted to ver­bal­ly re­quest­ing the mon­ey but de­nied at­tempt­ing to black­mail Au­gus­tine.

Last year, Dr Row­ley de­fend­ed his busi­ness re­la­tion­ship with the el­der Warn­er which was con­cre­tised with the launch of the farm­ing com­pa­ny in 2008. At the time, the Dr Row­ley was a back­bencher with­in his par­ty.

Delv­ing fur­ther, Mark said the gov­ern­ment in­formed the Sen­ate of its plan to dis­burse $100 mil­lion to the THA last year.

“This is the Act that was as­sent­ed to and in this Act you see the $100 mil­lion for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly,” he said while dis­play­ing a doc­u­ment.

“Far­ley talked about two se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. We want to know who are the two se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. Is the Prime Min­is­ter one of the se­nior of­fi­cials? Is the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance one of those se­nior of­fi­cials, or is the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for To­ba­go West a mem­ber of the se­nior team that was men­tioned at his press con­fer­ence?” he asked.

How­ev­er, Cud­joe minced no words when she de­nied claims of in­volve­ment in the saga and ad­vised Au­gus­tine to be hon­est and come clean.

“I have made no such re­quests of the Chief Sec­re­tary or any­one. The Chief Sec­re­tary needs to come clean with the facts, tell the truth, the whole truth and noth­ing but the truth,” she de­clared.

Cud­joe ac­cused the THA Chief of “try­ing to pro­mote pro­pa­gan­da to dis­tract and de­flect from the morass in which he has found him­self.”

Mean­while, com­ment­ing on the oth­er con­tro­ver­sy that has em­broiled the THA in re­cent weeks, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist and at­tor­ney Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad said Au­gus­tine’s claims that a plan to hire staff to spread pro­pa­gan­da nev­er ma­te­ri­alised might not be enough to keep him out of trou­ble. On Fri­day, Au­gus­tine of­fered that de­fence in re­la­tion to a leaked au­dio clip which has been shared wide­ly on so­cial me­dia.

Ram­per­sad said since the mat­ter has been re­port­ed to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way, the au­thor­i­ties will have to de­ter­mine if the Chief Sec­re­tary and his col­leagues are guilty of mis­con­duct in pub­lic of­fice or con­spir­a­cy to com­mit fraud.

“He can­not de­cide that he did not com­mit a crime and there­fore it’s okay. That is not for him. So it’s not him­self on­to him­self. That is for oth­er bod­ies to de­cide,” she said.

Ram­per­sad said Au­gus­tine is un­doubt­ed­ly in “hot wa­ter” and this could spell his po­lit­i­cal down­fall. She said he was al­ready on thin ice af­ter he and oth­er mem­bers re­signed from the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) and formed their own par­ty al­though they got in­to of­fice on a PDP tick­et.

“It’s go­ing to have se­ri­ous po­lit­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions and ram­i­fi­ca­tions and Far­ley Au­gus­tine is the one, I think, who is go­ing to be in trou­ble,” she said.

At yes­ter­day’s press con­fer­ence Mark al­so de­fend­ed state­ments he made in the Sen­ate last Tues­day dur­ing the de­bate on the Ar­bi­tra­tion (Amend­ment) Bill 2023 about At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour and his wife, In­dus­tri­al Court mem­ber Eliz­a­beth Solomon.

Mark claimed that Ar­mour breached Par­lia­ment’s stand­ing or­ders be­cause he al­leged­ly failed to de­clare a link to a com­pa­ny, Di­a­logue So­lu­tions Ltd, which falls un­der the Bill and men­tioned Solomon. He main­tained that he did noth­ing wrong.

“I ain’t call your wife name, I don’t even know the woman. I knew about her years ago but I have no con­cern, I cast no as­per­sions on any­body. My on­ly con­cern is the pub­lic in­ter­est and we will not al­low the PNM to use the shelf of Par­lia­ment to pro­mote their pri­vate agen­da at our ex­pense,” he said.

The Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor, com­ment­ing ahead of to­day’s Labour Day ob­ser­vances, said he wants the gov­ern­ment to in­vest in tech­nol­o­gy and train work­ers be­fore agen­cies in­tro­duce ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to the labour mar­ket. Not­ing that tech­nol­o­gy is dri­ving eco­nom­ic change around the world, Mark im­plied that work­ers are un­der threat.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly it will im­pact on labour, the labour mar­ket and on jobs so we have to pre­pare the work­ers,” he said.

He ad­vised union lead­ers to in­clude pro­vi­sions in their col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments to en­sure em­ploy­ees get the ben­e­fit of train­ing be­fore new tech­nol­o­gy is in­tro­duced.

“The em­ploy­ers are in a si­lo by them­selves and they are plan­ning to in­tro­duce mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy eight years in ad­vance and the on­ly time the work­ers and their rep­re­sen­ta­tive unions will know about it is when they’re about to in­tro­duce it and ap­ply it to pro­duc­tion. That is high­ly dan­ger­ous,” he warned.

Mean­while, the Op­po­si­tion said it has no is­sues with for­mer ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Tahar­qa Obi­ka join­ing the PNM. Obi­ka was an­nounced as a PNM mem­ber at an on­line news con­fer­ence on Fri­day af­ter­noon where he was seen seat­ed be­tween Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings and ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Lau­rel Leza­ma Lee Sing who both wel­comed him to the par­ty.

Mark said the UNC sends best wish­es but is fo­cused on more im­por­tant things.

“You are free to leave and we wish every­body well. How­ev­er, may I say, our fo­cus is not on those who are leav­ing. Our fo­cus, it is al­most like ra­zor sharp fo­cus, is on a crim­i­nal klep­to­crat­ic regime that is pau­peris­ing and bru­tal­is­ing the work­ing peo­ple of our coun­try,” he said.