Clay­ton Clarke

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has fired back at Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for his crit­i­cism of the con­tentious spe­cial sit­ting of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) held one week ago.

Dr Row­ley had con­demned Au­gus­tine say­ing he abused the House priv­i­leges by al­leg­ing that he and sev­er­al high-pro­file pub­lic of­fi­cials had plot­ted to re­move the Au­gus­tine-led THA from of­fice. Dr Row­ley al­so claimed THA Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer Ab­by Tay­lor act­ed im­prop­er­ly by al­low­ing Au­gus­tine to present video ev­i­dence by whis­tle-blow­er Ak­il Ab­dul­lah dur­ing the sit­ting.

In re­sponse, Au­gus­tine ad­vised Dr Row­ley to get fa­mil­iar with the THA’s Stand­ing Or­ders.

“I can say with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion that the Prime Min­is­ter does not know what he’s talk­ing about. The Prime Min­is­ter needs to read it again. I will ad­vise the Mi­nor­i­ty Leader to give him a copy of the Stand­ing Or­ders of the THA and you will see that it is prop­er and in or­der,” he said.

Au­gus­tine, in an in­ter­view on To­ba­go Chan­nel Five’s High Five talk show on Mon­day evening, main­tained that he act­ed with­in the reg­u­la­tions when he made Ab­dul­lah’s claims pub­lic.

“The priv­i­leges list­ed out for mem­bers of the THA are not just for mem­bers but any­one who par­tic­i­pates,” he said.

The Chief Sec­re­tary al­so re­ferred to the stand­ing or­der that out­lines rights, priv­i­leges and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and pow­ers. He said the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer did no wrong when she al­lowed the bomb­shell ut­ter­ances to be made.

“The Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer gives the au­thor­i­ty in ar­eas where the Stand­ing Or­ders are silent to make a de­ci­sion and that de­ci­sion stands, so the Prime Min­is­ter does not know what he’s talk­ing about in that re­gard,” Au­gus­tine said.

The Chief Sec­re­tary said he was op­ti­mistic the re­cent ver­bal clash­es with Dr Row­ley have not de­terred busi­ness in­ter­ests in To­ba­go.

He said, “In­vestor con­fi­dence has not de­creased ac­tu­al­ly, by what might ap­pear as a rift be­tween the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary and the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

“I can tell you, con­fi­dence lev­el in To­ba­go has not been high­er. In the last two months, we have had peo­ple send­ing in pro­pos­als val­ued in ex­cess of US$500 mil­lion.”