Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s Face­book post on Sun­day night has cer­tain­ly pro­voked a great deal of dis­cus­sion both in To­ba­go and in Trinidad, about whether the ma­jor­i­ty of mem­bers of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try can leave that par­ty, form a new en­ti­ty, and re­main in of­fice with­out go­ing back to the elec­torate for a new man­date.

In a so­cial me­dia post, Dr Row­ley out­lined his view that “...the ex­ec­u­tive of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has end­ed up in the hands of a self-serv­ing group of in­de­pen­dents, who, while un­der no le­gal re­quire­ment to re­sign their po­si­tions, have no man­date from the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

The Prime Min­is­ter ar­gued that if THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and his ex­ec­u­tive “wish to be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the peo­ple of To­ba­go,” he should “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.”

As Dr Row­ley has clar­i­fied, Chief Sec­re­tary Au­gus­tine and cur­rent THA ex­ec­u­tive are un­der no le­gal re­quire­ment to re­sign their po­si­tions, there­fore, the fun­da­men­tal is­sue is whether they have a man­date from the peo­ple of To­ba­go as a new en­ti­ty.

Fact is, a par­ty called the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) won the De­cem­ber 6, 2021 elec­tion by a 14-1 mar­gin, al­most an­ni­hi­lat­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), which had ruled To­ba­go for two decades.

It is al­so a fact that on Sep­tem­ber 9, 2022, the leader and founder of the PDP, Wat­son Duke, fired Mr Au­gus­tine and two oth­er deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers but that ac­tion had no im­pact on their THA ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions.

In fact, Mr Au­gus­tine and all the THA sec­re­taries and as­sis­tant sec­re­taries then re­signed from the PDP on De­cem­ber 1, 2022, de­clar­ing that they “re­main com­plete­ly fo­cused on the busi­ness of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and serv­ing the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

Fur­ther­more, the Au­gus­tine-led THA has con­tin­ued to serve the peo­ple of To­ba­go, even as they tran­si­tion to the new To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty.

Do the events of the last 17 months nec­es­sar­i­ly mean the cur­rent lead­er­ship of the THA has lost the man­date of the To­ba­go peo­ple? From an eth­i­cal stand­point, should they seek to com­plete their full term as is?

In the Sun­day post, Dr Row­ley out­lined five ac­tions of the cur­rent THA ex­ec­u­tive which he per­ceived to be “warped in­ter­pre­ta­tions” of T&T’s Con­sti­tu­tion and the THA Act. These in­clude the THA’s re­la­tion­ship with the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency and the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion.

In both these cas­es, Mr Au­gus­tine has made it clear he be­lieves these State agen­cies, and oth­ers, must an­swer to the du­ly elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of To­ba­go when ad­dress­ing mat­ters in To­ba­go, and about To­ba­go.

In ef­fect, by a se­ries of ac­tions, de­ci­sions and com­ments, it ap­pears that Mr Au­gus­tine wants to fur­ther re­de­fine the re­la­tion­ship be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad with­out care­ful, if any, con­sid­er­a­tion of the con­se­quences of his po­si­tions and with­out ap­ply­ing the in­tel­lec­tu­al rigour re­quired to come up with a new man­i­festo of pro­posed poli­cies.

Hav­ing been elect­ed un­der the PDP ban­ner, Mr Au­gus­tine and his col­leagues must now tell the peo­ple of T&T ex­act­ly what the TPP stands for. In ef­fect, how would the pro­grammes, poli­cies and per­spec­tives of the TPP dif­fer from the PDP or will re­main the same?