To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don says there is noth­ing new in the as­sem­bly be­ing tak­en to court in a dis­pute with the cen­tral gov­ern­ment. "With all the hul­la­baloo tak­ing place one will get the im­pres­sion that this is the first time that the THA is be­ing tak­en to court by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment," Lon­don said in re­sponse to state­ments made by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan in the Sen­ate on Wednes­day night.

Ram­lo­gan said Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai had been asked to ini­ti­ate le­gal ac­tion against the THA in re­la­tion to the BOLT arrange­ment for the Mil­shirv of­fice com­plex con­trary to sec­tion 51 of the THA Act. Lon­don said the THA had to ap­pear in court ac­tions on at least five oc­ca­sions from 1980 to present. It start­ed back in 1982 un­der the 1980 THA Act when then chair­man Arthur NR Robin­son was tak­en to court by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion of George Cham­bers.

Lon­don said twice in 1984 the Robin­son ad­min­is­tra­tion took the cen­tral gov­ern­ment to court, while in 2000 the As­sem­bly ad­min­is­tra­tion un­der Ho­choy Charles trig­gered the Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion Com­mis­sion (DRC) and al­so start­ed le­gal pro­ceed­ings against the gov­ern­ment in 2000.

He said any­time there was a re­la­tion­ship be­tween a lo­cal body and a cen­tral gov­ern­ment or be­tween the THA and the cen­tral gov­ern­ment, there are go­ing to be is­sues and dis­agree­ments and the as­sem­bly is pre­pared for this round of lit­i­ga­tion by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment.

The Chief Sec­re­tary said the dif­fer­ence be­tween what tran­spired on those five oc­ca­sions and what is tran­spir­ing now is that on pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions the fo­cus was on the is­sue, not on politi­cis­ing or slan­der­ing. "There were no as­per­sions cast on in­di­vid­u­als who had tak­en de­ci­sions based on their in­ter­pre­ta­tion of their pow­ers un­der the THA Act," Lon­don said.

"If dur­ing the dis­cus­sion and dur­ing the ac­tion any ev­i­dence was seen of per­son­al in­volve­ment then so let it be, but to have a sit­u­a­tion where at the be­gin­ning of a process, be­fore any ev­i­dence is put for­ward ... to al­low that to cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment where peo­ple's char­ac­ters are sul­lied in this man­ner, I think that is very un­for­tu­nate."

Lon­don said the THA will con­tin­ue to do what it has to do with­in the pa­ra­me­ters of the law for the de­vel­op­ment of To­ba­go. "We recog­nise that we have con­straints but we al­so recog­nise that we have cer­tain pow­ers and there­fore us­ing those pow­ers we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the peo­ple of To­ba­go."

He said when­ev­er the as­sem­bly made de­ci­sions it al­ways con­sult­ed with its se­nior le­gal ad­vis­er Alvin Pas­call who in turn would be ad­vised by se­nior coun­sel and his col­leagues when he be­lieved that he had an is­sue in which he need­ed ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion. He said a le­gal opin­ion ob­tained from Hamel-Smith, at­tor­ney's-at-law, in­di­cat­ed that the BOLT arrange­ment was not con­trary to sec­tion 51 of the THA Act since it did not in­volve bor­row­ing.

"The de­ci­sions we make are in ac­cor­dance with the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go and ac­cord­ing to the pow­ers giv­en to the THA un­der the House of As­sem­bly Act," he said.