The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment (PP) is deny­ing it is dis­re­spect­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al au­thor­i­ty of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA). For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan de­nied the claim dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Co­co Reef Ho­tel, To­ba­go.

"The Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to re­spect the arrange­ments be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go," Ram­bachan added. To­ba­go is gov­erned by the PNM-con­trolled House of As­sem­bly. How­ev­er, Ram­bachan said the Gov­ern­ment was do­ing more for the is­land. He added: "The Gov­ern­ment has in­tro­duced a Min­istry for To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment, which is to look at the big­ger pic­ture."

It was the es­tab­lish­ment of that min­istry which had re­port­ed­ly caused ten­sions be­tween the THA and the re­spec­tive Min­is­ter Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin. Last week To­ba­go-born Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Sham­fa Cud­joe said the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment was be­ing dis­re­spect­ful to the THA.