Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Orville Lon­don, has called on Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Ash­worth Jack to make a pub­lic apol­o­gy to Se­nior Coun­sel Rus­sel Mar­tineau for "cast­ing as­per­sions on the in­tegri­ty of the high­ly re­spect­ed Se­nior Coun­sel." Ac­cord­ing to Lon­don, in a re­cent in­ter­view with a To­ba­go tele­vi­sion sta­tion, Jack had said the amend­ments to the Con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act pre­pared by Mar­tineau, were an in­sult to the in­tel­li­gence of To­bag­o­ni­ans and he was sure that "it was part of the rea­son why the Se­nior Coun­sel was not at the han­dover".

Lon­don said it was un­ac­cept­able that Jack could give To­bag­o­ni­ans the im­pres­sion that Mar­tineau would have ac­cept­ed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­pare doc­u­ments which were so crit­i­cal to the fu­ture re­la­tion­ship be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad, then dis­as­so­ci­ate him­self from the process at the han­dover.

Lon­don said Jack should al­so apol­o­gise to the mem­bers of the THA ap­point­ed com­mit­tee and all To­bag­o­ni­ans for his as­ser­tion that the amend­ments to the Con­sti­tu­tion and the THA Act were an in­sult to the in­tel­li­gence of the peo­ple of To­ba­go. Lon­don said the doc­u­ments were draft­ed af­ter ex­ten­sive dis­cus­sions with the com­mu­ni­ties, in­ter­est groups, po­lit­i­cal par­ties and in­di­vid­u­als over a three-year pe­ri­od.

Those amend­ments, he said, rep­re­sent­ed the views and as­pi­ra­tions of To­bag­o­ni­ans and no rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the peo­ple had the au­thor­i­ty to den­i­grate and dis­re­gard that en­tire process to have it re­placed by a process con­trolled by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Cab­i­net.