Casan­dra Thomp­son-Forbes

Mi­nor­i­ty leader in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Ash­worth Jack has called on chief sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don to re­lease de­tails of the dates and times when he spoke to for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning about in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go. Speak­ing at Tues­day's mi­nor­i­ty leader's news con­fer­ence, Jack said he re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that Lon­don has again writ­ten to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad–Bisses­sar, re­quest­ing a meet­ing to dis­cuss the is­sue of in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go. "I want to say that I am quite hap­py that for the last two years, the chief sec­re­tary would have seen it fit to start dis­cussing the is­sues of in­ter­nal self- gov­ern­ment," he said. "I know that the Prime Min­is­ter, through the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, has writ­ten to the chief sec­re­tary in De­cem­ber and Sep­tem­ber of last year, ask­ing for his po­si­tion on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form be­fore the Green Pa­per was made and on both oc­ca­sions the chief sec­re­tary de­clined, stat­ing that he did not wish to par­tic­i­pate."

Jack said Lon­don should share with To­bag­o­ni­ans all in­for­ma­tion when he com­mu­ni­cat­ed with any for­mer prime min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go on the mat­ter dur­ing his 11 years in of­fice. "A lot of in­for­ma­tion would be cleared up if the chief sec­re­tary would al­so give us an idea as to the oth­er oc­ca­sions on which dur­ing his tenure as chief sec­re­tary for past 11 years that he has pe­ti­tioned oth­er prime min­is­ters to dis­cuss the mat­ter of in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment," he said. He said the chief sec­re­tary should al­so in­form the pub­lic about the out­come of the dis­cus­sions so that such in­for­ma­tion can be in­clud­ed in the Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion on in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go.