The Prime Min­is­ter's three-mem­ber com­mit­tee on Pub­lic Con­sul­ta­tions on the Green Pa­per on in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go has promised to con­sid­er two To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly-spon­sored bills as part of its de­lib­er­a­tions. A state­ment from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) said chair­man of the com­mit­tee, Dr Hamid Ghany, con­firmed the de­ci­sion by let­ter to Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don dat­ed Ju­ly 24, 2012.

Lon­don had sub­mit­ted to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, chair­man of the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion Sam­raj Har­ri­paul and Dr Ghany him­self, copies of the two bills along with a pe­ti­tion ti­tled To­ba­go Voice Must be Heard-a Peo­ple's Mo­tion. 6,000 To­bag­o­ni­ans showed their sup­port for the bills by sign­ing the pe­ti­tion.

The doc­u­ments were ac­com­pa­nied by a cov­er­ing let­ter dat­ed Ju­ly 18, 2012 giv­ing de­tails of the pro­ce­dure used to ar­rive at the bills and the pe­ti­tion. The Chief Sec­re­tary al­so pro­vid­ed the as­sem­bly's po­si­tion on the Green Pa­per pub­lished for pub­lic com­ment by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. While he re­ceived no ac­knowl­edge­ment from the Prime Min­is­ter and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Har­ri­paul re­spond­ed by in­form­ing Lon­don that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al al­ready had copies of the bills.

The state­ment said Ghany thanked Lon­don for his let­ter and said: "My col­leagues and I on the com­mit­tee for the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions on the Green Pa­per on in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment for To­ba­go have not­ed your let­ter and its en­clo­sures. We shall con­sid­er your sub­mis­sion in re­la­tion to the Green Pa­per to­geth­er with all the oth­er sub­mis­sions that we re­ceived. Thank you for your kind con­sid­er­a­tion and for en­gag­ing our process."

The two bills seek to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion in re­la­tion to cer­tain pro­vi­sions of the THA Act. They were draft­ed by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Rus­sell Mar­tineau SC af­ter a THA work­ing com­mit­tee had met with To­bag­o­ni­ans in 41 com­mu­ni­ties across the is­land and three con­sul­ta­tions host­ed by Mar­tineau. The Prime Min­is­ter's com­mit­tee al­so in­clud­ed To­ba­go-born at­tor­neys Christlyn Moore of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's Of­fice and Mar­tin George. Lon­don said it would be in­ter­est­ing to see how the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al han­dled this de­vel­op­ment.