London: PM can’t dictate THA polls

Chief Secretary of the Tobago House of Assembly (THA), Orville London, is making it clear that Prime Minister Kamal Persad-Bissessar cannot dictate when THA election should be called. London was responding yesterday to statements the Prime Minister made while addressing party supporters at her private residence in Phillipine, south Trinidad, on Sunday. Last Thursday, Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley, during a news conference at his Port-of-Spain office, said:  "They (Government) do not deserve to be in office. They have betrayed the trust of the people of Trinidad and Tobago. They are stained and they are shamed and they must leave office and we are calling for elections now." Persad-Bissessar in response on Sunday said:  "We challenge you (Rowley), call the THA election now. That is the only one that is due and we will not sacrifice the votes and the trust and the mandate of the electorate of Trinidad and Tobago to do the thing that Mister Manning did twice, early elections."

 

She added: "So Mr Rowley be a Tobago-born soldier, call the THA election now. Dissolve the THA. Let us go forth. “We are rising to the top with the TOP (Tobago Organisation of the People) because, for the first time in the history of this country, people of Tobago are given due respect. Mr Rowley tell Mr (Orville) London to dissolve the THA and I will make the date for the election." However, London said the THA would call elections when it was ready. He added: “The Tobago House of Assembly election is not called by any Prime Minister. It is called by the President after consultation with the Prime Minister. “I think the Prime Minister is wrong on a number of counts and I don’t think the Prime Minister should be telling us in the Tobago House of Assembly to call the elections.” He said in the history of the country no Prime Minister had called on any Chief Secretary to call an election, adding he hoped Persad-Bissessar would not impose her will on the people of Tobago.

 

He said: “I want to make it very clear to the people of the country that since I have been Chief Secretary and during the time of Hochoy Charles no Prime Minister attempted to tell the Chief Secretary the date of the election. “The date of the election is transmitted to the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister concurred as a matter of course and the President would have also sanctioned that and I am hoping the Prime Minister would not go against tradition and impose her will on the Tobago House of Assembly.” Former prime minister Patrick Manning and former leader of the People's National Movement (PNM) called early general election twice — once in 1995, which he lost to the United National Congress (UNC) and its then leader Basdeo Panday, and then in 2010, which he lost to the People's Partnership Government led by Persad-Bissessar.