Chester Sam­bra­no

A de­bate over the time al­lot­ted to ask the Chief Sec­re­tary ques­tions in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) end in a walk out by Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke..

Dur­ing the sit­ting on Thurs­day, op­po­si­tion mem­bers posed ques­tions to Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine dur­ing the timed seg­ment. Fol­low­ing sev­er­al min­utes of ques­tions to from Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris and Mi­nor­i­ty Coun­cil­lor Petal Daniel-Benoit, Duke stood up to ask his three pre-ap­proved ques­tions. But be­fore he did so, Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer Ab­by Tay­lor re­mind­ed mem­bers that the time al­lot­ted was 20 min­utes.

Duke asked whether he should sit down as he won­dered whether the time had elapsed.

To this Au­gus­tine chimed in: “At last take his first ques­tion.”

Tay­lor said there were five min­utes re­main­ing, to which Duke re­spond­ed that he would not ask any ques­tions as it was un­fair to the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

How­ev­er, Tay­lor made it clear to him that she was not deny­ing him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ask ques­tions but was sim­ply in­di­cat­ing the time lim­it as she usu­al­ly does every sit­ting.

“You are al­lowed to ask your ques­tions,” she said.

Duke opt­ed to read out his ques­tions which he was told there was no re­quire­ment to do as it they had al­ready been cir­cu­lat­ed but he in­sist­ed.

The first ques­tions was about the num­ber of projects in the Rox­bor­ough/Ar­gyle dis­trict, the num­ber of po­si­tions for each project and the num­ber of peo­ple from the dis­trict work­ing on those projects.

Au­gus­tine re­spond­ed that there were three ma­jor projects em­ploy­ing 60 peo­ple from the dis­trict.

Duke asked three fol­low-up ques­tions be­fore he went on to his sec­ond ques­tio and Tay­lor in­di­cat­ed that the 20 min­utes for Ques­tions to the Chief Sec­re­tary had ex­pired.

Duke protest­ed that Tay­lor had told him he would be al­lowed to ask all his ques­tions but the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer stood firm.

“We are guid­ed by the stand­ing or­ders of this House. I am not go­ing to al­low any­body, any­one to ma­nip­u­late the stand­ing or­ders of this house,” she said.

Duke then packed his bags, stood up and left the cham­ber.

Lat­er on Thurs­day night, the PDP did a live Face­book video on Face­book where he ac­cused Tay­lor and Au­gus­tine of try­ing to si­lence him.

“There is a con­spir­a­cy in the House, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly. Is it be­cause Ab­by Tay­lor was once a PDP? I say once a PDP. We don’t know her true colours right now and Far­ley was once a PDP . . . that all around they are try­ing now to use the House as some stage to fight Wat­son Duke and to pre­vent me from ques­tion­ing le­git­i­mate­ly on be­half of the peo­ple I rep­re­sent,” he said.

Chief Sec­re­tary Au­gus­tine and the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer have not yet re­spond­ed to Duke’s al­le­ga­tions.