The co­nun­drum cre­at­ed by the 6-6 dead­lock in the re­cent THA elec­tions has forced a re­con­sid­er­a­tion of the pro­vi­sions of the 1996 THA Act. The pri­ma­ry in­ten­tion be­hind the leg­is­la­tion was to sub­stan­tial­ly re­move any re­main­ing ves­tiges of Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment con­trol from Port-of-Spain over the af­fairs of the peo­ple of To­ba­go in their gov­er­nance process­es.

Much more was con­tem­plat­ed in 1996 how­ev­er, there was con­cil­i­a­tion and com­pro­mise in the con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that put the THA, its Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil and the To­ba­go Fund in­to the re­vised Chap­ter 11A of the Con­sti­tu­tion (Act 39 of 1996) and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Act (Act 40 of 1996).

The in­ten­tion was to avoid hav­ing a Pres­i­dent sit­ting in Port-of-Spain se­lect­ing a Chief Sec­re­tary to sit in Scar­bor­ough. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the ap­point­ment of nom­i­nat­ed mem­bers in the As­sem­bly was to be done by a Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer elect­ed by the As­sem­bly­men in Scar­bor­ough and not by a Pres­i­dent in Port-of-Spain. The on­ly ap­point­ment du­ty as­signed to the Pres­i­dent was the se­lec­tion of the Mi­nor­i­ty Leader af­ter the As­sem­bly­men had cho­sen the Chief Sec­re­tary and the Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary.

This was a mat­ter of trust and it still is. Many peo­ple in Trinidad do not un­der­stand the dy­nam­ics of a dis­ad­van­taged re­la­tion­ship where­by To­ba­go, from the time it was joined with Trinidad in 1899, has nev­er had an equal "side by side we stand" re­la­tion­ship.

All of this may ap­pear to be con­tro­ver­sial, but it has mean­ing to­day as the dead­lock cre­at­ed by the To­ba­go elec­torate can­not now be bro­ken in To­ba­go and pro­pos­als for re­course to the Par­lia­ment in Port-of-Spain (the na­tion­al Par­lia­ment) has arisen. Ei­ther that in­ter­ven­tion will come by amend­ment of the law or the ap­pli­ca­tion of ex­ist­ing law through the use of the Stand­ing Or­ders of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives which (since 2014) has had a mech­a­nism for draw­ing lots to ul­ti­mate­ly break a tie in the elec­tion of a Speak­er.

The Gov­ern­ment ap­pears to have a pref­er­ence for amend­ing the THA Act to pro­vide for an un­even num­ber of seats, while the Op­po­si­tion does not. Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley has ad­vanced the view that un­even seats may not solve the prob­lem in the fu­ture as there could be an in­de­pen­dent or third par­ty can­di­date who may win one seat and the oth­er two main par­ties win an even num­ber of the re­main­ing seats each.

While the Clerk of the As­sem­bly has de­clined to ac­cept the pro­pos­al by As­sem­bly­man Far­ley Au­gus­tine to use the ex­ist­ing Stand­ing Or­ders of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the na­tion­al Par­lia­ment as the tiebreak­er mech­a­nism on the ba­sis that the THA Stand­ing Or­ders make no pro­vi­sion for deal­ing with the sit­u­a­tion at hand and sug­gest re­fer­ral to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, there is no head­way. This would cure the la­cu­na in the THA Act that does not per­mit the tie to be bro­ken among the 12 As­sem­bly­men in choos­ing the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer. This would be a very sim­ple so­lu­tion.

In those cir­cum­stances, if there is a re­luc­tance to ap­ply it as ex­ist­ing law, then it should be ap­plied as an amend­ment to sec­tion 7 of the THA Act to per­mit the same word­ing, suit­ably mod­i­fied, to be in­sert­ed in the act to per­mit the draw­ing of lots to de­ter­mine the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer.

Re­turn­ing to the polls af­ter a pro­tract­ed pe­ri­od of time with the for­mer ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil con­tin­u­ing to man­age the af­fairs of To­ba­go af­ter a reshuf­fle of port­fo­lios is not the ide­al so­lu­tion. How long will this arrange­ment con­tin­ue? There is the risk of a po­lit­i­cal back­lash in To­ba­go as ex­pen­di­ture ought not to be in­curred ex­cept on a care­tak­er ba­sis. No new pol­i­cy should be ini­ti­at­ed and this will put pres­sure on the pub­lic ser­vants in the THA to over­see the con­duct of care­tak­er busi­ness as op­posed to new busi­ness.

What this is al­so do­ing is pre­vent­ing Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine from hav­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty, as leader of the To­ba­go Coun­cil of the PNM, from be­com­ing Chief Sec­re­tary of the THA which was the arrange­ment be­tween her and An­cil Den­nis (the Chief Sec­re­tary who suc­ceed­ed Kelvin Charles).

On the PDP side, it is al­so pre­vent­ing Far­ley Au­gus­tine from hav­ing a shot at be­com­ing the Chief Sec­re­tary of the THA as es­poused by Wat­son Duke, the po­lit­i­cal leader of the PDP.

Fix­ing the tiebreak­er for the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer is bet­ter than spend­ing mon­ey on a new elec­tion.