Renu­ka Singh

Se­nior Coun­sel Mar­tin Daly yes­ter­day dis­agreed with the Prime Min­is­ter’s as­sess­ment that the ex­ist­ing To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) ex­ec­u­tive re­mains in place while moves were made to re­solve the six-six dead­lock.

Daly is the lat­est le­gal lu­mi­nary to add his voice to the on­go­ing im­passe for the THA.

Yes­ter­day, Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes swore in 12 as­sem­bly­men, six from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and an­oth­er six from the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP).

There was no agree­ment on the se­lec­tion of the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer or the Chief Sec­re­tary, which means that the THA has not been con­sti­tut­ed.

Speak­ing on the is­sue dur­ing last night’s CNC3 news­cast, Daly said he was “to­tal­ly against” leav­ing the sta­tus quo with the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive in place.

“It does not seem to me to make log­i­cal sense that while the old as­sem­bly is dis­solved, the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil re­mains in place but you can have no par­lia­men­tary scruti­ny of that Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly,” Daly said.

“The ques­tion is what is the law­ful route by which you can gen­er­ate and start an­oth­er elec­tion. That is where you have to be look­ing,” he said.

Tha Chief Secretary Ancil Dennis takes the oath of office during the swearing in cermony for the THA, at the Magdalena Grand ballroom, yesterday.

VINDRA GOPAUL

Daly said that a lot of re­search need­ed to be done now to seek out the source of an­oth­er elec­tion.

“If there is no such au­thor­i­ty then we may have to amend the leg­is­la­tion,” he said.

Daly said he was not con­fi­dent of the two par­ties com­ing to an arrange­ment to go for­ward am­i­ca­bly.

“I am dis­ap­point­ed that no one has yet brought in­to the dis­cus­sion the ba­sis on which the elec­tions were held un­der the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act. I heard the Prime Min­is­ter say and I agree that we are in a sit­u­a­tion where we can­not put an as­sem­bly in place as re­quired by law,” he said.

Daly ques­tioned whether the sit­u­a­tion was one in which the Pres­i­dent, act­ing on the ad­vice of the rel­e­vant politi­cians, ought to be ad­vised to is­sue new writs of elec­tion for all 12 seats.

“I have not come to a con­sid­ered con­clu­sion but some­one must have start­ed the process for elec­tion when the THA was dis­solved and I think we have to start there,” Daly said.

“I don’t think any of the oth­er so­lu­tions make any sense,” he said.

Daly said he was “very con­cerned” about the call for the par­lia­ment to get in­volved.

“Sim­ply be­cause it would be the un­der­stood thing for the par­ty that has the ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment, which is the PNM which wants to win an elec­tion in To­ba­go, to fash­ion some sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty leg­is­la­tion to suit their pur­pose,” he said.

“That’s not say­ing any­thing bad, that is just re­al­i­ty,” he said.