Chester Sam­bra­no

Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke has writ­ten to To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer Ab­by Tay­lor, de­mand­ing that she de­clare the 13 seats of his for­mer col­leagues in the As­sem­bly va­cant.

The seats are those of Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and the 12 oth­er As­sem­bly­men who re­signed from the PDP on Mon­day.

In the let­ter, dat­ed De­cem­ber 7, Duke told Tay­lor they all con­test­ed the De­cem­ber 6 THA elec­tions un­der a PDP ban­ner.

Duke in­formed the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer that un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion, Sec­tion 49 (2) (E) states, “A mem­ber shall va­cate his seat where hav­ing been a can­di­date of a par­ty and elect­ed to the house, he re­signs from or is ex­pelled by the par­ty.”

He ar­gued that the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Stand­ing Or­ders come in­to place be­cause the THA Stand­ing Or­ders are silent on such a mat­ter.

He said, “Stand­ing Or­der 92(1) of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly deals with cir­cum­stances not pro­vid­ed for in the gen­er­al body of stand­ing or­ders. It states that: ‘In any mat­ter not here­in pro­vid­ed for, re­sort shall be had to the us­age and prac­tice of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Trinidad and To­ba­go which shall be fol­lowed as far as the same may be ap­plic­a­ble to this As­sem­bly, and not in­con­sis­tent with these Stand­ing Or­ders nor with the prac­tice of this As­sem­bly.’”

The let­ter added, “Stand­ing Or­der 92(2) of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly states: “In cas­es of doubt the Stand­ing Or­ders of the As­sem­bly shall be in­ter­pret­ed in the light of the rel­e­vant us­age and prac­tice of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.”

In light of this, Duke told Tay­lor, “They can­not con­tin­ue in of­fice. By their con­duct, their po­si­tions have each been ren­dered il­le­gal and their seats must be va­cat­ed.

“You are there­fore en­joined to act in ac­cor­dance with the law and de­clare the seats of the un­der-men­tioned 13 per­sons in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly as va­cant and you are re­quired to do so forth­with so as not to per­pet­u­ate the il­le­gal­i­ty.”

Farley Augustine

THA

Apart from Au­gus­tine, the oth­er PDP mem­bers who re­signed were Faith B Yis­rael, Ter­rence Baynes, Tasha Bur­ris, Natisha Charles-Pan­tin, Wane Clarke, Son­ny Craig, Naill George, Zor­isha Hack­ett, Trevor James, Or­nal­do Kerr, Megan Mor­ri­son, Ian Pol­lard, Joel Samp­son, Nigel Taitt and Cer­ti­ca Williams-Orr.

In a video post­ed to his Face­book page yes­ter­day morn­ing, Duke al­so called on the THA ex­ec­u­tive who were for­mer PDP mem­bers to re­sign.

“I say to Far­ley and his friends, right now you have been elect­ed in­to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly through a par­ty sys­tem. Now that you have re­signed, please leave us, please va­cate the seat, all of you, all of you there are op­er­at­ing il­le­gal­ly and I would not recog­nise any of you,” he said.

Duke said notwith­stand­ing Au­gus­tine’s re­fusal, he has no choice but to call ear­ly THA elec­tions.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, THA Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer Tay­lor said she had not yet seen Duke’s let­ter.

How­ev­er, she said once she re­ceives it, she would have to “pe­ruse it and then make a de­ci­sion.”

Asked if she would have to seek le­gal ad­vice, Tay­lor said on­ly “if nec­es­sary.”

On Tues­day, Au­gus­tine told Guardian Me­dia that he had re­ceived “strong” le­gal ad­vice that the group re­sign­ing from the PDP and stay­ing in of­fice as in­de­pen­dent mem­bers was “to­tal­ly le­gal.”

Both con­sti­tu­tion­al ex­pert Dr Hamid Ghany and po­lit­i­cal Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath have said that the busi­ness of the THA can con­tin­ue un­af­fect­ed even in the face of PDP res­ig­na­tions.

How­ev­er, Duke has since threat­ened to take the mat­ter to court.