LOYSE VIN­CENT

Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) Far­ley Au­gus­tine said his par­ty has ini­ti­at­ed le­gal ac­tion against the Clerk of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Mer­na McLeod for fail­ing to car­ry out the prop­er pro­ce­dure to elect a new pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer.

The six as­sem­bly­men re­mained at the as­sem­bly cham­ber overnight Mon­day, res­olute in their po­si­tion that both par­ties—the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the PDP—must sit to­geth­er un­til the mat­ter is re­solved.

Fol­low­ing the de­par­ture of the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer and the PNM mem­bers from the lat­est sit­ting, PDP mem­bers pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly post­ed videos on so­cial me­dia of the As­sem­bly­men sit­ting in the cham­ber await­ing the re­sump­tion of the sit­ting.

Around 6 pm Mon­day, Po­lit­i­cal Leader Wat­son Duke made a call for sup­port­ers to “come with food and wa­ter” as the staff at the As­sem­bly Leg­is­la­ture Sec­re­tari­at “locked up every­thing and left.”

By 7 pm peo­ple re­spond­ed and there were groups of sup­port­ers scat­tered at dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions out­side the build­ing.

The six as­sem­bly­men emerged from the cham­ber with food and drinks in hand which they shared with sup­port­ers as both Duke and Au­gus­tine ad­dressed them.

Au­gus­tine said while his par­ty was will­ing to risk lead­er­ship of the THA to get on with the busi­ness of gov­ern­ing the is­land, the PNM ap­pears to be com­fort­able with op­er­at­ing the ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil with no sys­tems of ac­count­abil­i­ty in place.

“If this is about To­ba­go mat­ters and mem­bers are in­ter­est­ed in To­ba­go mat­ters then mem­bers should have not aban­doned the process.”

De­scrib­ing the process as “un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic”, Au­gus­tine ac­cused the PNM of “draw­ing down on food cards, giv­ing away house­hold ap­pli­ances and ser­vice con­tract,” as bribes in the lead up to the re­cent THA elec­tions.

And while cer­tain mem­bers of the pre­vi­ous ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil re­main in place, Au­gus­tine al­so ques­tioned the log­ic of Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis who said it may take as long as six months to sort out the cur­rent predica­ment.

“They want us to con­tin­ue as is for about six months or longer and we would have a sit­u­a­tion where our re­sources con­tin­ue to be used with­out any ac­count­abil­i­ty at all. I pre­fer to be a mi­nor­i­ty coun­cil­lor who could hold them ac­count­able than to have a sit­u­a­tion where I’m in the house every week try­ing to pick a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer and no­body can ask them any­thing.”

The var­i­ous PDP as­sem­bly­men post­ed up­dates through­out the night as they sang hymns and rest­ed at var­i­ous in­ter­vals.

A small group of sup­port­ers al­so kept vig­il out­side of the THA cham­ber.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing the group post­ed an­oth­er up­date stat­ing its in­ten­tion to ap­proach the clerk again to have the meet­ing re­sumed. How­ev­er, Au­gus­tine said if that did not oc­cur “a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter will be is­sued to the clerk of the house and that sets the stage for court ac­tion as we seek ju­di­cial re­view and have the court de­cide in fi­nal­i­ty how this process is sup­posed to go.”

Sources con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that the clerk did re­port to work yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the le­gal doc­u­ment was left for her at her of­fice.