Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has launched an ini­tia­tive al­low­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic to sub­mit ques­tions di­rect­ly to sec­re­taries, which will be an­swered dur­ing a sit­ting of the as­sem­bly.

The mo­tion was moved yes­ter­day by as­sem­bly mem­ber Keigon De­noon dur­ing the first ple­nary ses­sion fol­low­ing the Jan­u­ary 12 elec­tions, in which the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) swept all 15 dis­tricts, leav­ing the as­sem­bly with­out an op­po­si­tion.

De­noon said the amend­ment would en­hance trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy with­in the THA, not­ing that ad­vances in dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy now make it pos­si­ble to fa­cil­i­tate struc­tured and re­spon­si­ble pub­lic en­gage­ment in par­lia­men­tary pro­ceed­ings.

Un­der the New Stand­ing Or­der 25-2, an on­line plat­form would be es­tab­lished for cit­i­zens to sub­mit pro­posed ques­tions. All sub­mis­sions must com­ply with ex­ist­ing rules gov­ern­ing the form, con­tent and ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty of ques­tions. No ques­tion will be ac­cept­ed un­less it re­ceives the record­ed sup­port of at least 100 reg­is­tered vot­ers in a THA elec­tion, and sub­mis­sions re­main open for 21 days. The Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer will have fi­nal ap­proval be­fore any cit­i­zen-sub­mit­ted ques­tion is placed on the Or­der Pa­per for an oral re­sponse.

The mo­tion was lat­er passed, for­mal­ly im­ple­ment­ing the pub­lic ques­tion sub­mis­sion ini­tia­tive.

Ear­li­er in the sit­ting, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine spoke on the im­por­tance of ac­count­abil­i­ty and open gov­er­nance and why they were in­tro­duc­ing new mo­tions.

“They are about open­ing up of this house, they are about straight­en­ing over­sight, they are about mod­ernising gov­er­nance, and they are about en­sur­ing that pow­er re­mains ac­count­able to peo­ple. We are say­ing to To­ba­go, Mr Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer, watch us, ques­tion us, en­gage us, hold us re­spon­si­ble, and we wel­come it,” Au­gus­tine said.

In ad­di­tion to the pub­lic ques­tion ini­tia­tive, sev­er­al oth­er mo­tions were passed to strength­en gov­er­nance and over­sight in the as­sem­bly.

These in­clude the ap­point­ment of a non-ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the THA as chair­per­son of the Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee, which will meet at least once per month, and an in­crease in the quo­rum for a sit­ting from nine to 12 mem­bers.

The as­sem­bly al­so ap­proved mea­sures to al­low pub­lic pro­pos­als for de­bates, re­view and pre­pare rec­om­men­da­tions for hy­brid and vir­tu­al sit­tings, en­able dig­i­tal par­tic­i­pa­tion for mem­bers un­able to at­tend phys­i­cal­ly, and fa­cil­i­tate live broad­cast­ing of pro­ceed­ings from ses­sion­al, se­lect and spe­cial se­lect com­mit­tees.