Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Af­ter he was re­moved from a To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly ple­nary sit­ting on Thurs­day, Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke has vowed to en­sure the po­lit­i­cal death of the Far­ley Au­gus­tine-led ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Duke ac­cused THA pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer Ab­by Tay­lor of act­ing out­side of the Stand­ing Or­ders af­ter he com­plained of in­sults by an as­sem­bly­man dur­ing Thurs­day’s de­bate.

Duke ac­cused as­sem­bly­man Ter­rence Baynes of breach­ing the stand­ing or­ders when he de­scribed some con­tri­bu­tions made in the cham­ber as “la­trine-at­ed” talk.

From his seat, Duke loud­ly voiced his com­plaints, dis­rupt­ing the pro­ceed­ings. Tay­lor paused the de­bate to cau­tion Duke, but he per­sist­ed, re­peat­ed­ly shout­ing, “This is not a Mick­ey Mouse house.”

As a re­sult, Tay­lor in­struct­ed po­lice of­fi­cers with­in the cham­ber to es­cort him out­side. Duke yes­ter­day said he posed no threat and the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer had no pow­er to in­struct po­lice to re­move him.

He called on Tay­lor to ei­ther learn the stand­ing or­ders or re­sign.

“I want to ask Ab­by Tay­lor to do To­ba­go a ser­vice and re­sign. You’re poor at it. You may not have even read this book at all. Re­fer­ring to a mem­ber in the house by wrong ti­tle. You seem not to care and there is no em­pha­sis on you get­ting it right,” he said.

He ac­cused Tay­lor of ne­glect­ing her du­ties, not­ing there had been no meet­ings of the Pub­lic Ac­counts or Reg­u­la­tions Com­mit­tees un­der her lead­er­ship. He went on to call To­bag­o­ni­ans dis­sat­is­fied by the Far­ley Au­gus­tine-led THA to be ready to treat mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive the same way they have been treat­ed over the past three years when they seek sup­port in the up­com­ing elec­tions.

“I’m say­ing to all To­bag­o­ni­ans, gath­er up the lit­tle bit of fight in your bel­ly and get ready to vote them out. Get rid of the en­tire slate. They must not win one sin­gle seat and none of them must get more than 100 votes,” Duke said.

Duke vowed to right the wrong he cre­at­ed when he se­lect­ed the group to deal with To­ba­go af­fairs in the 2021 THA elec­tion.

For­mer pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers: Tay­lor was wrong

Mean­while, for­mer THA pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer Kelvin Charles agreed that prop­er pro­ce­dures were not fol­lowed dur­ing the forced re­moval of Duke.

He told Guardian Me­dia, “A pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer is em­pow­ered un­der the stand­ing or­ders to main­tain or­der dur­ing any sit­ting of the As­sem­bly.”

Charles went on to ex­plain, “How­ev­er, as­sum­ing the clip is a fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what tran­spired, the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer did not fol­low the ac­cept­ed or ap­proved path or pro­to­col.”

He elab­o­rat­ed on the prop­er steps that should have been tak­en.

“The pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer should have first asked the mem­ber to with­draw the re­marks, as­sum­ing they were of­fen­sive,” he said. “If that didn’t work, she could have di­rect­ed the mem­ber to apol­o­gise to the House. I didn’t see any ev­i­dence of this in the video.”

Charles added that if the mem­ber re­fused to com­ply, fur­ther mea­sures should have been em­ployed.

“If the mem­ber re­fused to apol­o­gise, the next step would have been to di­rect him to ex­it the cham­ber for a short pe­ri­od, pre­sum­ably to cool off. Again, if he re­fused, there are some pre­de­ces­sor steps to be ex­e­cut­ed be­fore seek­ing to en­force re­moval by force.”

He al­so called for cau­tion in han­dling such mat­ters.

An­oth­er for­mer pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, Dr Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus, agreed prop­er pro­ce­dures were not fol­lowed. Tsoiafatt-An­gus ex­plained that the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer’s pri­ma­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was to main­tain or­der in the cham­ber. And while they had the au­thor­i­ty to ask a dis­rup­tive mem­ber to leave or take a break and re­turn, they did not have the pow­er to forcibly re­move a mem­ber. She said in in­stances of un­con­trol­lable dis­rup­tion, the pro­ce­dure re­quired the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer to in­form the house of the mem­ber’s dis­obe­di­ence and call on a sec­re­tary to move a mo­tion for their re­moval.

She said such sit­u­a­tions were rare, re­call­ing the last in­stance when coun­cil­lor Hughvon DesVi­gnes was sus­pend­ed un­der the lead­er­ship of then-mi­nor­i­ty leader Ash­worth Jack. At that time, the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer was Ann Mitchel Gift, and chief sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don led the THA.

Dr Tsoiafatt-An­gus crit­i­cised the re­cent ac­tions of the cur­rent pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, la­belling them as re­flec­tive of the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s “poor judge­ment, ar­ro­gance, and in­com­pe­tence.”