Chairman with no power

“Chairman without power.” This is how Claude Benoit, Chairman of the Tobago Division of the TT Chamber of Industry and Commerce describes his position are it relates to the business body.

In a telephone interview with Newsday Tobago on Friday, Benoit, referring to a September 19 meeting at which a management team of the Tobago Chamber met and decided that Vice-Chairman Martin George would assume the Chairman’s role and functions, said he was disappointed in and distrustful of these people.

“...Because of that, I am not in a position to go to meetings, deal with meetings, call meetings and so on, I am not in that position. They were to repose the Chairman and that hasn’t changed, the only thing that has changed is that the person they gave the power to, that person resigned and even from my perspective, I too want to know how they are handling that.

“… the whole thing is now a turmoil and how do you solve something like this. Even if someone recognises me as Chairman, I still cannot go to that committee to instruct them, so technically the thing took another turn,” he said.

George had previously confirmed the decision of the management committee to hand him Benoit’s duties.

He told Newsday Tobago that “the decision of the management committee…going forward for the remainder of the current Chairman’s tenure, that the Vice Chairman shall assume all authority and control for operational and management issues, has been communicated to the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber and also to the current Chairman himself, as a means of ensuring that the work and business of the Tobago Division continues uninterrupted.”

Last week Tuesday however, in a statement posted on his Facebook page, George submitted his resignation to the Chamber with immediate effect, stating:

“Regretfully, the demands of my office dictate that I will not be able to devote the time required to continue with this, which appears to be rather cyclical and in my respectful view, counterproductive instead of being forward moving and progressive and I hereby relinquish the portfolio of Vice Chairman with immediate effect.

Benoit, who is the Managing Director of Trico Industries which manages Tobago Channel 5, and who was elected chairman in March this year, spoke of his “distrust” and “disappointment” by what he deemed a “coup d’etat against him,” behind his back as he was out of the country on vacation.

“I held a meeting with them, and we had no problems. It was a coup d’etat. There is no two ways about it,” he said on Friday.

He said that since his return to the country, he has not communicated with any of the Management Committee members or even members of the Chamber in Tobago.

“When they did that, it put me in a position that I don’t even think I should even go to the office of even communicate with them. So, I haven’t don’t any of that since I returned to the country on September 18.

“As Chairman, they have taken away my post and so on, and I should now go to meetings and sit there? Or even though I attend a management meeting chaired by someone else, you think the former chairman would sit in there and have someone else chair the meeting and he sits there?

“It’s most reprehensible. I would not humiliate myself to go and sit there and have somebody else chair the meeting and I am sitting there. You don’t subject yourself to humiliation like that.

“The entire management team have gone silent and that is one of the problems that we are having, we don’t communicate, I can tell you that at least. We don’t communicate, I am not in their circle, they are the coup leaders.”

Benoit said he did seek advice from the TT Chamber’s CEO Gabriel Faria and President Ronald Hinds.

In a email to the Management Committee of the Tobago Chamber last Tuesday, Faria advised that that there were two options open to the Tobago Division - continue to hold meetings and choose a member of the Committee to chair each meeting or to dissolve the entire committee and hold an extraordinary general meeting with the membership to reappoint a new management committee until the next annual general meeting due in March 2019.

Sources said a meeting planned by the management committee last Thursday to decide on what option would be pursued was abandoned as not enough members showed up.