Roberts: Don’t usurp EBC’s role in THA boundaries

OPPOSITION Senator Anil Roberts on Tuesday warned the Government via the Parliament not to usurp the role of the Election and Boundaries Commission (EBC) to set electoral boundaries. He was speaking in the Senate against the Government’s proposed bill to increase the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) seats from 12 to 15 to break a six-six deadlock from last January’s elections. Debate on the Tobago House of Assembly (Amendment) Bill 2021 was set to go very late into the night.

Roberts challenged Government Senator Nigel de Freitas’s earlier call for the PDP to join in a long-standing consultative process in Tobago on self-governance.

Roberts said, “The process itself is not for the Government and the executive so to conclude. The process about seats, allocation, number of electors, electorates, electoral districts, is not the purview of the executive (Government) to conduct any consultation but that of the EBC.”

He added, “It is ironic that my colleague the senator from Tobago said and I quote, he says proudly, that if Tobago cannot resolve their issues then Trinidad will solve it.”

Roberts said that remark had hurt him as a Tobagonian descendant.

“It’s as if the children are squabbling in Tobago and daddy in Trinidad will fix it and that could never be the position of a proud Tobagonian people.”

Saying this was all a usurpation of the EBC’s authority and more so by a simple majority, he claimed tyranny by the PNM.

He said Tobago has long been disrespected by some and then gave a history lesson of the island including its annexation in 1889 to Trinidad despite having been politically more advanced at that time, with a flourishing sugar cane industry.

Roberts said Tobago must now be allowed to sort out its own business, lamenting that on that day Senators were sitting in the Senate in Trinidad to decide the fate of Tobago.

He reiterated that the TT Constitution has deemed the EBC to be an independent body that was subject to no-one’s control and direction.

Roberts said the AG said it was against the Constitution for the EBC to take instruction from the Parliament to prepare for a new election. He said this could be challenged in court.

Roberts referred to a recent news report of purported remarks by an EBC official. He chided, “I think you need to read your constitution, understand your job specs, understand your constitutional independence and take no instruction from any government whether it is UNC, PNM or any other government.”