Rose­marie Sant

Po­lit­i­cal leader of the To­ba­go Coun­cil of the PNM Kelvin Charles, who will take the oath this morn­ing as the new Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, says he will give it his best shot.

Charles led the PNM to vic­to­ry in Mon­day's elec­tion. The PNM, which pre­vi­ous­ly con­trolled all 12 seats in the as­sem­bly won 10, while the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots, led by Wat­son Duke, cap­tured two seats.

Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will at­tend the 10th in­au­gu­ra­tion cer­e­mo­ny,at which the Pres­i­dent is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er a brief ad­dress.

The in­au­gu­ra­tion is a grand af­fair in To­ba­go and seat­ing in the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil is by in­vi­ta­tion on­ly. But of­fi­cials say seat­ing will be pro­vid­ed at James Park in Scar­bor­ough where screens have been set up for the pub­lic to view the in­au­gu­ra­tion cer­e­mo­ny, which will al­so be car­ried live on tele­vi­sion in To­ba­go.

Charles told the T&T Guardian he is ready to do the work of To­ba­go and will "not be dis­tract­ed by Duke, he has to do what he has to do, we have our plans and we need to keep faith with the peo­ple. I am go­ing to give it my best shot and get it go­ing as best as I can with the fi­nan­cial re­sources we have," he said.

As he gets down to busi­ness Charles has a mix­ture of the old and new in his team and will be re­ly­ing on the ex­per­tise of those who sat in the as­sem­bly be­fore to help the new team mem­bers. Charles him­self is a for­mer pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer of the as­sem­bly.

His team com­pris­es for­mer deputy pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, An­cil Den­nis, for­mer fi­nance sec­re­tary Joel Jack, and for­mer as­sis­tant sec­re­taries in agri­cul­ture, ed­u­ca­tion and health, Hay­den Spencer, Jo­mo Pitt and Shel­don Cun­ning­ham.

The new­ly-elect­ed PNM as­sem­bly­men are Shomari Hec­tor, Clarence Ja­cob, Mar­isha Os­mond and Marslyn Jack.

On the Mi­nor­i­ty bench are Duke and Au­gus­tine Far­ley.

Charles said his first or­der of pri­or­i­ty af­ter tak­ing the oath of of­fice will be to deal with "house-keep­ing is­sues. One has to do a quick as­sess­ment on what is hap­pen­ing with re­gard to on-go­ing projects, where they are, and where are we in terms of fi­nances."

He al­so in­tends to "im­me­di­ate­ly be­gin to tack­le is­sues of tourism and agri­cul­ture," two is­sues which he said are crit­i­cal to To­ba­go's econ­o­my.

The new Chief Sec­re­tary wants to set up a "Tourism Au­thor­i­ty to treat de­ci­sive­ly with is­sues im­pact­ing tourism, in­clud­ing the is­sue of mar­ket­ing and the tourism prod­uct." To this end he said he in­tends to "im­me­di­ate­ly be­gin con­sul­ta­tions with stake-hold­ers to re­vise the ex­ist­ing plan for tourism."