Casan­dra Thomp­son�Forbes

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke says there is noth­ing in the labour union's con­sti­tu­tion that de­bars him from run­ning as an in­de­pen­dent can­di­date for To­ba­go East in the up­com­ing 2015 gen­er­al elec­tions.

He was speak­ing to the me­di­aafter the launch of his cam­paign, ?which was held at the Pi­rates Boat Yard,Rox­bor­ough, which is Duke's home­town.

Duke said the PSA ex­ec­u­tive read the As­so­ci­a­tion's con­sti­tu­tion and of­fered him no ob­jec­tion.

"I have re­ceived en­dorse­ments from my ex­ec­u­tive, from my gen­er­al coun­cil and my con­fer­ence of del­e­gates. Those were prop­er­ly doc­u­ment­ed, meet­ings were held and there is noth­ing in the con­sti­tu­tion that sug­gests or even ad­vis­es on any­one re­sign­ing from their po­si­tion be­cause they are seek­ing to rep­re­sent a big­ger com­mu­ni­ty," he said.

He said there was no con­flict of in­ter­est since it is the great­est rec­on­cil­i­a­tion any trade union leader can do to rec­on­cile his mem­bers' in­ter­est, with the in­ter­est of the cit­i­zen­ry.

Dis­pelling ru­mours that the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion was fund­ing his cam­paign, Duke said he was get­ting sup­port from work­ing class cit­i­zens close to him.

"The PSA has not sub­scribed or pro­vid­ed any funds for this cam­paign, nor have I made any re­quests for such funds. What I have been do­ing is sav­ing mon­ey.I have a lit­tle sav­ings, I have friends and work­ers who are work­ing-class peo­ple who have de­cid­ed to pitch in, who would pay for a two, five or ten jer­seys,as the case may be. And so that is how we in­tend to fund my cam­paign from the re­sources of friends and peo­ple," Duke said.

He said if he is suc­cess­ful as the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for To­ba­go East he will not be ac­cept­ing any min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tion as his main fo­cus will be to rep­re­sent poor peo­ple. But a po­lit­i­cal par­ty could be in the mak­ing for the next To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions, he said.

"This is a move­ment of im­mense pro­por­tions. This is a move­ment that will not stop just with the win­ning of the East. This will stop with the com­plete over­haul of To­ba­go and we are com­ing for the West al­so. We are com­ing for the en­tire twelve seats. We are com­ing to put Lon­don and his en­tire idle ad­min­is­tra­tion out of of­fice," he said, an ap­par­ent ref­er­ence to THA Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don.

The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment can­di­date for­To­ba­go East is Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy.