The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s Mi­nor­i­ty Leader in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is ob­serv­ing the sit­u­a­tion af­ter Wat­son Duke’s res­ig­na­tion as THA deputy chief sec­re­tary - and Duke’s sig­nal that he’d oc­cu­py a new seat away from As­sem­bly­men.

And the na­tion­al PNM par­ty is silent on Duke’s bid to chal­lenge them in Port-of-Spain for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

This was among feed­back yes­ter­day af­ter Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots leader Duke gave up the post of THA deputy chief sec­re­tary, fol­low­ing his run­ning bat­tle with Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine which broke out open­ly re­cent­ly.

Duke, among com­ments, said he’d con­tin­ue as As­sem­bly­man for Rox­bor­ough/Ar­gyle and oc­cu­py a seat in the THA away from Au­gus­tine’s side and away from the PNM.

How­ev­er, Duke, who at­tacked Au­gus­tine, said Au­gus­tine was too small to fight and he’d now fo­cus on con­test­ing the PNM in PoS in up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls.

Duke had been cam­paign­ing all over Trinidad since ear­ly this year - in­clud­ing East PoS ar­eas - and opened an of­fice in Barataria. He’d been greet­ed with en­thu­si­asm, par­tic­u­lar­ly by youths in some East PoS ar­eas, when he be­gan his tours. He’d al­so toured La Hor­quet­ta, Tal­paro and San Fer­nan­do ar­eas.

On the PDP’s wran­gling, THA Mi­nor­i­ty leader Kelvon Mor­ris said, “I see it as just an­oth­er episode in this un­fold­ing dra­ma and at this time, I sim­ply pre­fer not to get in­volved in this PDP in­ter­nal mat­ter be­tween their po­lit­i­cal leader Mr Duke and Chief Sec­re­tary Mr Au­gus­tine. So, at this time, I’m sim­ply ob­serv­ing and like the rest of To­ba­go just hop­ing for the best.”

Asked about his po­si­tion as Mi­nor­i­ty Leader in the event Duke gath­ers more sup­port in the As­sem­bly ahead, Mor­ris said, “I’ve al­ways main­tained my in­volve­ment in pol­i­tics has been about ser­vice and un­til Mr Duke or any­body else is pre­pared to chal­lenge me in the elec­toral dis­trict of Dar­ryl Spring-Whim, that is where my con­cern lies be­cause I’m about the peo­ple.

“The post of Mi­nor­i­ty Leader is an ap­point­ment and can be with­drawn at any point in time once some­one else has a ma­jor­i­ty in the mi­nor­i­ty. So un­til such time, I con­tin­ue to func­tion in the best in­ter­ests of the peo­ple of To­ba­go and that is first­ly as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the peo­ple of Dar­ryl Spring-Whim and sec­ond­ly, in my role of rep­re­sent­ing the in­ter­ests of all of To­ba­go and hold­ing this ad­min­is­tra­tion ac­count­able to the peo­ple, as it’s the peo­ple who have elect­ed us all.”