ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

Free­lance Writer

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts are puz­zled by the mo­tive be­hind Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots leader Wat­son Duke’s call for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, re­tired pub­lic ser­vice head Regi­nald Du­mas and po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts Win­ford James, Bish­nu Ra­goonath and Vanus James all felt that Duke’s con­sis­tent crit­i­cism of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) con­tra­dict­ed his calls for uni­ty.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence on Mon­day, Duke ex­tend­ed an olive branch to THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, call­ing on him to put their dif­fer­ences aside and work to­geth­er for the ben­e­fit of To­ba­go.

All calls and texts to Au­gus­tine went unan­swered on Mon­day and yes­ter­day.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Faith B Yis­rael al­so told Guardian Me­dia she had noth­ing to say on the mat­ter. How­ev­er, one mem­ber of the ex­ec­u­tive, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said they would not con­sid­er work­ing with Duke again.

Du­mas, how­ev­er, said the re­cent call for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with Au­gus­tine was mere­ly a ploy to re­gain po­lit­i­cal pow­er. He said he does not un­der­stand how this strat­e­gy, if suc­cess­ful, will ul­ti­mate­ly serve the best in­ter­ests of To­ba­go and its peo­ple.

“Does Wat­son Duke se­ri­ous­ly be­lieve that he could just make a pub­lic state­ment that he has of­fered the hand of friend­ship to Far­ley Au­gus­tine af­ter he crit­i­cised Far­ley so much, and that Far­ley will sim­ply say ‘Yes boy, we must work to­geth­er for To­ba­go’?”

He added, “How would a lot of peo­ple in To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly the TPP (To­ba­go Peo­ple Par­ty) sup­port­ers, re­act if they were to hear Far­ley say Duke is our con­sul­tant and will ad­vise us af­ter what hap­pened? If you are a mem­ber of the As­sem­bly, how could you be a con­sul­tant to the As­sem­bly? How is this log­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble?”

Du­mas not­ed that Duke con­tin­ues to bad­mouth the ex­ec­u­tive while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly claim­ing to want to help. He saw this as a ploy by Duke to re­gain pow­er in the THA, not­ing Duke de­cid­ed to re­sign from the THA in the first place.

Win­ford James al­so agreed, stat­ing that Duke had done too much dam­age in the THA for the ex­ec­u­tive to con­sid­er a fu­ture part­ner­ship.

He told Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, “It’s just a waste of peo­ple’s time.”

An­a­lyst Vanus James mean­while felt a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion would on­ly lead to dis­as­ter.

“I think that is a con­se­quence of the dev­as­tat­ing loss that Duke ex­pe­ri­enced in Trinidad’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion(s), with a mas­sive re­jec­tion from the peo­ple in Trinidad. It shows he has noth­ing to con­tribute to them in pol­i­tics down there. I al­so think Duke and Far­ley demon­strate here in To­ba­go that they have no idea what it means to look af­ter the in­ter­ests of To­ba­go,” he said.

“So, any col­lab­o­ra­tion with them amounts to an­oth­er waste of To­ba­go peo­ple’s time. I don’t think that can be trust­ed. They will cause more dis­as­ter than they caused last year, a mas­sive de­struc­tion of the To­ba­go econ­o­my and col­lab­o­ra­tion in the con­text of those re­stric­tions, with no idea of how to deal with that dis­as­ter. To­ba­go peo­ple would be out of their minds to en­cour­age that loose can­non, in­com­pe­tent be­hav­iour from their politi­cians.”

Mean­while, Ra­goonath said this lat­est move was Duke re­turn­ing to square one. He ques­tioned whether his rea­sons would be ac­cept­ed by the cur­rent THA ex­ec­u­tive, as that seems to be his end goal.

Ra­goonath al­so doubt­ed if any lev­el of trust ex­ists where Duke is con­cerned.

“I would say that Duke, hav­ing recog­nised that he hasn’t been able to gain any grounds in Trinidad in the re­cent elec­tion, has de­cid­ed that he has to go back to base and try to work up mo­men­tum in To­ba­go.”