ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

Wat­son Duke still wants to be Prime Min­is­ter.

The Leader of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) says he will an­nounce his can­di­dates for next year’s Gen­er­al Elec­tions once the date is set.

He post­ed a pic­ture of him­self on his Face­book page on Mon­day with the cap­tion, "Prime Min­is­ter in 2025".

But Duke's pro­posed path to PM is an in­ter­est­ing one, and sta­tis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, a long­shot. 

Af­ter his falling out in 2022 with Far­ley Au­gus­tine, lead­ing the Chief Sec­re­tary to form the To­ba­go Peo­ple's Par­ty, Duke's po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal has some­what dwin­dled. It's un­like­ly he'll field 41 can­di­dates na­tion­al­ly. So his plan is to run in To­ba­go East and West and hope votes in Trinidad leave him in a po­si­tion to be­come a play­mak­er, sim­i­lar to ANR Robin­son in 1995.

He said he is open to dis­cus­sions with for­mer mem­bers who want to re­turn to the PDP, as a reg­u­lar mem­ber, not as an ex­ec­u­tive, for the up­com­ing Gen­er­al and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Duke ex­plained:

"The po­lit­i­cal dy­nam­ics of 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion can ei­ther be one where the PDP has the two seats in To­ba­go, To­ba­go East and To­ba­go West, thus giv­ing way to a mi­nor­i­ty gov­ern­ment in Trinidad where PNM/UNC par­ty would have ei­ther 20 seats and the UNC/PNM 19 seats.  The oth­er ide­al sit­u­a­tion is one where both ma­jor par­ties could have 20 seats each, that is the mak­ing it 20 seats and the PDP wins one seat in the To­ba­go East, where­by the PDP would seek a par­ty will­ing to work with it so that all of To­ba­go could win, fi­nal­ly."

In 2020, Duke con­test­ed the To­ba­go East seat but lost to Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy of the PNM by 800 votes. Then, and now, Duke is hop­ing for a 20 - 20 - 1 elec­tion re­sult.  He would like to be the tie break­er, de­cid­ing whether he'll join the PNM or the UNC to form the gov­ern­ment.

The PNM has yet to em­brace a coali­tion gov­ern­ment, of­ten be­ing as­so­ci­at­ed with the mantra of win­ning alone and los­ing alone. Even with a coali­tion, the par­ty would have to nom­i­nate Duke as po­lit­i­cal leader, thus el­e­vat­ing him to Prime Min­is­ter.

Asked if he would be con­test­ing the seat again, he on­ly said, “We have a rea­son­able about of in­ter­est ex­press in elec­tions by dif­fer­ent peo­ple so we can draw from it.”

He told Guardian Me­dia "many peo­ple" are in­ter­est­ed in run­ning for the PDP in both To­ba­go East and West.  As for his plans for Trinidad, Duke said he’ll make that an­nounce­ment when the elec­tion has been an­nounced.

Duke has con­test­ed elec­tions in Trinidad. He cam­paigned hard in East Port-of-Spain, Sea Lots and Beetham in the run up to the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion last year, but his par­ty was un­able to make in­roads in­to Trinidad elec­toral pol­i­tics.

Duke be­lieves his par­ty will do well though, even though all his ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers left to form the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty.

He re­mains un­fazed by an­oth­er par­ty en­ter­ing the ring.

“There have al­ways been third par­ties in To­ba­go. Most of them are nui­sance par­ties … they will not get any rea­son­able amount of votes to cause dam­age.  That is how the PDP emerged.”