Gail Alexan­der

Emer­gency ef­forts were be­ing made yes­ter­day evening by se­nior mem­bers of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) to find a so­lu­tion to the stand-off be­tween To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and THA deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Wat­son Duke.

This was con­firmed by those mem­bers who were aim­ing to ob­tain a meet­ing be­tween the men.

This, fol­low­ing ten­sions which re­cent­ly erupt­ed pub­licly af­ter sim­mer­ing on var­i­ous is­sues for al­most six months.

The lat­est is the THA’s han­dling of fund­ing for a New York tour by the Rox­bor­ough Folk Per­form­ers led by Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin. Duke had slammed the lack of as­sis­tance to the group af­ter claim­ing they had run in­to fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties in New York last week.

How­ev­er, dur­ing a post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil me­dia brief­ing last week, Au­gus­tine said the THA had pro­vid­ed $400,000 for their tick­ets. He al­so said he was re­view­ing the roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of Duke as THA deputy. It’s led to con­tin­ued hos­til­i­ties, with Duke re­vok­ing Au­gus­tine’s po­si­tion as deputy leader of the PDP.

PDP se­nior mem­bers said yes­ter­day that ef­forts will be made to try to re­solve the mat­ter, al­so in­cor­po­rat­ing THA Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil mem­bers. They ad­mit­ted there’s a view both men need to make ad­just­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly Duke. But they ac­knowl­edged that go­ing for­ward will re­quire per­sua­sion —and ac­cep­tance—of changes.

They said a method’s al­so need­ed to com­mu­ni­cate with the pub­lic on the is­sue be­fore the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment cap­i­talis­es on the rift. They not­ed the two To­ba­go self-gov­ern­ment bills are on Par­lia­ment’s agen­da for the Third Ses­sion of Par­lia­ment, which starts to­day.

Au­gus­tine and Duke are among in­vi­tees to to­day’s cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the Third Ses­sion of Par­lia­ment. To­day’s func­tion would have been the first such one for them af­ter the PDP won the THA elec­tions nine months ago.

Some as­sem­bly­men are at­tend­ing the func­tion, THA of­fi­cials con­firmed. THA Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer Ab­by Tay­lor will at­tend, as well as some As­sem­bly­men, but not all.

How­ev­er, it’s un­cer­tain whether Au­gus­tine will. And Duke, who’s in New York, is due back by Wednes­day, or just be­fore.

For­mer PP Min­is­ter Al­leyne-Top­pin is ex­pect­ed home to­day.

Nei­ther Duke nor Au­gus­tine an­swered calls or mes­sages yes­ter­day.

When their is­sue erupt­ed, Au­gus­tine said he was re­view­ing Duke’s port­fo­lio. In turn a PDP ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing re­moved Au­gus­tine, Health Sec­re­tary Faith B. Yis­rael and Ali­cia Roberts-Pat­ter­son as PDP deputy lead­ers. Duke sub­se­quent­ly con­tin­ued warn­ing Au­gus­tine via video mes­sages.

PDP’s re­lease stat­ed that the va­cat­ed po­si­tions will be filled by the “ap­point­ment of the po­lit­i­cal leader of the PDP (To­ba­go)” by mem­bers “in good stand­ing with the par­ty.”

The fact that the re­lease sig­nalled Au­gus­tine, B. Yis­rael and Roberts-Pat­ter­son aren’t in “good stand­ing,” along with and Duke’s con­tin­ued warn­ings, have fu­elled spec­u­la­tion about moves against Au­gus­tine’s post as Chief Sec­re­tary, since he’s no longer PDP deputy leader.

THA and PDP of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day that while the THA’s law doesn’t specif­i­cal­ly pro­vide for a par­ty de­ci­sion to in­flu­ence gov­ern­ment, “It’s pos­si­ble.” They cit­ed the is­sue of for­mer PNM THA chief sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles, who re­signed af­ter los­ing the fight for po­lit­i­cal leader to Tracey David­son-Ce­les­tine,

They not­ed the law pro­vides for a Chief Sec­re­tary to move if he re­signs or a suc­cess­ful no-con­fi­dence mo­tion is mount­ed against him. Al­so, if the Chief Sec­re­tary wants to re­move a deputy sec­re­tary, this can be done via a no-con­fi­dence vote from the As­sem­bly, they added.

Duke, on Face­book, has warned the po­lit­i­cal stand-off won’t end un­til PDP’s lead­er­ship is giv­en the re­spect it de­serves. He’d la­belled Au­gus­tine “sim­ply a hireling” who “will soon come to un­der­stand he’s sim­ply a re­flec­tion of the par­ty...”

Duke said PDP mem­bers “have been con­tin­u­ous­ly dis­re­spect­ed and ig­nored” by Au­gus­tine “and his cheer­lead­ers ... PDP’s ex­ec­u­tive would do what­ev­er nec­es­sary to pro­tect To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic in­ter­est, there­fore, we call up­on him to hum­ble him­self and re­spect the PDP par­ty who was sin­gle-hand­ed­ly re­spon­si­ble for his rise from the shad­ows to po­lit­i­cal light and rel­e­vance.”