Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Far­ley Au­gus­tine is chal­leng­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to call a gen­er­al elec­tion.

Au­gus­tine made the call as he of­fi­cial­ly launched his To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) on Sun­day night at the Mil­ford Road Lay­by (Stage In The Sea), Mil­ford Road, Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go.

“I un­der­stand that your Prime Min­is­ter is on the is­land tonight and I un­der­stand that al­though he has an elec­tion in Trinidad to­mor­row (Mon­day) he’s in To­ba­go tonight (Sun­day). But now might be a good time to tell the Prime Min­is­ter just pro­rogue Par­lia­ment and call a gen­er­al elec­tion be­cause we ready, we ready,” Au­gus­tine said.

The TPP’s lo­go is an an­chor that serves as a mir­ror with two P’s on ei­ther side.

The par­ty’s colour is a light blue that Au­gus­tine said was in­spired by a jer­sey owned by his now de­ceased grand­fa­ther.

The Chief Sec­re­tary took the stage just af­ter 8 pm, promis­ing sup­port­ers of im­prove­ment in their stan­dard of liv­ing as he pledged to make ad­vance­ments in ed­u­ca­tion, in­no­va­tion, tourism, and oth­er sec­tors.

Au­gus­tine and 15 oth­er As­sem­bly­men re­signed from the Wat­son Duke-led Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) in De­cem­ber last year, form­ing the TPP four months lat­er.

Fol­low­ing the fall­out, there have been calls for fresh elec­tions.

Ad­dress­ing his dis­agree­ment with Duke, Au­gus­tine said his for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader’s “head eh good.”

He added that he had no choice but to de­part the par­ty but not­ed that some peo­ple re­main on the ship steered by Duke.

Draw­ing an anal­o­gy ref­er­enc­ing Je­sus Christ walk­ing on wa­ter, he said the TPP was cre­at­ed for mem­bers to do just that.

He was flanked by all cur­rent mem­bers of the TPP.