Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke is dis­tanc­ing him­self from the lat­est al­leged leaked voice record­ing linked to Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar say­ing this time he is not a part of the team and can­not be blamed.

Duke, who led the PDP to a 14-1 land­slide vic­to­ry over the PNM in the De­cem­ber 6, 2021 THA elec­tion, took aim at his for­mer par­ty mem­bers, in­sist­ing he had no part to play in the al­leged con­ver­sa­tion or its record­ing.

“These same peo­ple who telling you Wat­son Duke do it, Wat­son Duke record them—when they record­ed them­selves say­ing to you they will use the THA mon­ey to hire peo­ple to spread lies,” Duke said.

Duke was speak­ing at a spot meet­ing in. Mt Grace last night.

Re­fer­ring to the lat­est record­ing, which sur­faced this week and al­leged­ly cap­tures a con­ver­sa­tion about funds be­ing sent from a UNC of­fi­cial to as­sist a To­ba­go po­lit­i­cal team, Duke mocked at­tempts by Au­gus­tine to de­ny the ex­change.

“They say­ing they don’t know the UNC, they nev­er talk to them—yet you hear them in their stam­mer­ing voice say­ing, ‘Yeah, I want more com­mu­ni­ca­tion,’” he said.

He re­ferred to a fe­male voice al­leged to be from the “yel­low side,” (Per­sad-Bisses­sar UNC leader), “telling her To­ba­go coun­ter­part she had sent mon­ey for Christ­mas gifts.”

Ac­cord­ing to Duke, the To­ba­go voice (Au­gus­tine) ini­tial­ly pre­tend­ed not to know what she was talk­ing about.

“She raise her voice say­ing, ‘I send some mon­ey, you for­get?’ He then say, ‘Or hor, or hor… $100,000?’ She didn’t call name—he did. He said Christlyn Moore bring it up.”

Duke ques­tioned the mo­tives be­hind the in­ter­ac­tion—If re­al, and the im­pli­ca­tions for To­ba­go’s po­lit­i­cal fu­ture.

“So when they say when they win the two seats they will go down there and ne­go­ti­ate—with who? We have to ask,” Duke said. “In Trinidad they say­ing yel­low is the code, in To­ba­go they say­ing blue is the code. I don’t know what code they deal­ing with.”

Duke said the PDP has no se­cret codes. He in­sists his par­ty’s words mean ex­act­ly what they say.

“If you want To­bag­o­ni­ans to de­vel­op and be rich, vote for us,” he added. “If the ball jam, I’ll be Prime Min­is­ter and Cur­tis Dou­glas (PDP To­ba­go West can­di­date) will be a min­is­ter.”

The voice note con­tro­ver­sy is the sec­ond in re­cent years in­volv­ing Au­gus­tine. A 2023 leaked record­ing, where Au­gus­tine was heard dis­cussing us­ing THA funds to pro­mote pro­pa­gan­da, was ini­tial­ly de­nied as fake by sup­port­ers un­til Au­gus­tine ad­mit­ted it was re­al, but linked to an at­tempt to ex­tort funds from him by a PNM busi­ness­man.

Au­gus­tine point­ed fin­gers at Duke say­ing he was the source of the leak.

Both Au­gus­tine and Per­sad-Bis­sas­ar have de­nied be­ing in­volved in any such meet­ing and have claimed that the au­dio record­ings are AI gen­er­at­ed.