Derek Achong

Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue his par­ty’s bid to make po­lit­i­cal in­roads in­to Trinidad by host­ing a march to protest a re­cent in­crease in fu­el prices. 

Duke, who tout­ed the idea dur­ing the open­ing of the par­ty’s Trinidad head­quar­ters at Sec­ond Street, Barataria, ear­li­er this month, raised it again as he ad­dressed sup­port­ers at the par­ty’s of­fi­cial launch at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain, on Sun­day evening.

Duke stat­ed that he would be writ­ing to act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob this week to seek per­mis­sion for the pub­lic demon­stra­tion.  

“Should I write?...Are you will­ing to be part of that march?” Duke said, as he re­ceived a round of ap­plause and loud cheers from the au­di­ence. 

De­scrib­ing the pro­posed protest as a “hunger march”, Duke called on sup­port­ers to at­tend with their pots, pans and spoons to chal­lenge the tim­ing of the in­crease an­nounced by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, ear­li­er this month. 

“Why raise gas price when there is job­less­ness and hope­less­ness?...I hear the cries of my peo­ple say­ing: enough is enough,” Duke said. 

Dur­ing his speech, Duke sought to re­veal some of his cam­paign plans and strate­gies.

He said that over the next few months he and oth­er key PDP of­fi­cials would be mov­ing in­to “de­pressed” com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad to ob­tain first hand feed­back on the is­sues af­fect­ing cit­i­zens liv­ing there.  

“I want to know how it feel like to be in Laven­tille, Beetham and La Hor­quet­ta. We not go­ing to rent some-place, we go­ing to live by some­body. What them eat­ing, we eat­ing, what them sit down on, we sit down on too. What them bathing with, I bathing with, be­cause un­less you walk in these peo­ple shoes you cant rep­re­sent them,” Duke said. 

Duke blamed the in­cum­bent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) for is­sues in such com­mu­ni­ties as he claimed they the es­tab­lished po­lit­i­cal par­ties were re­spon­si­ble for con­tin­u­ous stig­ma­ti­sa­tion of res­i­dents. 

“They can not get any work be­cause PNM and UNC mash up their rep­u­ta­tion,” Duke said. 

Duke said that he had a fu­ture plan to re­de­vel­op these com­mu­ni­ties to give res­i­dents hope that they could rise out of pover­ty. 

“I long to see places like Beetham where every house has a pool...places in Laven­tille they must all have a nice ve­ran­da,” Duke said. 

He stat­ed that his com­mu­ni­ty out­reach would in­clude the in­tro­duc­ing the PDP’s “Loaves of Love”, which was launched in To­ba­go in the run-up to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions in De­cem­ber, last year. 

Duke said un­der the pro­gramme, the PDP would dis­trib­ute hun­dreds of loaves of bread to poor com­mu­ni­ties week­ly. He said that he in­tends to hire res­i­dents in the com­mu­ni­ties to bake the bread so be­gin to as­sist them with em­ploy­ment. 

“If you have bread you have food. We can’t give mon­ey but we can give a bread,” Duke said. 

He al­so re­vealed that he and his team would be help­ing res­i­dents with mi­nor house re­pairs. 

Duke called on af­flu­ent cit­i­zens across T&T to do­nate to his par­ty so that they could con­tin­ue their work even be­fore suc­ceed­ing in an elec­tion in Trinidad. 

“Those per­sons who have re­al mon­ey and don’t know what to do with it, give the PDP some­thing be­cause we are on the path to build­ing a bet­ter T&T,” Duke said. 

Duke said that the par­ty had a long-term vi­sion of lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form in­clud­ing giv­ing re­gion­al and mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions the pow­er and fi­nances to prop­er­ly main­tain roads, schools, and pri­ma­ry health care fa­cil­i­ties. 

“The UNC and PNM have been promis­ing that for years. We are not go­ing to talk it, we are go­ing to do it,” Duke said. 

“Right now all the pow­er is con­cen­trat­ed in cen­tral gov­ern­ment. They spend bil­lions of dol­lars but it is lost through cor­rup­tion and bac­cha­nal,” he added. 

He al­so said that the PDP would ad­dress ma­jor is­sues in the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) to help cit­i­zens with home-own­er­ship. 

Duke, who is al­so the THA Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary, re­vealed that the THA has al­ready en­tered in­to ne­go­ti­a­tions with in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal con­trac­tors to de­vel­op low cost hous­ing in­clud­ing sin­gle bed­room units for cou­ples at a cost of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $300,000. 

“Long time peo­ple would get mar­ried out of mat­ri­mo­ny, now they come to­geth­er to “match their mon­ey” just to make their rent and ex­pens­es,” Duke said.