ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke has made it clear—once his par­ty wins the two seats in To­ba­go and a gov­ern­ment has to be formed, he wants full con­trol over four key gov­ern­ment po­si­tions: prime min­is­ter, at­tor­ney gen­er­al, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, and fi­nance min­is­ter.

“I want four po­si­tions for the peo­ple of To­ba­go and the PDP and Trinidad, four po­si­tions—Prime Min­is­ter, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al… Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.”

He even hint­ed that he may per­son­al­ly “hold down” the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry be­fore putting crim­i­nals on no­tice.

“I ain’t tak­ing chance with no­body,” Duke said.

“Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, we hold­ing that and Fi­nance Min­istry, those are four po­si­tions I want. They could take any­thing else they want. It’s fair ne­go­ti­a­tions.”

Duke was speak­ing at the un­veil­ing of his par­ty’s To­ba­go East and West can­di­dates yes­ter­day.

All-To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Cur­tis Dou­glas was re­vealed as the par­ty’s To­ba­go West prospec­tive can­di­date, while Duke will con­test the To­ba­go East seat again.

He de­tailed his plan to be­come prime min­is­ter, say­ing To­ba­go’s two seats would be the de­cid­ing fac­tor in the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“If you have 20 seats and you have 19 seats and you want to form the gov­ern­ment, go ahead. But we have the pow­er. These two seats in To­ba­go have the pow­er,” he said.

Duke said he would use To­ba­go’s in­flu­ence to de­mand half of all diplo­mat­ic and board po­si­tions in Trinidad.

“For the first time, you can have bal­ance in this thing called Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“We must par­tic­i­pate in all ar­eas. This is not about to­kenism, where they take one To­bag­on­ian, put them in a min­istry, and say we have rep­re­sen­ta­tion. To­ba­go must be through­out the gov­ern­ment.”

Duke framed his cam­paign as a his­toric strug­gle, say­ing it was about more than just win­ning an elec­tion.

He said, “This thing se­ri­ous. This is not just an elec­tion. We fight­ing for a gen­er­a­tion. If we don’t fight now, they’ll be a gen­er­a­tion of slaves.”

He called for a “po­lit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion” and in­voked past lead­ers like ANR Robin­son and Win­ston Mur­ray.

“Our an­ces­tors died fight­ing. I have come to take up an­oth­er fight,” he said.

“I fight­ing for James Big­gart, ANR Robin­son, and Dr Win­ston Mur­ray. I’m com­ing to fin­ish the fight now.”

Duke al­so promised to in­crease To­ba­go’s bud­get al­lo­ca­tion from 4.03 per cent to 10 per cent, which he said would amount to $6 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

“They have forced us to stand at at­ten­tion and sing, ‘Every creed and race find an equal place.’ There is no equal place here,” he said.

He added that black peo­ple in the coun­try need eco­nom­ic em­pow­er­ment.

“There are Chi­nese bil­lion­aires, In­di­an bil­lion­aires, Eu­ro­pean bil­lion­aires, Arab bil­lion­aires. But where are the black bil­lion­aires?”

To ad­dress this, Duke promised to es­tab­lish a To­ba­go Na­tion­al Bank and a To­ba­go Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund to help fi­nance de­vel­op­ment.

“When Wat­son Duke be­comes prime min­is­ter, I will rule very hard,” he said.

“I am the re­al prime min­is­ter, and there is no oth­er prime min­is­ter in­side here.”