Joshua Seemu­n­gal

The ten­sion be­tween Wat­son Duke and Far­ley Au­gus­tine has been build­ing for some time re­sult­ing in a mod­er­a­tor hav­ing to be brought in five months ago to try and quell it, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James has re­vealed.

James gives the in­sight in his col­umn in to­day’s news­pa­per (see page 15).

“Back in April 2022, just about a measly four months af­ter the fate­ful elec­tions, mi bre­dren Vanus (James) was in­vit­ed to sort out the dif­fer­ences be­tween the two men. Wat­son was com­plain­ing about dis­re­spect from Far­ley vis-à-vis his roles as Po­lit­i­cal Leader and Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary. Recog­nis­ing that Wat­son want­ed a high­er pro­file both in the THA and the par­ty that could ef­fect a bal­ance in the lead­er­ship be­tween him­self and Far­ley, Vanus adopt­ed the stance of a mod­er­a­tor or om­buds­man,” James wrote.

James said un­for­tu­nate­ly, plans pro­posed by Vanus James to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion were im­ple­ment­ed in the way they should have been.

Duke and Au­gus­tine have been at log­ger­heads over the THA’s han­dling of fund­ing for a New York tour by the Rox­bor­ough Folk Per­form­ers.

Duke us­ing his per­son­al Face­book page yes­ter­day said he built the PDP, but there are peo­ple try­ing to take it over.

He warned that the po­lit­i­cal stand-off be­tween the PDP’s ex­ec­u­tive and the THA lead­er­ship will not end un­til the PDP’s lead­er­ship is giv­en the re­spect it de­serves.

“I warned the Chief Sec­re­tary that this is about gov­er­nance, con­trol your emo­tions, and when you are ready to drink the cool­ing bush and smoke the peace pipe, we can share that drink and we can smoke that peace pipe to­geth­er,” Duke said of Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

“You are no lone wolf. You are no boss. You are sim­ply a hireling. Hired to the par­ty by the peo­ple to fa­cil­i­tate To­ba­go.”

Duke claimed that the re­al, sub­stan­tive is­sue be­tween him­self and Au­gus­tine is that the PDP’s ex­ec­u­tive has been shown to­tal dis­re­spect and dis­dain by the chief sec­re­tary and his ex­ec­u­tive.

He said the PDP spon­sored their am­bi­tions and placed them in­to gov­ern­ment, yet they have con­tin­u­ous­ly re­fused to meet with the par­ty’s lead­er­ship.

“They’ve re­fused to dis­cuss with the ex­ec­u­tive what are the man­dates they’ve tak­en from the par­ty and are now try­ing to for­mu­late a pol­i­cy. They have re­fused to treat with the par­ty in a re­spect­ful man­ner, and al­so in a sub­mis­sive man­ner,” Duke com­plained.

“Around the world, it’s a known fact that the par­ty dri­ves the gov­ern­ment, not the gov­ern­ment dri­ves the par­ty. The par­ty must an­swer to the peo­ple, and the politi­cians must an­swer to the par­ty…The Chief Sec­re­tary must know and will soon come to un­der­stand that he is sim­ply a re­flec­tion of the par­ty and the par­ty is a re­flec­tion of the peo­ple.”

The PDP’s Po­lit­i­cal Leader ac­cused Au­gus­tine of fail­ing to deal with sev­er­al im­por­tant is­sues in­clud­ing po­lit­i­cal au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go.

“What has hap­pened to the of­fice that should be set up in Trinidad? The Chief Sec­re­tary has been tip-toe­ing around the is­sue. He has been play­ing on that is­sue. He has failed to se­cure an of­fice for that au­ton­o­my is­sue,” he said.

He al­so com­plained that Au­gus­tine has failed to cre­ate the right en­vi­ron­ment for for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment to thrive.

Up to press time at­tempts to con­tact Au­gus­tine for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.