PDP Po­lit­i­cal Leader Wat­son Duke has apol­o­gised to To­bag­o­ni­ans for the job loss­es and eco­nom­ic chaos that fol­lowed his de­ci­sion to hand over pow­er to Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

Duke said it was a mis­take that led to wide­spread suf­fer­ing.

“That was the biggest mis­take I ever made in my en­tire life,” he said dur­ing a spot meet­ing in Good­wood on Sun­day. “The ef­fect of that is that To­ba­go was thrown in­to chaos. Peo­ple are now with­out jobs.”

Af­ter the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots won the 2021 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions, Duke the po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty said it was agreed that Au­gus­tine would be Chief Sec­re­tary while he would serve as deputy chief sec­re­tary. The two fell out in Sep­tem­ber 2022, lead­ing Au­gus­tine and oth­ers to ex­it, form­ing the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty.

Duke ac­cused Au­gus­tine of be­tray­ing the PDP and the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

“He even went and got bap­tized and was iden­ti­fied as an el­der, and we trust­ed him. I trust­ed him with pow­er, great pow­er. I said, ‘Sir, you lead the THA’.”

But now, Duke said it was time to fix what was bro­ken and re­turn To­ba­go to a place of op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“Every sin­gle per­son in To­ba­go will have a job, be­cause we will con­trol the Trea­sury, and when we con­trol the Trea­sury, we will spend the mon­ey on the peo­ple, so the thieves will have noth­ing to steal.”

He promised a min­i­mum salary of $5,000 for Cepep and URP work­ers.

“The first ma­jor project we go­ing to do is to en­sure that per­sons who are work­ing, the Cepep work­er, the URP work­er, the de­vel­op­ment work­er, those pick­ing up trash on the road, will col­lect a salary of noth­ing less than $5,000.”

He said re­tirees will al­so get a raise, with pen­sions mov­ing from $3,500 to $4,500.

Duke out­lined plans to hire 500 full-time work­ers in every dis­trict to beau­ti­fy com­mu­ni­ties and re­pair homes.

“Every sin­gle house will have toi­let and bath, every sin­gle house will have kitchen cup­board, every sin­gle house will have a con­crete foot­path. No longer mud on your shoes.”

Duke said his mis­sion is to im­prove the qual­i­ty of life for all To­bag­o­ni­ans.

“We are build­ing a To­ba­go for To­bag­o­ni­ans.”

‘Emp­ty promis­es’

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed has ques­tioned Wat­son Duke’s promis­es and am­bi­tions, call­ing them “emp­ty” and “un­re­al­is­tic” ahead of the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion.

He main­ly want­ed to know where Duke would source the mon­ey to de­liv­er pay and pen­sion in­crease promis­es.

Re­act­ing to Duke’s bold state­ments about se­cur­ing key min­istries—in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Fi­nance, and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty—Mo­hammed said, “I want to know in what ca­pac­i­ty is he do­ing that? As the in­com­ing Prime Min­is­ter?”

Mo­hammed point­ed out that even for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day on­ly of­fered ANR Robin­son min­istries like Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, and a Min­istry of To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment when his par­ty se­cured the To­ba­go seats.

He asked, ”How is he go­ing to ne­go­ti­ate with Mr Young or Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar… to get four min­istries?”

He said Duke lacked the na­tion­al cred­i­bil­i­ty to make such de­mands.

“Mr Duke has not shown po­lit­i­cal grav­i­tas in the time that he has bro­ken away from the ex­ec­u­tive of the THA. It’s a lot of emp­ty promis­es that does not car­ry po­lit­i­cal stock, po­lit­i­cal stand­ing and grav­i­tas.”