Clay­ton Clarke

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says he is con­fi­dent that he and his To­ba­go House As­sem­bly ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil mem­bers will be cleared of any wrong­do­ing when he does speak on a con­tentious au­dio clip which was re­cent­ly leaked on so­cial me­dia.

The au­dio clip has caused a furore since it was leaked on so­cial me­dia, as it pur­ports to rep­re­sent two THA of­fi­cials dis­cussing pay­ing per­sons full time through the THA to spread pro­pa­gan­da on­line about the new To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty agen­da.

De­spite calls for the mat­ter to be ad­dressed pub­licly from sev­er­al quar­ters, Au­gus­tine is yet to do so and has even elud­ed me­dia per­son­nel seek­ing com­ment on the mat­ter.

How­ev­er, two of his ex­ec­u­tives, Dr Faith B Yis­rael and Zor­isha Hack­ett, touched on the is­sue ear­li­er this week but steered clear of mak­ing any com­ment of sub­stance it, in­stead not­ing that Au­gus­tine would ad­dress it soon.

Speak­ing at THA Town Meet­ing at the Fair­field Com­plex in Ba­co­let, Scar­bor­ough, last night, Au­gus­tine fi­nal­ly touched on the is­sue but did lit­tle to clear the air on the al­leged in­ci­dent.

Rather, he said he has noth­ing to be wor­ried about and will break his si­lence on the mat­ter in the com­ing days.

“Right, so, and I can al­so say with a high de­gree of con­fi­dence that when I speak on this is­sue my­self and my ex­ec­u­tive will be prop­er­ly ex­on­er­at­ed. I have no fear. So don’t lose any sleep over it. In fact, by the time we get to the end of the week you will hear more ex­ten­sive­ly about this mat­ter and some oth­ers as well.”

Au­gus­tine added that he will not be rushed by the me­dia to talk on the is­sue.

“I know a lot of peo­ple in the me­dia want me to talk on their time. That is one thing I don’t do. I set my own agen­da. The me­dia don’t set my agen­da but be­yond that, I will speak ex­ten­sive­ly on the is­sue,” Au­gus­tine said.

“I could tell you and I can tell you this is more than just an au­dio tape and it in­volves se­cu­ri­ty con­sid­er­a­tions, ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous at that, that re­quires me as leader that I spend enough time mulling over it. I think some­body asked me to­day, ‘Well is 21 days and you ent talk about it.’ But the truth is it could take 21 days for cra­paud. School boy on­ly need one day.”

Re­spond­ing to two mem­bers of the au­di­ence who asked him to clear the air on the au­dio tape, Au­gus­tine went on to say, “When I make my state­ments every­one will not be hap­py. When I make those state­ments they may bring the house down on some peo­ple.”