To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) po­lit­i­cal leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine has re­ject­ed claims that his par­ty is aligned with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), dis­miss­ing a vi­ral voice note as “fool­ish­ness” and po­lit­i­cal mis­chief aimed at mis­lead­ing vot­ers ahead of the gen­er­al elec­tion.

Speak­ing at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Fri­day night, Au­gus­tine said he had no in­ten­tion of re­spond­ing to the “mis­chief” be­ing spread by po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents. He not­ed that this was not the first time at­tempts had been made to link him to the UNC and ac­cused his de­trac­tors of us­ing new tech­nol­o­gy to repack­age old smear tac­tics.

“I do not care to re­spond to the fool­ish­ness, be­cause To­ba­go has se­ri­ous is­sues,” Au­gus­tine said. “They are short on ideas, they failed on de­liv­ery, so they must con­coct what­ev­er they think is nec­es­sary to dis­tract you.”

He in­di­rect­ly sug­gest­ed that the meet­ing ref­er­enced in the voice note nev­er oc­curred and was fab­ri­cat­ed to stir con­tro­ver­sy.

Au­gus­tine re­called sim­i­lar in­ci­dents dur­ing pre­vi­ous THA elec­tions, where posters ap­peared with his face next to that of UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. “We don’t even know who put them there,” he said.

He added that he is con­fi­dent every­thing he does is “law­ful and moral­ly sound,” stat­ing, “Call my name with who­ev­er you want—I know I’m a son of the Most High.”

Yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so de­nied the claims. “I want to say cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that the UNC is not in­volved in any talks, al­liance, or dis­cus­sions with any par­ty in To­ba­go,” she said. “We are fo­cused on re­build­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go for all.”

The voice note, which be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on What­sApp and so­cial me­dia on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, al­leged­ly fea­tures voic­es re­sem­bling both Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Au­gus­tine, dis­cussing ties with the UNC.

It is be­lieved that the al­leged meet­ing oc­curred some­time af­ter the 2021 THA elec­tion, in which the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) de­feat­ed the PNM with a 14-1 vic­to­ry. In the au­dio, the voic­es are heard dis­cussing fund­ing and strength­en­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr. Hamid Ghany, writ­ing in to­day’s Sun­day Guardian, pre­dicts a se­ri­ous po­lit­i­cal bat­tle in To­ba­go.

He stat­ed that To­ba­go will be key in de­cid­ing the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Ghany, the PNM must re­tain both To­ba­go East and To­ba­go West seats to re­turn to gov­ern­ment—if it man­ages to hold on to its cur­rent seats in Trinidad.

Ghany added that the new­ly formed TPP, born out of the PDP, will face its first elec­toral test, and that the po­lit­i­cal split could re­shape the out­come of the race.

“All eyes will be on To­ba­go,” Ghany said.