Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said fa­ther­hood has re­shaped how he views lead­er­ship and life, es­pe­cial­ly as he rais­es a daugh­ter in a world he be­lieves is still deeply un­fair to women.

Speak­ing dur­ing a pan­el at Bish­op’s High School, To­ba­go, Au­gus­tine said while he’s hope­ful for his daugh­ter’s fu­ture, he al­so fears the harsh re­al­i­ties that still ex­ist for women in so­ci­ety.

“I would hope that my daugh­ter could sit in the seat that I sit in with­out her be­ing judged by her gen­der and just be­ing judged based on her char­ac­ter, the skills and what she has to of­fer,” he said.

“I will tru­ly hope that she would in­her­it a To­ba­go that is a lot more, even less chau­vin­is­tic, one that re­spects women and the role that they play in our so­ci­ety.”

Au­gus­tine, who cel­e­brat­ed his sec­ond Fa­ther’s Day yes­ter­day, said his ap­proach to bal­anc­ing pub­lic life and per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is root­ed in spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.

“One of the things about Bish­op’s High School is that there is a spir­i­tu­al el­e­ment that we should not over­look,” he said.

“We re­mem­ber the fact that every class had to keep as­sem­bly at least one morn­ing dur­ing the term... and there was one day every sin­gle week that the archdea­con came.

Au­gus­tine said that ground­ing in faith and dis­ci­pline has car­ried him through the storms of po­lit­i­cal life.

“I don’t think I would have sur­vived the past three, al­most four years if I didn’t have that spir­i­tu­al ground­ing and cer­tain­ly I wouldn’t have con­fi­dence in the fu­ture if I did not have it,” he said.

He re­called fac­ing in­tense pub­lic and po­lit­i­cal pres­sure ear­ly in his term.

“I won the elec­tion on a Mon­day. I got sworn in on a Thurs­day, this Sun­day. There­after, I got mar­ried. I went to work for the first day as Chief Sec­re­tary the day af­ter I got mar­ried, Mon­day, in the first six months in of­fice, I was boot­ed from my po­lit­i­cal par­ty and asked to find your own place,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said de­spite the chal­lenges, his faith re­mains his com­pass.

“There is some­body big­ger than you that you can go to and find a sense of peace even when the times get tu­mul­tuous and that’s the key to your suc­cess,” he said.

He said fa­ther­hood has changed his per­spec­tive on the fu­ture.

“When you be­come a par­ent, you stop think­ing about the now. You start think­ing about what kind of To­ba­go you want to hand over,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said he al­ways con­sid­ers how every pol­i­cy, every de­ci­sion, and every pub­lic ac­tion might af­fect not just his daugh­ter, but the daugh­ters and sons of every fam­i­ly on the is­land.