AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah

@guardian.co.tt

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says there is no “moral oblig­a­tion” to step down, as he be­lieves he would have won elec­tions as an in­de­pen­dent.

In an in­ter­view on TV6’s Morn­ing Edi­tion yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine al­so re­ject­ed calls made by Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke for there to be fresh elec­tions.

“When peo­ple go to the polls and vote in the con­text of democ­ra­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go, there are two things you vote for. There are two items on your bal­lot pa­per, one of which have to be there and one that doesn’t have to be there. One is a par­ty sym­bol, a name. And the oth­er is the name of the can­di­date. The one that ab­solute­ly must be there is name of can­di­date,” Au­gus­tine said.

The Chief Sec­re­tary, who re­signed from the PDP along with 15 oth­er mem­bers of the THA ex­ec­u­tive ear­li­er this month, ar­gued that the PDP’s past suc­cess was due to his in­volve­ment in the par­ty. He said if he had gone up as an in­de­pen­dent can­di­date, he would al­so have been vic­to­ri­ous at the polls.

“PDP per­haps won those seats in 2017 be­cause I was on the tick­et…had we not had the team we had in the last elec­tion, PDP wouldn’t win the elec­tion. PDP did not win the elec­tion be­cause of Wat­son Duke. PDP won the elec­tion be­cause we had the best can­di­dates in the elec­tion,” Au­gus­tine said.

Duke had ac­cused the for­mer PDP ex­ec­u­tive of re­fus­ing to call elec­tions in an ef­fort to pro­tect their own in­ter­ests be­cause they will have “no job” if they re­turn to the polls.

But Au­gus­tine ar­gued that do­ing the moral­ly right thing “means be­ing os­tracised, kicked out, be­ing slan­dered pub­licly and have your name dragged.”

“I’ve had very lit­tle to say about Wat­son Duke and very lit­tle to say about the mad­ness that has en­sued,” Au­gus­tine said.