Renu­ka Singh

New­ly-ap­point­ed To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has main­tained that deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Wat­son Duke will not have to re­lin­quish his post as pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA).

Au­gus­tine was asked about Duke’s sta­tus as both THA Ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber and PSA pres­i­dent just mo­ments af­ter be­ing sworn in yes­ter­day.

“The law says that one can­not be a mem­ber of the ex­ec­u­tive and re­ceive any re­mu­ner­a­tions, salaries, ben­e­fits from any oth­er place,” Au­gus­tine said.

“As you would be aware, ear­li­er in the week I made it clear that Mr Duke would need to be aligned with the law in or­der to be con­sid­ered to be a mem­ber of the ex­ec­u­tive. Now, he has since made him­self in line with the law.”

Au­gus­tine has a me­dia con­fer­ence planned for lat­er to­day af­ter Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes swears in the sev­en sec­re­taries and said he will ex­plain the “broad­er vi­sion” of what he wants to achieve then.

“And mat­ters con­cern­ing a con­flict of in­ter­est would not arise,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said when he lays out the ex­ec­u­tive to­day, Duke will be as­signed a task.

“Then you would get to un­der­stand the full vi­sion,” Au­gus­tine said.

Au­gus­tine said there were oth­er chal­lenges, in­clud­ing the state of the econ­o­my.

“We do have a pri­vate sec­tor that has all but col­lapsed and there is an ur­gent need for us to re­align even fur­ther to en­sure that we can get tourism back up and run­ning, that we can se­cure our pri­vate sec­tor, that we can se­cure jobs and that is a top pri­or­i­ty for us,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said he was plan­ning a re­treat for the THA ex­ec­u­tive, as no one on the en­tire slate has any po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence.

“There are no oldies present in my ex­ec­u­tive. They are all com­plete­ly new to the ex­ec­u­tive. Yes, that was pur­pose­ful be­cause I felt To­ba­go need­ed a very fresh breath, a fresh di­rec­tion and I did not want folks with old at­ti­tudes try­ing to trans­fer those old po­lit­i­cal cul­tures in­to the new ex­ec­u­tive,” he said.

He said that the chal­lenge was now to get the team ready to hit the ground im­me­di­ate­ly.

Au­gus­tine promised to present a bud­get in Jan­u­ary and al­so hint­ed that there would be a “re­align­ment” of port­fo­lios in the THA.

He promised an up­date on the port­fo­lios to­day af­ter the of­fi­cial swear­ing-in du­ties are com­plet­ed.

“We have quite a wide range of ex­per­tise and we would be us­ing the ex­per­tise along those lines. We are al­so bring­ing in some in­ter­est­ing coun­cil­lors in a short while,” Au­gus­tine said, adding that some may be a sur­prise to the pub­lic.

“We have as a coun­cil­lor, some­one who has not been in pol­i­tics at all but I have brought him on be­cause of the kind of ex­per­tise that I think he would bring to the ta­ble,” he said, adding there were “promis­ing days ahead” for To­ba­go.

As Chief Sec­re­tary, Au­gus­tine is not al­lowed to dri­ve him­self and yes­ter­day said he asked to forego that pro­to­col but was re­fused. He ad­mit­ted he was still “grap­pling” with the changes.

“I am ac­cus­tomed to my short pants and slip­pers and thing, dri­ving my­self any hour of the day and night,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said he planned to have reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, which is part of the job de­scrip­tion. He said that he hoped the new re­la­tion­ship would put pol­i­tics in the past and work to­ward the bet­ter­ment of To­ba­go.

He said that the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots would keep its cam­paign pledge to make fund­ing avail­able to every dis­trict, PNM or PDP.

“Be­cause there has to be eq­ui­ty in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of re­sources. I am now Chief Sec­re­tary for all of To­ba­go and that in­cludes Dar­ryl Spring/Whim,” Au­gus­tine said.

The PNM can­di­date Kelvon Mor­ris won that lone seat.

“He will not be starved for re­sources, I wish to as­sure him of that,” Au­gus­tine said, adding that Mor­ris was an old friend and for­mer class­mate.

“I don’t see why pol­i­tics should di­vide us,” he not­ed.

Mor­ris con­cerned

Mean­while, Mor­ris has al­so ex­pressed con­cern about Duke’s dual roles.

“In terms of we now have Mr Wat­son Duke has been elect­ed deputy Chief Sec­re­tary and of course we know that and we saw a re­lease from the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion in­di­cat­ing that he would have re­lin­quished his re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­ages but not the po­si­tion,” Mor­ris said.

“I am of the firm view that that does not auger well for good gov­er­nance. I am see­ing con­flicts of in­ter­est and my first or­der of busi­ness would be to write to the Chief Sec­re­tary in­di­cat­ing that we are very un­com­fort­able with such a de­vel­op­ment.

“If we are about good gov­er­nance, then we must start off on the right foot.”

De­spite that con­cern, Mor­ris con­grat­u­lat­ed the PDP on its vic­to­ry and al­so com­mend­ed the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

“It speaks to the lev­el of democ­ra­cy on this is­land of To­ba­go,” he said.

Mor­ris said that the ease of tran­si­tion from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment to the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots was tes­ti­mo­ny to the ma­tu­ri­ty of the elec­torate.