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 Sat­ur­day night in Crown Point, 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 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.”

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

It is be­lieved that the al­leged meet­ing oc­curred some­time af­ter the 2021 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion, in which the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) de­feat­ed the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment with a 14-1 vic­to­ry. In the au­dio, the voic­es are heard dis­cussing fund­ing and strength­en­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Au­gus­tine re­called sim­i­lar in­ci­dents dur­ing pre­vi­ous THA elec­tions, where posters ap­peared with his face next to that of the UNC leader.

“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.”

Ear­li­er on Sat­ur­day, 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.”

How­ev­er, PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil po­lit­i­cal leader An­cil Den­nis warned To­bag­o­ni­ans not to fall for claims that the lat­est leaked voice record­ing al­leged­ly of Au­gus­tine and the UNC leader was gen­er­at­ed by ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.

Speak­ing at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Sat­ur­day night in Mt St George, Den­nis re­mind­ed To­bag­o­ni­ans of the first leaked au­dio con­tro­ver­sy in 2023, when a record­ing sur­faced al­leged­ly fea­tur­ing Au­gus­tine and Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett dis­cussing the use of pub­lic funds to push po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da.

“At that time, all of them came out say­ing it was AI and the video was fake,” Den­nis said.

“Un­til Far­ley called a fu­ner­al, stood there with his head down in shame, and ad­mit­ted the record­ing was re­al.”

He claimed the same pat­tern is re­peat­ing it­self, with “ly­ing spin doc­tors” jump­ing on­line to dis­miss the new record­ing as fake.

“But any­body with ba­sic sense and in­tel­li­gence will know the dif­fer­ence be­tween AI and a re­al con­ver­sa­tion,” he said. “You could hear the am­bi­ent sounds—glass­es clink­ing in the back­ground—it’s a nat­ur­al con­ver­sa­tion.”

Den­nis then took di­rect aim at Au­gus­tine and Per­sad-Bisses­sar, say­ing, “The on­ly AI in that clip is Au­gus­tine and the in­tox­i­cat­ed one. The on­ly AI in that clip is the ‘Asi­nine Im­poster,’” he claimed.

Den­nis al­so crit­i­cised TPP sup­port­ers who, he said, fol­low Au­gus­tine blind­ly, de­fend­ing him “de­spite clear ev­i­dence.”

“Dic­ta­tors are cre­at­ed when they have peo­ple around them who en­able their non­sense,” he said. “Up­hold­er worse than the thief.”

He ac­cused Au­gus­tine of se­cret­ly work­ing with the UNC while pre­tend­ing to lead an in­de­pen­dent To­ba­go par­ty.

“At least Ash­worth Jack hugged up Kam­la with his chest. He was open,” Den­nis said, adding, “But Far­ley hid­ing un­der the ta­ble.”

He said To­bag­o­ni­ans now have a du­ty to de­mand hon­esty and trans­paren­cy, and re­mind­ed Au­gus­tine of his own words:

“Don’t love your par­ty more than your is­land.”

Den­nis then told the peo­ple of To­ba­go, “You have a right to know if you’re vot­ing for TPP or UNC—be­cause what we have now is UNC iden­ti­fy­ing as TPP.”

Duke dis­tances him­self from au­dio scan­dal

Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke dis­tanced him­self from the al­leged leaked voice record­ing, say­ing this time he can­not be blamed.

Duke, who led the PDP to a 14-1 land­slide vic­to­ry over the PNM in the De­cem­ber 6, 2021 THA elec­tion, took aim at his for­mer par­ty mem­bers, in­sist­ing he had no part to play in the al­leged con­ver­sa­tion or its record­ing.

“These same peo­ple who telling you Wat­son Duke do it, Wat­son Duke record them—when they record­ed them­selves say­ing to you they will use the THA mon­ey to hire peo­ple to spread lies,” Duke said.

Duke was speak­ing at a spot meet­ing in Mt Grace last night where he mocked at­tempts by Au­gus­tine to de­ny the ex­change.

“They say­ing they don’t know the UNC, they nev­er talk to them—yet you hear them in their stam­mer­ing voice say­ing, ‘Yeah, I want more com­mu­ni­ca­tion,’” he said.

He re­ferred to a fe­male voice al­leged to be from the “yel­low side,” (Per­sad-Bisses­sar), “telling her To­ba­go coun­ter­part she had sent mon­ey for Christ­mas gifts.”

Ac­cord­ing to Duke, the To­ba­go voice ini­tial­ly pre­tend­ed not to know what the woman was talk­ing about.

“She raised her voice say­ing, ‘I send some mon­ey, you for­get?’ He then say, ‘Or hor, or hor… $100,000?’ She didn’t call name—he did. He said Christlyn Moore bring it up.”

Duke ques­tioned the mo­tives be­hind the in­ter­ac­tion—if re­al, and the im­pli­ca­tions for To­ba­go’s po­lit­i­cal fu­ture.

“So when they say when they win the two seats they will go down there and ne­go­ti­ate—with who? We have to ask,” Duke said. “In Trinidad, they say­ing yel­low is the code, in To­ba­go they say­ing blue is the code. I don’t know what code they deal­ing with.”

Duke said the PDP has no se­cret codes. He in­sist­ed his par­ty’s words mean ex­act­ly what they say.

“If you want To­bag­o­ni­ans to de­vel­op and be rich, vote for us,” he added. “If the ball jam, I’ll be Prime Min­is­ter and Cur­tis Dou­glas (PDP To­ba­go West can­di­date) will be a min­is­ter.”