Clay­ton Clarke

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day avoid­ed the me­dia, as a con­tro­ver­sy over who were the in­di­vid­u­als heard in an au­dio clip, dis­cussing hir­ing per­sons un­der the THA to spread pro­pa­gan­da on be­half of the new To­ba­go Peo­ple Par­ty, swirled across the is­land.

The is­sue has cre­at­ed a firestorm on the is­land as per­sons ex­pressed anger that tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey could be used to fund a par­ty ini­tia­tive in an il­le­gal man­ner, with many sug­gest­ing those in­volved would have se­ri­ous ques­tions to an­swer.

Mean­while, oth­er As­sem­bly­men stayed mum when asked to com­ment on the mat­ter, as they con­gre­gat­ed for yes­ter­day’s sit­ting of the As­sem­bly.

In the voice clip, which has been cir­cu­lat­ing for a cou­ple days on so­cial me­dia, one male and one fe­male, who sound like two se­nior THA of­fi­cials, are heard dis­cussing hir­ing per­sons to work to pro­mote po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da through the THA.

The male is heard say­ing, “Cre­ate the plan, the strat­e­gy, what­ev­er. Bring it here. Once you get ap­proval. Once, ... you have 13 peo­ple now. You might just need five or sev­en to do the strict PR. So, you could use some to do some pro­pa­gan­da. Whether they go­ing to use face pro­file, whether they go­ing to use their own pro­file, what­ev­er they do­ing. And what you will have to con­sid­er is find­ing a way to em­ploy peo­ple on the THA side. Could be me­nial.”

The fe­male joins in, “Be­cause they are hap­py to do the thing on the side vol­un­tar­i­ly, once we em­ploy them eight to four in a lu­cra­tive way.”

The male in­ter­jects, “And that will help even with, as I was in­di­cat­ing, with the chal­lenge you raise in how To­bag­o­ni­ans are re­spond­ing to the news in Trinidad that can help in shap­ing the nar­ra­tive. I don’t want us to stop cam­paign­ing and then switch back.”

Guardian Me­dia has tried un­suc­cess­ful­ly to get Au­gus­tine to com­ment on the is­sue since Mon­day. Chief Sec­re­tary Au­gus­tine and Leader of As­sem­bly Busi­ness Zor­isha Hack­ett did not en­ter the Cham­ber by the main en­trance, in­stead opt­ing to use the back en­trance.

At­tempts to get com­ments from As­sem­bly­men as they were on their way in­to As­sem­bly Leg­is­la­ture for yes­ter­day’s Ple­nary Sit­ting al­so bore no re­al suc­cess.

Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Dr Faith B.Yis­rael, Pas­tor Ter­rance Baynes, Ian Pol­lard and coun­cil­lor Cer­ti­ca Williams-Orr did not an­swer ques­tions from re­porters. Nial George, Joel Samp­son and coun­cil­lor Or­lan­do Kerr of­fered no com­ment by the nod of their heads.

Natasha Charles-Pan­tin of­fered, “Any com­ment? I love you all. No com­ments.”

Megan Mor­ri­son said, “Have a won­der­ful day. (This year’s) Her­itage (Fes­ti­val) will be a bumper sea­son.”

Son­ny Craig said he did not lis­ten to record­ing.

“I heard about it. I have to take a lis­ten and see what it is about,” he said.

Trevor James and coun­cil­lor Tashia Bur­ris were ab­sent from the sit­ting.

Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) Wat­son Duke mean­while said he would com­ment un­der the priv­i­lege of the Cham­ber.

How­ev­er, PNM Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris told the me­dia he was con­cerned that no word had come from the two in­di­vid­u­als pur­port­ed to be in the clip.

“We, like the rest of To­ba­go, we are very con­cerned of those au­dio record­ings. As a mat­ter of fact, it is quite strange, pass­ing strange that af­ter 48 hours, we are yet to get a com­ment from the voic­es to whom we all know it sound­ed like in those au­dio record­ings,” Mor­ris said.

“We know those per­sons quite like so­cial me­dia. We know that usu­al­ly, if there are is­sues to be re­spond­ed to, they do that very quick­ly and prompt­ly and it is there­fore pass­ing strange that we are yet to get a com­ment.”

Mor­ris added that he tried to get the mat­ter dis­cussed in yes­ter­day’s Ple­nary Sit­ting but was turned down.

“What I can say is that from the very face of what is in front of us, there is a pri­ma fa­cie case for breach­es in both the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act as well as the Pre­ven­tion of Cor­rup­tion Act. I have raised this mat­ter in the House. We have tabled and sub­mit­ted to the Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer, a mo­tion call­ing for a loss of con­fi­dence in both the Chief Sec­re­tary and the Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion. That mo­tion has been de­nied but, of course, at the very next op­por­tu­ni­ty, we will be bring­ing that mo­tion to the House.”

Mean­while, PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil chair­man An­cil Den­nis said the par­ty will host a me­dia con­fer­ence to­day to ad­dress the mat­ter.

How­ev­er, for­mer Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion head Regi­nald Du­mas was more force­ful in his com­ments on the is­sue.

Speak­ing in an in­ter­view on I95FM yes­ter­day, Du­mas said if the di­a­logue did oc­cur, then the per­sons in­volved should demit of­fice.

“If it can be shown that this con­ver­sa­tion took place be­tween two mem­bers of the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil, then res­ig­na­tions are clear­ly called for. It will go be­yond res­ig­na­tions and call for elec­tions.“

Du­mas added that the al­le­ga­tions be­ing made about the con­ver­sa­tion in the voice note were tan­ta­mount to cor­rup­tion.

“It sug­gest­ed that some arrange­ment was been talked about to use tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey in or­der to ad­vance po­lit­i­cal in­ter­est and I want to hope that I did not hear cor­rect­ly be­cause that would be cor­rup­tion,” Du­mas said.