Clay­ton Clarke

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

For­mer To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Ho­choy Charles says he is ea­ger­ly wait­ing on Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine’s ex­pla­na­tion of the au­dio record­ing pur­port­ed­ly in­volv­ing two THA ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers.

In the au­dio clip, which was leaked on­line three weeks ago, two of­fi­cials be­lieved to be THA ex­ec­u­tives are heard dis­cussing hir­ing per­sons full-time through the THA to spread pro­pa­gan­da on be­half of the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty.

Au­gus­tine has so far not con­firmed whose voic­es are on the clip but has said he has noth­ing to fear about it and promised to ad­dress the mat­ter be­fore the end of this week.

Asked to com­ment on the con­tin­u­ing fi­as­co on I95FM yes­ter­day, Charles said, “I have avoid­ed speak­ing on it as I have not got­ten word from the Chief Sec­re­tary be­cause I know he promised he is go­ing to do some­thing and I heard him promise that he is go­ing to do some­thing, I think I heard him say he planned to speak on it some­time be­fore the end of this week.”

Charles con­tend­ed, how­ev­er, that the record­ing could ac­tu­al­ly be as old as a year.

“My in­for­ma­tion is, and I didn’t want to get in­volved in this, is that that tape is over one year old. Is a year and some­thing when they just got in­to of­fice. I am say­ing this be­cause I asked him and he was prepar­ing some­thing and I have not got that in­for­ma­tion yet but the tape is over one year old.”

He fur­ther claimed that the Au­gus­tine-led ad­min­is­tra­tion would have al­so met per­sons hired by the out­go­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment THA to en­gage in sim­i­lar po­lit­i­cal agen­das as was fea­tured in the au­dio clip.

“I know that they went in there and I can tell you some­thing more, in­clud­ing, peo­ple who have been em­ployed by the past ad­min­is­tra­tion as co­or­di­na­tors to do some work which was do­ing just what the tape says they were plan­ning to do.”

Charles is hop­ing that when Au­gus­tine gives the promised de­tails on the record­ing, he will say if what was pro­posed was in fact ac­tu­al­ly achieved.

“So that in­for­ma­tion, we want to know whether they were plan­ning this strat­e­gy based on what they met in of­fice, where peo­ple were em­ployed, paid with tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey to do pro­pa­gan­da work all over the place and whether they think it was le­git­i­mate. So, that is why I want to hear from him. If they ac­tion it, that is an­oth­er ques­tion. We have a lot of sto­ries if they ac­tion it. If they didn’t ac­tion, I don’t have any­thing to an­swer.”

Charles, who was the first Chief Sec­re­tary of the THA, sur­pris­ing­ly said he was fair­ly sure about who one of the voic­es in the record­ing was.

“I know he is go­ing to say it is his voice. I am al­most sure he is go­ing to say it is his voice,” he said in an­tic­i­pa­tion of Au­gus­tine’s state­ment.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact PDP leader Wat­son Duke for a com­ment on the mat­ter but got no re­sponse.