Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is be­ing ac­cused of dis­re­spect­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans af­ter she dis­missed com­ments made by Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, who said that had the de­ci­sion rest­ed with him, he would have re­ject­ed the in­stal­la­tion of the mil­i­tary radar and de­nied Unit­ed States mil­i­tary air­craft ac­cess to To­ba­go’s air­ports.

When the Prime Min­is­ter was asked for her com­ment fol­low­ing Au­gus­tine’s ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, where he said if the is­land had au­ton­o­my, he would have said no to the US mil­i­tary equip­ment and as­sets, Per­sad-Bisses­sar replied, “Well, Far­ley does not have his way, does he? He is en­ti­tled to his opin­ion; I am not of that opin­ion.”

The Prime Min­is­ter went on to say that the radar has boost­ed this coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as­sets.

But the PNM’s An­cil Den­nis told Guardian Me­dia the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­sponse showed con­tempt for the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary.

“The Prime Min­is­ter’s re­sponse to me was quite dis­re­spect­ful, sug­gest­ing that Far­ley doesn’t have his way. And the fact that this was done on this is­land with­out con­sul­ta­tion, with­out even dis­cus­sion with the Chief Sec­re­tary, nor the peo­ple of To­ba­go, points to a high lev­el of dis­re­spect and dis­re­gard by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment for the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary.”

The for­mer chief sec­re­tary added, “And while I cur­rent­ly don’t hold the of­fice, I have ut­most re­spect for that of­fice, be­cause the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is a body de­vel­oped in To­ba­go for To­bag­o­ni­ans, by To­ba­go Unions. The late, great ANR Robin­son was one of the ma­jor pi­o­neers of this. And it’s re­al­ly about To­ba­go hav­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our own af­fairs here in To­ba­go.”

Mean­while, Dr Denise Tsoifatt-An­gus, the po­lit­i­cal leader of the In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance, shared sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments.

“The way it was done was a dis­re­spect to the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary. And once you’ve dis­re­spect­ed the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary, you’ve dis­re­spect­ed the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

How­ev­er, she be­lieves Au­gus­tine brought this on­to him­self.

“Where Far­ley Au­gus­tine lost his way is by com­ing out and de­fend­ing the ac­tions of the Prime Min­is­ter in­stead of stand­ing up and say­ing it was a dis­re­spect from the first out­set and we will not ac­cept that. He would have got­ten the peo­ple on his side for that. In­stead, he came out and said, Well, the Prime Min­is­ter is do­ing her best and what­not, what­not. No, there’s a lev­el of dis­re­spect that you don’t ac­cept.

“If this was the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, he would not have ac­cept­ed it. And what the peo­ple of To­ba­go ex­pect­ed Far­ley to do is get up and stand up like a full man, like he says he is, and de­mand an apol­o­gy and de­mand prop­er con­sul­ta­tion for the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary.”

Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.