Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh 

am­bi­ka.ja­gas­sars­ingh@guardian.co.tt 

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Far­ley Au­gus­tine has stat­ed that he in­tends to re­view the roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary of THA, Wat­son Duke. 

This pro­ceeds Duke’s call on Au­gus­tine to pro­vide mon­e­tary as­sis­tance to mem­bers of the Rox­bor­ough Folk Per­form­ers who are cur­rent­ly lo­cat­ed in New York and are in need of funds for ba­sic ameni­ties. 

Duke is the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) which is the rul­ing par­ty in To­ba­go.

Au­gus­tine, the deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty, was giv­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to lead the THA as Chief Sec­re­tary, while Duke took the role of Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary.

Au­gus­tine out­lined the cur­rent re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary as mat­ters of in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal re­la­tions, di­as­po­ra re­la­tions, for­eign di­rect in­vest­ments, a pol­i­cy mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion unit as well as an en­er­gy bor­ough along with ad­min­is­tra­tive sup­port. 

He stat­ed that he will be­gin re­view­ing all of those re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as­signed to Duke’s po­si­tion to en­sure that they are in line with the THA’s man­date in or­der to make To­ba­go reach its true po­ten­tial. 

The Chief Sec­re­tary af­firmed that as the on­ly per­son au­tho­rized by To­ba­go’s law, it was his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to as­sign du­ties to his sec­re­taries. 

“I will re­view those re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as­signed to him and by to­mor­row I will let you know what re­spon­si­bil­i­ties he will have if any at all,” he said. 

In a re­sponse to Far­ley’s state­ments, Duke took to his so­cial me­dia page and stat­ed that this was a di­rect threat against him.  

“To­day my broth­er has com­menced a po­lit­i­cal war against his Po­lit­i­cal Leader which he can­not win,” added Duke.  

“Yes­ter­day (Sep­tem­ber 7) twen­ty-sev­en per­sons were chal­lenged with food and in spite of what was be­ing said, the an­swer was food, and my con­cern was how do we feed these To­bag­o­ni­ans on a dai­ly ba­sis un­til they have to take their ex­it.” 

Duke said he called up­on the THA to fix the mat­ter ex­pe­di­tious­ly to look af­ter these strand­ed To­bag­o­ni­ans. 

He called the re­view of his func­tions “laugh­able” and “ridicu­lous” and is once again call­ing on Au­gus­tine to “hum­ble him­self, be­fore he makes an­oth­er fool­ish move that he will re­gret.” 

Duke end­ed his speech by ask­ing Au­gus­tine to let them sort the is­sue out to­geth­er.

“Let’s fix this, let us change your name from liar Far­ley to fix this Far­ley,” he said.