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Saturday, February 22, 2025

Vanus James writes off Farley’s THA, Duke’s PDP

by

Gail Alexander
623 days ago
20230609
Tobago economist Dr Vanus James

Tobago economist Dr Vanus James

THA INFO DEPT

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

To­ba­go econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James, who once cam­paigned for the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, is now cam­paign­ing for a new gov­er­nance sys­tem in the THA.

And if that means cam­paign­ing against them, “so be it,” James said yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, James point­ed out that he’d nev­er been a mem­ber of any par­ty but once vig­or­ous­ly cam­paigned for the PDP and ad­vised them. Now he’s slam­ming both the Au­gus­tine-led THA and PDP leader Wat­son Duke, whose chances to re­turn to gov­er­nance on the is­land, he said, are over.

Speak­ing as a con­cerned To­bag­on­ian who wants the best for the is­land and coun­try, James took is­sue with the con­tro­ver­sial voice note re­cent­ly leaked on so­cial me­dia, in which in­di­vid­u­als dis­cussed hir­ing per­sons un­der the THA to al­leged­ly spread pro­pa­gan­da on be­half of the new To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty.

Au­gus­tine and his ex­ec­u­tive have failed to ad­dress the mat­ter pub­licly since it was put in­to the pub­lic do­main three weeks ago, al­though it has caused a firestorm in To­ba­go and na­tion­al­ly.

Frown­ing on the THA lead­ers’ long­stand­ing si­lence on the is­sue, James said, “The sit­u­a­tion is straight­for­ward. There are two peo­ple in To­ba­go who knows if it’s an au­then­tic voice note: Far­ley and Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ette.

“Since they know and are such im­por­tant THA mem­bers, they ought to tell To­bag­o­ni­ans if it’s au­then­tic or not, they ought to ex­plain and say what they’re try­ing to do as far as they know. As the law pro­vides, they can be guilty with ex­pla­na­tions. This com­plete si­lence is cost­ing them the last ves­tiges of their cred­i­bil­i­ty.”

But James said he wasn’t among those who want an im­me­di­ate THA elec­tion, since To­ba­go must in­stead first fight for a changed sys­tem of gov­er­nance to pre­vent good peo­ple en­ter­ing the sys­tem from be­com­ing “dev­ils” lat­er.

“We need a sys­tem to al­low To­bag­o­ni­ans to su­per­vise their gov­ern­ment prop­er­ly and pre­vent any­one else whom they put in pow­er to be­have this way.”

James added that au­ton­o­my is a big part of the process, as it’s re­quired for To­ba­go to make laws (which it cur­rent­ly can’t do) and es­pe­cial­ly for non-ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers to reg­u­late the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil’s be­hav­iour.

”We need to move in this di­rec­tion be­fore any THA elec­tion to al­low things to op­er­ate bet­ter,” James said, adding he’s cam­paign­ing ac­tive­ly to change the sys­tem to­wards im­prove­ments and re­move what ob­tains in THA now.

On if he’ll sup­port the PDP or Au­gus­tine in the next elec­tion, James said the Au­gus­tine ad­min­is­tra­tion has lost cred­i­bil­i­ty and he didn’t think there’s any come­back for them, es­pe­cial­ly since they had demon­strat­ed “a lot of in­com­pe­tence.”

He al­so felt there’s no chance of Duke re­turn­ing as a po­lit­i­cal force in To­ba­go.

“He’s lost his … po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tion,” James added.

James said there was no go­ing back to the PNM, how­ev­er, as To­bag­o­ni­ans couldn’t sup­port a par­ty that wasn’t open to de­mo­c­ra­t­ic struc­tures for peo­ple to prac­tice ful­ly in the par­ty and wasn’t will­ing to change To­ba­go’s gov­er­nance sys­tem to al­low de­ci­sion-mak­ing in the way re­quired.

“Peo­ple will go nowhere re­turn­ing to PNM or stay­ing with Far­ley and com­pa­ny,” James said.

Say­ing he’s cam­paigned all his life for a To­ba­go par­ty gen­uine­ly in­ter­est­ed in build­ing for growth, James added that it’s time for To­bag­o­ni­ans to move on and do that now and for se­ri­ous steps to­wards progress on that, “Both in Trinidad, as well as To­ba­go.”

Say­ing he talks to peo­ple con­tin­u­ous­ly on chang­ing the sys­tem, James said, “That’s first and fore­most—chang­ing it so no one else will be­have the way they’re be­hav­ing. And if they’re the tar­get of my cam­paign – so be it.”


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