As it was in the be­gin­ning, Wat­son Duke’s Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots is once again a par­ty of one.

The sit­u­a­tion de­vel­oped yes­ter­day af­ter Duke re­signed as Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary, as his con­tin­u­ing spat with To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine im­plod­ed be­fore those seek­ing to mend ties be­tween the men could achieve their goal.

Quite dis­turbing­ly to those who gave the PDP a man­date to run To­ba­go’s af­fairs in last De­cem­ber’s elec­tion, Duke in­stead chose to be­come an­oth­er mi­nor­i­ty mem­ber of the THA rather than re­solve the is­sues with his for­mer right-hand man.

And so, for a man who formed a par­ty with the lofty goal of of­fer­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans an al­ter­na­tive, Duke will now, un­for­tu­nate­ly, be re­mem­bered as the man who squan­dered mas­sive po­lit­i­cal sup­port in record time.

In less than ten months in of­fice, Duke has put him­self in the THA dog­house, as the once 14-1 ma­jor­i­ty the PDP had is now re­duced to 13-1-1, with the pub­lic still un­sure whether those mem­bers on the gov­ern­ing side will still hold to the PDP ide­ol­o­gy they es­poused on the cam­paign plat­form?

In­stead, Duke now vows to sit across from Au­gus­tine but not with the PNM. What he in­tends to do in that po­si­tion is now any­body’s guess, since if we are to look at the signs, the oth­er 12 PDP mem­bers are in sup­port of Far­ley and Duke can on­ly be a voice of op­po­si­tion in the THA.

Mr Duke’s ef­fec­tive­ly tak­en his ball and gone home. To quote him, “When Wat­son Duke moves away, he car­ries the PDP with him.”

It now re­mains to be seen if Au­gus­tine will form a new par­ty as Duke al­leges.

Duke claims his stance is one where he is fight­ing for the peo­ple of To­ba­go. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, he has now giv­en up the trust and hope hand­ed to him by those same peo­ple.

And of course, To­bag­o­ni­ans are still most­ly in the dark over what caused such a rapid de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween two men who once held out hope a To­ba­go-bred par­ty could guide the af­fairs of the peo­ple on the is­land.

Far from show­ing he could rule with a lev­el-head­ed tem­pera­ment, Duke’s re­gressed to what he knows best from his trade union days. Duke was in a po­si­tion to en­act change. But gov­er­nance isn’t easy and there’s less room for the­atrics when you’re re­strict­ed by pro­to­col and process.

Duke has thus once again shown he is un­able or un­will­ing to face op­po­si­tion, whether it comes from the pub­lic or his par­ty mere­ly want­i­ng him to play by the rules, which is par for the course when in pow­er.

Mr Au­gus­tine, to his cred­it, has shown he is will­ing to de­fend the pub­lic purse and put peo­ple over par­ty. If Duke can show oth­er­wise, we call on him to bring the ev­i­dence against the Chief Sec­re­tary in­stead of mak­ing spu­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions.

Duke’s now an­nounced he will con­test the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion. He’s made no se­cret about his de­sire to be Prime Min­is­ter and has been cam­paign­ing heav­i­ly in Beetham, Sea Lots and Laven­tille hop­ing to wrest pow­er from the PNM’s grip. How­ev­er, giv­en the PDP fi­as­co, John Pub­lic may nev­er ever tru­ly be able to trust Duke with such re­spon­si­bil­i­ty again.