Augustine calls election a fight for Tobago’s future

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Chief Sec­re­tary and To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty, TPP, po­lit­i­cal leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine says next month’s To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion is a fight to keep the is­land “out of the hands of Sa­tan and his chil­dren,” as he asked sup­port­ers to treat Jan­u­ary 12 as the most de­ci­sive vote in mod­ern To­ba­go his­to­ry.

Speak­ing at the Bon Ac­cord and Crown Point TPP meet­ing on Tues­day night, Au­gus­tine framed the elec­tion as a turn­ing point for To­ba­go, call­ing on vot­ers to pro­tect the is­land from forces he said were de­ter­mined to “pull To­ba­go back­wards.”

He warned sup­port­ers not to un­der­es­ti­mate what is at stake. At one point in his al­most hour-long ad­dress, Au­gus­tine said the cam­paign went far be­yond par­ty loy­al­ty.

He told the crowd: “This is not just an elec­tion be­cause we want to win. We need to win to keep To­ba­go out of the hands of Sa­tan and his chil­dren.”

Au­gus­tine pressed the point that the TPP sees the Jan­u­ary vote as a bat­tle over To­ba­go’s dig­ni­ty, iden­ti­ty, and fu­ture di­rec­tion.

Through­out his speech, Au­gus­tine ar­gued that To­ba­go had suf­fered great­ly un­der pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions and that the is­land could not risk “go­ing back.” He de­scribed what he called years of mis­treat­ment, ne­glect, and dis­re­spect, say­ing the TPP had been work­ing to cor­rect long-stand­ing prob­lems across the is­land.

He told sup­port­ers To­ba­go was “now in a place where it is ready to launch for­ward,” and in­sist­ed the TPP was the on­ly po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion equipped to keep the is­land sta­ble in a time of un­cer­tain­ty.