Duke throws support behind Farley in THA elections

PDP po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke has con­firmed his sup­port for Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, leader of the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP), ahead of the Jan­u­ary 12 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence at the PDP head­quar­ters at Port Mall this morn­ing, Duke ac­knowl­edged what he de­scribed as Au­gus­tine’s short­com­ings but em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of fam­i­ly and sol­i­dar­i­ty.

“Be­cause at the end of the day, fam­i­ly is fam­i­ly,” Duke said. “As bad as Far­ley is, doesn’t an­swer your phone some­times, tell you one thing and do the next thing some­times, he’s still fam­i­ly. We have to stick to­geth­er un­til we get it right. So I’ve said to him when he called me re­cent­ly, I said, boy, look, I’m here. (0:42) Let me sleep on it.I slept on it. I rolled on it, I prayed on it. But I said, you can­not aban­don fam­i­ly un­der no cir­cum­stances. So I’m here to tell the pub­lic to­day that Far­ley has my sup­port.”

Duke said he was speak­ing on be­half of PDP Spar­tans and oth­ers in the au­di­ence. “Far­ley has our sup­port. We will be go­ing in the high­ways and the by­ways, the nooks and the cran­nies. We will be look­ing for the for­got­ten peo­ple, those who have been alien­at­ed, those who have been mar­gin­alised and side­lined and been made to lose their salti­ness. I’m go­ing to let them know ye are the salt of the earth. And you can­not lose your salti­ness now. Speak up for your­self. Look out for us. Be­cause from this day on­ward, we have a mis­sion.”

He warned against re­turn­ing the PNM to pow­er in To­ba­go. “Hav­ing been out of of­fice for the first four years, they are com­ing to tell us put To­ba­go first,” Duke said.

This an­nounce­ment comes a short while ago, amid grow­ing in­ter­est in the PDP and TPP’s po­si­tions ahead of the Jan­u­ary 12 THA elec­tions.

In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Duke re­signed im­me­di­ate­ly from the post of Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly. At that time he has said he will sit on the op­po­site side of the THA, de­scrib­ing the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive as a group of “spine­less jel­ly­fish”, “nau­se­at­ing” and “im­posters.”

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