Farley welcomes Duke’s surprise endorsement

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Chief Sec­re­tary and To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine says he was “sur­prised” by Wat­son Duke’s pub­lic en­dorse­ment of the TPP ahead of the 12 Jan­u­ary THA elec­tion, but he is wel­com­ing the sup­port.

Au­gus­tine re­spond­ed in a so­cial me­dia re­port af­ter Duke an­nounced yes­ter­day he and his re­main­ing PDP sup­port­ers would ral­ly be­hind the TPP. The two men have been po­lit­i­cal­ly di­vid­ed since their 2022 fall­out, which led to the col­lapse of the PDP and the for­ma­tion of the TPP. “Well, I was sur­prised. And I mean, I ap­pre­ci­ate the sup­port and the en­dorse­ment,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said dis­agree­ments in pol­i­tics do not pre­vent col­lab­o­ra­tion once To­ba­go’s in­ter­est is in­volved. “You know, we are say­ing To­ba­go is we, and part of that means from time to time peo­ple dis­agree on some prin­ci­ple mat­ters, but it does not mean when it comes to To­ba­go we can’t find grounds to agree and work to­geth­er.”

Au­gus­tine said he does not take any en­dorse­ment light­ly. “I ap­pre­ci­ate all the sup­port I can get. I don’t take it for grant­ed any sup­port I get from wher­ev­er,” he said. He said his re­sponse was root­ed in ma­tu­ri­ty and lead­er­ship. “You see, when you are vic­to­ri­ous is not the time to be pet­ty about some­thing.”

Au­gus­tine said the TPP won the last THA elec­tion even while Duke was in the race, which he said showed the par­ty could “win with and with­out him.” He added dis­cus­sions about rec­on­cil­ing were held “some time back” and were not tied to the cur­rent cam­paign. “But notwith­stand­ing, there must be a bet­ter way for us to get the kind of To­ba­go we re­al­ly want… and it was just a mat­ter of be­ing gra­cious even in vic­to­ry,” he said.

Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke end­ed months of si­lence on his po­lit­i­cal fu­ture yes­ter­day, pub­licly back­ing Au­gus­tine and the TPP. At a me­dia con­fer­ence at the PDP’s Scar­bor­ough of­fice, Duke urged the small group of sup­port­ers who re­mained with him—his “Spar­tans”—to line up be­hind Au­gus­tine. But he gave no clar­i­ty on whether the PDP in­tends to con­test any seats or whether the PDP name will ap­pear on the bal­lot.

Duke said the move fol­lowed a re­cent phone call with Au­gus­tine. “I want to be clear what I’m say­ing. I said we are sup­port­ing Far­ley. A house di­vid­ed against it­self can­not stand,” he told re­porters.

He framed the de­ci­sion as a re­turn to uni­ty, de­spite the pub­lic split in 2022 over fund­ing for folk per­form­ers who trav­elled to New York. By De­cem­ber that year, al­most the en­tire PDP lead­er­ship, in­clud­ing Au­gus­tine, left and lat­er formed the TPP, leav­ing Duke as the lone PDP as­sem­bly­man.

Duke in­sist­ed the re­la­tion­ship nev­er broke. “Far­ley and I have joined hands to­geth­er in 2016, and there’s no sep­a­ra­tion… I sim­ply say we are one. There’s no sep­a­ra­tion. There is no coali­tion. There’s no amal­ga­ma­tion.” But he did not ex­plain what “one” now means in prac­tice and re­fused to say whether the PDP has can­di­dates pre­pared for Nom­i­na­tion Day.

In­stead, he pledged to mo­bilise vot­ers for the TPP. “Far­ley has our sup­port. We will be go­ing on the high­ways and the by­ways, the nooks and the cran­nies. We will be look­ing for the for­got­ten peo­ple. Those who have been alien­at­ed.”

Au­gus­tine did not say whether Duke will ap­pear on the TPP plat­form or what form the co­op­er­a­tion will take as the elec­tion ap­proach­es.