Shamfa questions Farley on Tobago radar

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

For­mer To­ba­go West MP Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis is ques­tion­ing why Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has not told the Prime Min­is­ter ex­act­ly how he feels about the US mil­i­tary radar in To­ba­go air­port and ex­act­ly where To­bag­o­ni­ans think she should put it.

Cud­joe-Lewis raised the is­sue while ad­dress­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment po­lit­i­cal meet­ing, where she ac­cused the Chief Sec­re­tary of re­main­ing silent on the radar is­sue while To­ba­go faces po­ten­tial se­cu­ri­ty risks.

She di­rect­ly chal­lenged the Chief Sec­re­tary’s si­lence on the mat­ter.

“Why he can’t tell Kam­la ex­act­ly where to put the radar?” she asked. “Why he scared now?”

She ques­tioned Au­gus­tine’s un­will­ing­ness to chal­lenge the Prime Min­is­ter, point­ing out that he pre­vi­ous­ly had no dif­fi­cul­ty pub­licly crit­i­cis­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“Just months ago they were call­ing Row­ley name and bark­ing at the PNM,” Cud­joe-Lewis said.

Cud­joe-Lewis ar­gued that the in­stal­la­tion of the radar places To­ba­go at risk, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en on­go­ing re­gion­al ten­sions.

“You don’t put a tar­get on To­ba­go and ex­pect us to stay qui­et,” she said.