Two po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts say Wat­son Duke’s sud­den sup­port of the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) may not give the par­ty the boost he be­lieves it will. While both agree his en­dorse­ment is sig­nif­i­cant, they warn that the re­al test is not Duke’s words but whether he still has a vot­er base that can in­flu­ence the Jan­u­ary 12 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that Duke’s an­nounce­ment rais­es more ques­tions than an­swers. He be­lieves it is far from clear whether the PDP leader is bring­ing any mean­ing­ful po­lit­i­cal strength back to Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

“But the ques­tion is, how much sup­port are you bring­ing? It is not abun­dant­ly clear that he is bring­ing the kind of sup­port that Far­ley needs. Far­ley may think that the sup­port that he has with­in his own par­ty is good enough,” James said. James added that Au­gus­tine must de­cide whether he even wants Duke on the TPP plat­form.

“He can’t just in­vite him­self, if you fol­low,” he said.

Yes­ter­day, Duke, along with PDP sup­port­ers, gath­ered at the par­ty’s head of­fice in Scar­bor­ough, where he re­vealed his de­ci­sion to sup­port the Far­ley Au­gus­tine-led TPP.

James said Duke’s re­fusal to an­swer ba­sic ques­tions at the news con­fer­ence re­gard­ing the fu­ture of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots and his po­lit­i­cal fu­ture on­ly adds to the con­fu­sion.

“He didn’t an­swer some of the ques­tions. In fact, he said most of the ques­tions,” James said.

He be­lieves that a lack of clar­i­ty leaves the pub­lic un­sure about what Duke ac­tu­al­ly brings to the cam­paign.

“It’s not clear what he means by sup­port, or what role he sees him­self play­ing. We don’t know whether this will even mat­ter un­til Far­ley re­sponds,” he said.

James al­so point­ed out that the PDP’s po­lit­i­cal base has shrunk sharply since the de­par­ture of sev­er­al key fig­ures in 2022. Most of the peo­ple who once sup­port­ed Duke now sit firm­ly with Au­gus­tine’s TPP, mak­ing it un­cer­tain whether Duke’s en­dorse­ment can shift any sig­nif­i­cant num­bers.

“He doesn’t seem to have many sup­port­ers, does he?” James asked.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed agreed that Duke’s re­turn does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly trans­late in­to votes, but he be­lieves even a small pool of sup­port­ers could still in­flu­ence the out­come in close dis­tricts.

“In pol­i­tics, num­bers are very im­por­tant. Vot­er turnout is very crit­i­cal. What­ev­er re­main­der of sup­port, re­main­ing sup­port, that the PDP pos­sess­es that can add to the num­bers that ex­ist­ed in 2021, can on­ly be some­thing that must be wel­comed,” Mo­hammed said.

Mo­hammed said Duke’s move sig­nals an at­tempt to sta­bilise the op­po­si­tion space in To­ba­go and re­build some uni­ty be­fore the poll. He said the TPP should ac­cept the en­dorse­ment, even if the po­lit­i­cal val­ue is un­cer­tain.

“I think it’s about time the dif­fer­ences be­tween the PDP and the TPP be set­tled,” he said.

“I wel­come the state­ments… his po­si­tion with re­gard to what his in­ten­tions are. The re­sponse by the TPP should sim­ply be: ‘Thank you for your sup­port, and we look for­ward to work­ing to­geth­er in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of To­ba­go,’” he said.

But Mo­hammed al­so said that Duke may ex­pect some­thing in re­turn.

“That’s the game of pol­i­tics. It is al­ways a give and take. One doesn’t sim­ply de­cide to not con­test an elec­tion or step away from ac­tive pol­i­tics with­out a price be­ing paid for it,” Mo­hammed said.

He said Duke’s an­nounce­ment re­flects both po­lit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion and the re­al­i­ty that the PNM re­mains the TPP’s main op­po­nent in the up­com­ing race.

“There has to be a com­bined ef­fort and in that re­gard, uni­ty—even if it is frag­ile—mat­ters,” he said.