Loyse Vin­cent

Far­ley Au­gus­tine says a threat is­sued by the PDP Po­lit­i­cal Leader Wat­son Duke to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al needs to be tak­en in con­text.

Au­gus­tine co-host­ed a press con­fer­ence at the par­ty’s head­quar­ters in Scar­bor­ough yes­ter­day where he was asked if he felt state­ments made by Wat­son Duke would af­fect the out­come of next Mon­day’s THA elec­tions.

Dur­ing a com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing in Black Rock on Mon­day night Duke said he heard the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al was com­ing to To­ba­go with her lawyer to ad­dress the 2016 Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port.

He warned the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al to stay out of To­ba­go Pol­i­tics or else he would make her life a liv­ing hell. The PSA Pres­i­dent promised to shut down the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s de­part­ment if she came to To­ba­go and got in­volved. Au­gus­tine said every­thing has to be tak­en in­to con­text

“This is a con­ver­sa­tion I have had with Mr Duke one of the things he is op­er­at­ing on is that in­for­ma­tion that they were try­ing to get the au­di­tor gen­er­al to come to To­ba­go to at­ten­u­ate the grav­i­ty of her re­port so that she can walk back her find­ings po­lit­i­cal­ly so his sig­nal was just a po­lit­i­cal sig­nal.”

Au­gus­tine said he, how­ev­er, would wel­come the au­di­tor gen­er­al’s vis­it to the is­land as cur­rent­ly has in his pos­ses­sions doc­u­ments which may com­plete her au­dit

“ We do wel­come the au­di­tor gen­er­al be­cause there are some doc­u­ments that she could not find so that we could hand de­liv­er those doc­u­ments that she needs to see so that she can have an in­formed opin­ion on the fi­nan­cials of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly,” he said.

Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Lau­rel­ly Pu­jadas pre­sent­ed the THA a Dis­claimer of Opin­ion rat­ing for 2015.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, she was not able to pro­vide suf­fi­cient ap­pro­pri­ate au­dit ev­i­dence a ba­sis for an au­dit opin­ion.

The re­port fol­lows a man­age­ment let­ter which high­light­ed sev­er­al in­con­sis­ten­cies for the fi­nan­cial year, in­clud­ing $3.5 mil­lion dol­lars spent on a zip line project that nev­er ma­te­ri­al­ized.

This is not the first time Au­gus­tine is be­ing asked to jus­ti­fy state­ments made by Wat­son Duke on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form. A few days be­fore the 2010 Gen­er­al Elec­tions while speak­ing on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form, Wat­son Duke said he would take le­gal ac­tion against two “dut­ty, stink­ing girls” - a To­ba­go woman and her at­tor­ney - for defama­tion of char­ac­ter.

The PDPD Po­lit­i­cal Leader, who re­ferred to the fe­males by name, ac­cused them of slan­der­ing his name on so­cial me­dia.

Fol­low­ing the PDP’s de­feat at the polls Au­gus­tine was sub­se­quent­ly asked to com­ment on the state­ment made by Duke, and is­sued an apol­o­gy.

This, how­ev­er , did not sit well with Duke who re­spond­ed by say­ing, “I can­not fault the As­sem­bly­man for do­ing what he thought was right in the mo­ment...I have no prob­lem with that. How­ev­er, Wat­son Duke al­ways speaks for him­self.”

He said no­body speaks for him ex­cept his lawyer who he said would have a day to speak for him in court.