ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke claims the peo­ple of To­ba­go didn’t vote for the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) in the last gen­er­al elec­tion, but in­stead for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

He said this was the re­al rea­son the PDP lost in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“Peo­ple did not vote for TPP. That was a sym­bol that they chose to recog­nise. But per­sons vot­ed for the UNC and the cock­tail of ben­e­fits that they would have put out to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Duke claimed. “They were just a fig­ure face here, that was just a face.”

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Duke—whose par­ty failed to win the To­ba­go East and West seats—claimed the TPP was be­ing in­flu­enced by the UNC.

“It was Far­ley who led the cam­paign, and his cam­paign was more bac­cha­nal and stu­pid talk, not any­thing of sense to make To­ba­go dream, right? And I’m say­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans are not of that na­ture, but they’ll be look­ing at the gi­ant in Trinidad. The gi­ant was PNM and UNC, and they vot­ed for the UNC. I’m not ashamed to say that peo­ple vot­ed for the par­ty they think that rep­re­sent­ed the UNC, and that was the blue par­ty.”

Mean­while, Duke said he won’t be en­gag­ing in “the­atrics” ahead of the up­com­ing To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions.

While he’s not con­firm­ing his par­tic­i­pa­tion just yet, he’s warn­ing all con­tenders that if he steps in, the PDP will be ready.

“We cre­ate our own path, and we trod our own path, and we have been do­ing that,” Duke said.

He was, how­ev­er, shy when asked if the par­ty would con­test the up­com­ing THA elec­tions.

“It’s too ear­ly to say. You know, the games be­gin when the peo­ple line up at the start­ing line. The bell has not been rung, the game has not been called out. So I’m not go­ing to in­form any­one now that Duke is go­ing to par­tic­i­pate. But I’m a politi­cian. I have a po­lit­i­cal par­ty, and I have views that rep­re­sent the peo­ple of To­ba­go, that I con­tin­ue to es­pouse and cham­pi­on for them.”

De­spite oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties al­ready screen­ing can­di­dates, Duke said that shouldn’t be mis­tak­en as a sign that the PDP is be­hind.

“We’re not go­ing to try to en­gage in the­atrics that we are screen­ing to­day for Ply­mouth, we are screen­ing to­day for Buc­coo. We don’t have to do stretch­es on the field.”