RYAN BA­CHOO

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader, Wat­son Duke, is open to me­di­a­tion and po­ten­tial­ly mend­ing his bro­ken re­la­tion­ship with To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary, Far­ley Au­gus­tine.

He re­vealed this while on Free­dom 106.5fm on Mon­day in a wide-rang­ing in­ter­view which in­clud­ed field­ing phone calls from the pub­lic.

On De­cem­ber 5, all the mem­bers of the THA Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil re­signed from the (PDP) with Chief Sec­re­tary Au­gus­tine mak­ing the rev­e­la­tion by way of a res­ig­na­tion let­ter and a state­ment.

Yes­ter­day, Duke said he has giv­en March as a time­line to legal­ly chal­lenge the 13 res­ig­na­tions.

He said he is will­ing to go all the way to Privy Coun­cil if nec­es­sary. Duke says the THA must look to the con­sti­tu­tion and House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for guid­ance.

How­ev­er, Duke al­so said he re­mains open to di­a­logue with his for­mer deputy po­lit­i­cal leader.

He told Free­dom 106.5, “The truth is I haven’t giv­en up on it but I do not ex­pect it to hap­pen. A man is not a man un­less you can change his mind. If you can’t change your mind then you are God. God is the on­ly one who changes not. So a man ought to change his mind. A man ought to be rea­son­able. A man ought to look at any­thing that is ben­e­fi­cial to his peo­ple in To­ba­go and in Trinidad but such has not pre­sent­ed it­self and I con­tin­ue to hold my­self out and avail­able for such dis­cus­sions, and if they do take place, we will let the pub­lic know what the con­tents of those dis­cus­sions are and what is on the ta­ble for de­ci­sion mak­ing.”

Duke said To­bag­o­ni­ans feel cheat­ed as a re­sult of the 13 res­ig­na­tions and con­firmed he in­tends to take the post of Chief Sec­re­tary if To­ba­go goes back to the polls and he is suc­cess­ful.

The PDP leader says the is­land must fix its rev­enue gen­er­a­tion as a mat­ter of ur­gency with To­ba­go mak­ing $20 mil­lion per year but Duke said it costs $2.5bil­lion to run the af­fairs of the is­land.

He added that he is not against a ma­jor ho­tel in­vest­ing in the is­land.

Duke added, “I am not against San­dals com­ing to To­ba­go... We don’t want to give any­one land, build the ho­tel and then pay you to come and run the ho­tel for us. That is ab­solute rub­bish. It does not take place in a pro­gres­sive coun­try. We are of the mind­set that those that want to in­vest in our coun­try should do so but it should be mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fit­ing.”