Shas­tri Boodan

Guardian Me­dia Cor­re­spon­dent

PDP leader Wat­son Duke is con­fi­dent that his par­ty will cap­ture the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion in the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions.

Duke spoke with his sup­port­ers on Mon­day af­ter­noon fol­low­ing a walk from King’s Bay, De­laford to Rox­bor­ough, To­ba­go.

Duke said the peo­ple of Port-of-Spain are join­ing forces to boot out the PNM.

He said, “Port-of-Spain is com­ing to­geth­er. The so-called gangs in Port-of-Spain are com­ing to­geth­er. I have spo­ken to all of the lead­ers, all of them, and we have de­cent and con­struc­tive con­ver­sa­tions, and all of them want to end the vi­o­lence. They want to end the war, they want peace, they want de­vel­op­ment, they want sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and they know that the PDP will in­tro­duce that.”

Duke said the PDP would al­so con­test seats in oth­er mu­nic­i­pal bod­ies.

“Be­tween now and Au­gust you will see me in Trinidad, you will see the large march­es that we will be lead­ing down there. You will know that the rev­o­lu­tion has tak­en root in Trinidad be­cause I have de­cid­ed that Trinidad must be part of the T&T suc­cess sto­ry be­cause To­ba­go can­not cre­ate a T&T suc­cess sto­ry. We need both Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Duke said pol­i­tics in Trinidad is de­fined by the ma­jor racial groups in Trinidad.

How­ev­er, Duke said his par­ty’s strength in Trinidad would come from the poor hav­ing been mar­gin­alised and on­ly used for votes by Trinidad’s ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties. He said, “The poor peo­ple run through­out the African and East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ties, it is these poor peo­ple that the PDP is reach­ing out to.”

Duke said he has no prob­lem join­ing with any par­ty in To­ba­go that shares the same ideals that To­ba­go must rise.

Duke was greet­ed in Rox­bor­ough by Ar­cia Lin­dow and Star­la Miller, two fe­male pro­test­ers who bore plac­ards stat­ing that he had sold out to the PNM and had for­got­ten the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

Lin­dow tried to con­front Duke as he passed the boat­yard but he blew her kiss­es.

Lat­er, in his ad­dress, Duke said peo­ple are now sell­ing out “For a lit­tle piece of mon­ey, for a lit­tle shop, for a lit­tle con­tract.”

Duke said the PDP’s fight is for equal­i­ty and fair­ness for all.

He said, “ The fight to­day is for those who are cack­ling on the side across there, we will fight for them. The fight to­day is shame­ful for Far­ley, the pea­cock and his friends. We will fight for them, we will fight for all of them, be­cause un­less all of us in To­ba­go are free, none of us is free.

He claimed the THA was mort­gag­ing the fu­ture of To­ba­go to con­trac­tors from Trinidad while ne­glect­ing “starv­ing” To­bag­on­ian con­trac­tors.

Duke re­it­er­at­ed that le­gal ac­tion would be tak­en against mem­bers of the THA for “idle words.”

He said, “I am the el­e­ment of sur­prise to­day be­cause they thought I had for­got­ten To­ba­go, they thought To­ba­go was aban­doned. They thought I had left To­ba­go over to Ju­das and the 12 dis­ci­ples, but I came to let To­ba­go know to­day that the things we have fought for since 2015 now re­main unchecked.”