Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke says he is sor­ry for us­ing a racial slur on Mon­day.

Duke’s apol­o­gy came dur­ing a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day evening at his of­fice.

The PSA pres­i­dent’s re­marks sparked crit­i­cisms af­ter he used the N-word to de­scribe per­sons of African de­scent as he urged them not to vote dur­ing the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

“I called up­on Afro-Trini­bag­o­ni­ans to not vote for the PNM that was qual­i­fied we felt that we were bad­ly treat­ed and there­fore if the gov­ern­ment does not set­tle ne­go­ti­a­tions we were not go­ing to vote. Be­ing a mas­ter of “the art form of lan­guage, we had to use ex­treme lan­guage to get the at­ten­tion of the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

He said, “By no means have I or the peo­ple I rep­re­sent in the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion sees one race above the oth­er race, we be­lieve in equal­i­ty and we don’t be­lieve in us­ing deroga­to­ry lan­guage to re­fer to any race and while the “N” word is used in mul­ti­ple ap­pli­ca­tions, the on­ly ap­pli­ca­tion that per­sons from the op­pos­ing side, those per­sons who were very an­tag­o­nis­tic, the on­ly po­si­tion they saw were Wat­son us­ing a racial slur and be­lit­tling African males.”

The PSA pres­i­dent said he con­sid­ers him­self a true African and he can date his roots back to his great-grand­fa­ther back in Africa and he un­der­stands his African roots.

Duke added in no way was he den­i­grat­ing the African race in this coun­try and he is sor­ry and apolo­getic for us­ing the “N” word.

“To those on the red side and yel­low side, I want to say sor­ry to them that they missed my mes­sage and I am sor­ry that you took ad­van­tage of one word and cast the mes­sage aside,” Duke said.

He con­tin­ued, “I wish to re­state my mes­sage again, which is that if pub­lic of­fi­cers don’t re­ceive mon­ey by De­cem­ber 2nd the date of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions, the PSA will be launch­ing a no vote cam­paign.”

But in the mid­dle of his apol­o­gy, he al­so dropped a bomb­shell, say­ing he will not be step­ping down as PSA leader come No­vem­ber 30.

A few months ago, Duke told the me­dia that he was step­ping down to pur­sue his ca­reer in full-time pol­i­tics and gave the No­vem­ber dead­line.

He re­vealed he will not be step­ping down as yet and did not give an­oth­er date for his ex­it.

“I am step­ping down soon but not No­vem­ber 30th and I have no rea­son to give for that I am Pres­i­dent and I am the le­git­i­mate pres­i­dent, he said.

“I am ready for PSA elec­tions right now and I nev­er lost an elec­tion”, the PSA Pres­i­dent said, “When the elec­tions are called it’s not up to me but the mem­ber­ship”.

In the mean­time, the PSA pres­i­dent said he is call­ing on all his mem­bers to join him on his no vote cam­paign and cast away and burn polling cards.

He said the rea­son to do this is that the PNM gov­ern­ment has be­trayed pub­lic of­fi­cers.

Duke re­spond­ed to a re­lease is­sued by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.

“I want to say to my mem­bers that the words in the re­lease is not true”, he said, “ I am call­ing up­on the Prime Min­is­ter to pro­duce the records that the gov­ern­ment paid 60 bil­lion to pub­lic of­fi­cers in all cat­e­gories. Up to now Civ­il Avi­a­tion has not been paid, NP work­ers and T & TEC work­ers have not been paid, who you have been paid with this 60 mil­lion and if the gov­ern­ment can­not show the records they should re­tract the state­ment and the Prime Min­is­ter should call the elec­tions”, Duke said.

He said his union will pro­duce a list of those who were paid in 2016 and those who were not.

The PSA ne­go­ti­a­tions are cur­rent­ly be­fore the Cab­i­net.