Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) Wat­son Duke said he is re­launch­ing the par­ty in 2024 in prepa­ra­tion for the gen­er­al elec­tion and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions the fol­low­ing year.

Duke promised his par­ty mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in To­ba­go, that the new PDP ex­ec­u­tive team would be care­ful­ly hand-cho­sen, ex­pe­ri­enced, pas­sion­ate, re­li­able, peo­ple-cen­tred and trust­wor­thy.

“Some­time next year we would like to re­launch our cam­paign for 2025 for the na­tion­al elec­tion and the THA elec­tions. In re­launch­ing those cam­paigns we will be al­most strength­en­ing the PDP,” he said

Duke al­so said he plans to start a po­lit­i­cal move­ment based on pas­sion and en­thu­si­asm to re­build the PDP’s rep­u­ta­tion and the re­la­tion­ship it had with To­bag­o­ni­ans.

“I in­tend to present a whole new slate that will be dif­fer­ent from those I se­lect­ed. I have learned what not to se­lect and that is some­thing To­ba­go will be wait­ing to see. It will be a very strong team, not an OJT team but a team that will be ready to be held ac­count­able from day one,” he ex­plained.

Duke re­signed from the THA ex­ec­u­tive in Sep­tem­ber 2022 af­ter a pub­lic fall­out with Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine. Weeks lat­er, the en­tire THA ex­ec­u­tive re­signed from the par­ty.

He ex­pressed re­gret at the fall out with the THA ex­ec­u­tive less than a year af­ter the par­ty won 15-1 against the PNM in the 2021 THA elec­tion and said there will now be a stricter vet­ting process for can­di­dates in­ter­est­ed in rep­re­sent­ing the PDP on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form.

“I promised to stir it up years ago and when I said that I mean to re­move dead­beat politi­cians, those who are not on the ground and far off from hu­man­i­ty. We should have been on the ground and among the peo­ple, work­ing to lift the peo­ple and put them on a pedestal. We, the THA, should have been more hands-on politi­cians,” Duke said.

“Peo­ple do not feel to­day is worse off be­cause there are the same old po­lit­i­cal tricks. But we will stir it up in the next elec­tion.”