Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Far­ley Au­gus­tine has chal­lenged Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Wat­son Duke to move a mo­tion of no-con­fi­dence to re­move him from the po­si­tion of Chief Sec­re­tary.

How­ev­er, he said if Duke fails, "we will prompt­ly re­move him".

Speak­ing to Dale Enoch and Tony Lee on the i95.5FM Morn­ing Show this morn­ing, Au­gus­tine said Duke has un­til Thurs­day to file the mo­tion, which is the pro­ce­dur­al time­frame for the next sit­ting of the As­sem­bly on Sep­tem­ber 22.

"I will re­move the par­lia­men­tary whip and let him en­ter a mo­tion of no-con­fi­dence in me. Go right ahead, Mr Duke. Go right ahead. But if he en­ters it and is un­suc­cess­ful, I will de­mand his re­moval im­me­di­ate­ly," he said.

Au­gus­tine not­ed that there are on­ly two po­si­tions with­in the THA that must be re­moved by a vote - the po­si­tions of Chief Sec­re­tary and Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary.

He said from the feed­back he has been re­ceiv­ing, many To­bag­ni­ans are on the side of the 'As­sem­bly' and not on Duke's side.

He re­ferred to a fu­ner­al he re­cent­ly at­tend­ed in which peo­ple were telling him to stay strong, of­fer­ing prayers on his be­half and ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment in his con­duct.

Au­gus­tine had promised to re­view Duke's re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in the THA.

Yes­ter­day he said he has al­ready met with Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) As­sem­bly­men on the re­view and that the on­ly rea­son it has not yet been made pub­lic was that he pref­ered to first­ly give Duke an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard.

He has sched­uled a meet­ing with the THA ex­ec­u­tive to­mor­row, in­clud­ing Duke, at which point he in­tends to dis­cuss his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

He told his in­ter­view­ers that if they are un­able to meet with Duke then the mem­bers will have "to move with­out him".

"One will ap­pre­ci­ate it will not just be Far­ley's po­si­tion but the po­si­tion of the gov­ern­ment of To­ba­go," he said.

Au­gus­tine said be­ing re­moved as deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the PDP was in­con­se­quen­tial to the work­ing of the as­sem­bly and that he nev­er chal­lenged the de­ci­sion made by Duke who is the PDP's po­lit­i­cal leader.

FLASHBACK - Watson Duke takes the oath of office during the Inauguration Ceremony of the Tobago House of Assembly at the Magdalena Grand Beach and Golf Resort in Tobago on Thursday 9th December 2021.

"This pow­er strug­gle with­in the par­ty, Mr Duke is on his own in that con­cern. I was at the meet­ing where the three deputy lead­ers were re­moved, at the very in­stant I thanked the par­ty ex­ec­u­tive, did not make an ar­gu­ment or a case. I im­me­di­ate­ly thanked him and the ex­ec­u­tive and re­moved my­self from the meet­ing," he said.

He said he al­so thanked par­ty ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers in writ­ing in a par­ty chat fo­rum and re­moved from it as well.

"He is per­haps strug­gling with a ghost but not with Far­ley be­cause I have not tak­en on any fight with­in the PDP," he said.

He said while he is all for democ­ra­cy, the chal­lenge he has "with Mr Duke's pos­tur­ing" is that the things that Duke is a part of the very things he dis­agrees with.

"It is more than pass­ing strange that he would take this po­si­tion when he is a mem­ber of the team. It is not like he doesn't know our po­si­tion."

Ex­plain­ing what led to the de­ba­cle, Au­gus­tine said a cul­tur­al group came to the THA with a bud­get of just un­der $700,000 to trav­el to the US to per­form.

He said the THA made it clear that this couldn't be fund­ed in full but agreed to buy the air­line tick­ets for the group of 27, head­ed by for­mer To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin, which amount­ed to just over $300,000.

"It wasn't a THA trip so the THA took no re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in man­ag­ing their sched­ule in New York," he said adding, "The group had to have had their own book­ings sort­ed out."

He said that af­ter learn­ing that they did not prop­er­ly book a place to stay and hav­ing been called up­on to help, he ex­plained to Duke that the THA did not op­er­ate in such a way that funds could im­me­di­ate­ly be made avail­able to pay a ho­tel.

"The on­ly le­gal op­tion that could sat­is­fy ac­counts that the THA had, was to get some­one to pay the ho­tel bill, for­ward the in­voice and we could re­im­burse on a cer­ti­fied in­voice, and that was the ap­proach we took even though our orig­i­nal arrange­ments was on­ly to get them there," Au­gus­tine said.

He said he al­though he ex­plained this to Duke, the Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary chose to post a video on­line crit­i­cis­ing the THA for fail­ing to ad­dress the con­cerns of the group.

Au­gus­tine, how­ev­er, main­tains that the po­si­tion of the THA can­not be eas­i­ly bent since it was part of the reg­u­lar gov­er­nance op­er­a­tion stan­dards across T&T.

"Un­til those poli­cies and mech­a­nisms are changed, they have to be ob­served," he said.