Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris is ac­cus­ing Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine of aban­don­ing his once-strong stance, which he once had against the for­mer PNM-led Gov­ern­ment, on To­ba­go’s most press­ing is­sues, es­pe­cial­ly now on mat­ters in­volv­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s tough talk sur­round­ing the Venezuela/US ten­sion.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence, Mor­ris claimed Au­gus­tine was vo­cal up un­til April 28, but has since “gone soft” on de­fend­ing To­ba­go’s rights over en­er­gy re­sources and on the safe­ty con­cerns of fish­er­men. He said To­ba­go’s fish­er­folk are now afraid to go to sea, point­ing to re­cent in­ci­dents where ves­sels in the re­gion were bombed.

“You have your fish­ers say­ing that we are afraid to go out and fish be­cause we are see­ing boats be­ing bombed, and we don’t know if one of these days we might just be next,” Mor­ris said. “Rather than the Chief Sec­re­tary raise his voice on be­half of the fish­ers be­cause he now has his friends in Trinidad, and they are speak­ing a cer­tain kind of lan­guage, he has now gone qui­et, and he has now not just qui­et, but he has gone soft.”

Mor­ris ar­gued that Au­gus­tine had pre­vi­ous­ly chal­lenged the cen­tral gov­ern­ment on is­sues linked to au­ton­o­my and re­sources, but had since gone silent un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion in Port of Spain. He ac­cused Au­gus­tine of turn­ing his back on To­ba­go’s fish­er­men at a time when they need­ed a strong voice.

His crit­i­cism comes amid height­ened ten­sions in the south­ern Caribbean, where the Unit­ed States has car­ried out mis­sile strikes on Venezue­lan ves­sels al­leged­ly linked to drug traf­fick­ing. The is­land’s fish­er­folk said they are in fear that they could be mis­tak­en for smug­glers or be caught in the cross­fire.

On Tues­day, Au­gus­tine re­spond­ed at the open­ing of the Friend­ship Con­nec­tor Road, say­ing he is not wor­ried about the US-Venezuela sit­u­a­tion. He as­sured To­ba­go’s fish­er­men that the ves­sels tar­get­ed were not in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s wa­ters, and that law-abid­ing fish­ers have noth­ing to fear.

“From all re­ports, those ves­sels struck were not in Trinidad and To­ba­go wa­ters,” Au­gus­tine said. “Our fish­er­men are law-abid­ing; they don’t go in­to in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters il­le­gal­ly, and they should be safe in To­ba­go’s wa­ters.”

But Mor­ris in­sist­ed Au­gus­tine’s mut­ed re­sponse proved his point that the chief sec­re­tary had lost his voice. He warned that To­ba­go needs stronger lead­er­ship and that si­lence on such mat­ters could leave the is­land vul­ner­a­ble.