Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is hop­ing for an im­prove­ment in the tense re­la­tion­ship be­tween him­self and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley—for the bet­ter­ment of To­ba­go. How­ev­er, he re­mains com­mit­ted to ad­vo­cat­ing for To­ba­go-re­lat­ed mat­ters re­gard­less of the out­come.

In an in­ter­view on a morn­ing show yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine said he does not take the dif­fer­ences be­tween him­self and Row­ley per­son­al­ly. He said all his ac­tions have been dri­ven by To­ba­go’s best in­ter­ests, its peo­ple and fu­ture de­vel­op­ment.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue, Au­gus­tine said, “I am not a pet­ty per­son. So, I will con­tin­ue to en­gage. If he got his feel­ings that’s his busi­ness. Life too short. I am not go­ing to sleep with you in my mind what­so­ev­er. I am con­fi­dent that when I lie down and hug up my wife, I do not see the Prime Min­is­ter’s face in my mind’s eye.

“So I have no prob­lems what­so­ev­er with­in where that is con­cerned, and I will con­tin­ue to write cor­re­spon­dences. He’s free to re­spond or not re­spond.”

Even if the re­la­tion­ship doesn’t im­prove, Au­gus­tine em­pha­sised his de­ter­mi­na­tion to main­tain a cor­dial re­la­tion­ship with Trinidad. He high­light­ed the pos­i­tive work­ing re­la­tion­ship he has ex­pe­ri­enced with min­is­ters in re­cent weeks, in­clud­ing Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon and Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les.

He not­ed the suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion that led to the es­tab­lish­ment of a wa­ter treat­ment plant in Golds­bor­ough, which he said demon­strat­ed the strength of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad.

“And that shows how cor­dial the re­la­tion­ship is. If it was a pet­ty, ug­ly re­la­tion­ship with Trinidad, I will sim­ply say ‘No, it is THA land, move from here’. The re­la­tion­ship with Trinidad was nev­er sour. The re­la­tion­ship with the Prime Min­is­ter is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry,” he ex­plained.

Au­gus­tine even ad­mit­ted, “We have not spo­ken in a lit­tle while.”

Re­gard­ing the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter, the Chief Sec­re­tary stressed that the re­la­tion­ship can im­prove if To­ba­go is treat­ed fair­ly and in ac­cor­dance with the law.

“All we have to do is just keep ex­act­ly what the law says, and the re­la­tion­ship will re­main re­spect­ful,” he added.

Au­gus­tine said the last doc­u­ment he sent to the Prime Min­is­ter, in­volv­ing stud­ies and sur­veys on the Scar­bor­ough Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Project, re­ceived a re­sponse from Row­ley dur­ing a pub­lic po­lit­i­cal plat­form event in Ma­son Hall last month.

Au­gus­tine said, “We don’t have to be best friends, but we need to re­spect what the law says. So if I keep what Act 40 of ‘96 says and they keep what Act 40 of ‘96 says, then every­thing will be okay.”

So the act says send To­ba­go mon­ey in quar­ter­ly blocks, in front in ad­vance. If they keep that which is what the law says they must do, we are no prob­lem. I won’t have to quar­rel I don’t have to go to court.”

In June, dur­ing a Calder Hall po­lit­i­cal meet­ing, Row­ley said he want­ed noth­ing to do with Au­gus­tine un­less a third par­ty was present.

Weeks lat­er Au­gus­tine ac­cused the PM, oth­er se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil of un­der­min­ing the op­er­a­tions of the THA. There have al­so been some dis­agree­ments be­tween Au­gus­tine and the PM on in­ci­dents over the past six months.

Last month at the po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Ma­son Hall Row­ley said he was con­cerned by the state of the cur­rent re­la­tion­ship be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad. He ac­cused Au­gus­tine and his team of in­cit­ing a hate cam­paign among To­bag­o­ni­ans against their Trinidad coun­ter­parts for po­lit­i­cal gain.