Chester Sam­bra­no

The po­lit­i­cal fall­out with­in the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) has hit an­oth­er dev­as­tat­ing mile­stone, af­ter 16 of its mem­bers in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), in­clud­ing Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, an­nounced their res­ig­na­tion from the par­ty yes­ter­day.

In his res­ig­na­tion let­ter, how­ev­er, Au­gus­tine said the col­lec­tive res­ig­na­tions from the PDP were ef­fec­tive from De­cem­ber 1, 2022.

How­ev­er, he as­sured To­bag­o­ni­ans that they “re­main com­plete­ly fo­cused on the busi­ness of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and serv­ing the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

The Chief Sec­re­tary al­so stat­ed that the tran­si­tion will be “seam­less and swift.”

In the sec­ond doc­u­ment signed by all 16 for­mer PDP mem­bers, they in­di­cat­ed that they will con­tin­ue to serve as in­de­pen­dents in the House of As­sem­bly.

How­ev­er, in a state­ment fol­low­ing the shock an­nounce­ment, PDP leader Wat­son Duke de­mand­ed fresh THA elec­tions no lat­er than Jan­u­ary 2023.

“The peo­ple of To­ba­go need to elect an ex­ec­u­tive with a clear man­date and not be gov­erned by an ex­ec­u­tive that steals pow­er with no man­date,” Duke said.

While he thanked Au­gus­tine and oth­ers for their con­tri­bu­tion to the PDP, he said, “This cow­ard­ly act of aban­don­ing the PDP man­date and To­bag­o­ni­ans for 30 pieces of sil­ver must be treat­ed with scorn and con­tempt by us, the right-think­ing peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

Duke added that To­ba­go had been am­bushed by the “Far­ley and Friends” res­ig­na­tion from the PDP as it was not ex­pect­ed, since it was clear to all and sundry that af­ter be­ing elect­ed on a PDP slate “my on­ly and con­stant re­quest was that they im­ple­ment the man­date that got us elect­ed that is peo­ple be­fore pol­i­tics.”

The res­ig­na­tions al­so did not sit well with the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) To­ba­go Coun­cil, An­cil Den­nis.

He told Guardian Me­dia that the group had cam­paigned un­der a PDP ban­ner and many peo­ple would have vot­ed for the par­ty, not in­di­vid­u­als.

“So, the right and eth­i­cal thing to do at this point in time is to go back to the polls and run as in­de­pen­dents if they want to be in­de­pen­dents and be elect­ed as such,” Den­nis said.

Den­nis said while the THA does not re­quire an elec­tion, “we have 16 de­fec­tors con­trol­ling the man­age­ment of this is­land.”

“That to me is a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion and it will on­ly fur­ther con­tribute to an ex­ac­er­ba­tion of the chaos and con­fu­sion that we have had in the gov­er­nance of To­ba­go for the last ten months.”

Al­so com­ment­ing on the de­vel­op­ment, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said the res­ig­na­tions, “from a le­gal stand­point, it meant ab­solute­ly noth­ing.”

He ex­plained that the THA Act is clear on mat­ters such as this and Au­gus­tine and his team can func­tion as in­de­pen­dents if they choose for the re­main­der of their time in of­fice.

Po­lit­i­cal­ly, Ra­goonath felt that the thrust be­ing made by the PDP in Trinidad could be hin­dered by the de­fec­tion of so many se­nior mem­bers in To­ba­go.

“In Trinidad, peo­ple may not nec­es­sar­i­ly trust the PDP as be­ing that sta­ble and mov­ing for­ward,” he said.

Dr Ra­goonath told Guardian Me­dia that the 16 new in­de­pen­dents may al­so now seek to form their own par­ty and fo­cus sole­ly on To­ba­go.

“That might be suf­fi­cient, might be, I am not say­ing that it will be, I am say­ing it might be suf­fi­cient for them to keep con­trol and keep the sup­port of the To­ba­go pop­u­la­tion,” he ex­plained.

Yes­ter­day’s ex­o­dus was the cul­mi­na­tion of weeks of ten­sion be­tween Au­gus­tine and Duke. Their spat start­ed in Sep­tem­ber, af­ter the PDP leader pub­licly chas­tised the Chief Sec­re­tary for what he called the aban­don­ment of mem­bers of the Rox­bor­ough Folk Group who were strand­ed in New York dur­ing a cul­tur­al tour.

Duke lat­er fired Au­gus­tine, Faith B Yis­rael and Ali­cia Roberts-Pat­ter­son as deputies of the PDP.

He sub­se­quent­ly re­signed from his post as Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary and has been sit­ting on the op­po­si­tion side of the Cham­ber dur­ing sit­tings of the THA.