Deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (PDP) Far­ley Au­gus­tine last night said the par­ty’s re­sound­ing vic­to­ry in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion stood as a re­jec­tion of To­bag­on­ian-born Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Au­gus­tine, who was al­ways in PDP gear on the cam­paign trail, last night said he de­lib­er­ate­ly wore plain white to toast the vic­to­ry be­cause the cam­paign was over and now was the time for the busi­ness of run­ning the coun­try.

The PDP is now set to be sworn in on Thurs­day.

“We wake up to­mor­row with new re­solve. We wake up to­mor­row ready for change. We can­not be­have like those we re­placed tonight, we have to do bet­ter, we are re­quired to do bet­ter, the stan­dard is high­er for us and it is im­por­tant that that stan­dard be raised high enough that even our friends and fam­i­ly in Trinidad could look on and be­gin to en­vy what we can ac­com­plish on our small democ­ra­cy,” Au­gus­tine said.

“A par­ty of just about five years old was able to do what par­ties old­er than us could not do,” he added.

Au­gus­tine al­so called on the Prime Min­is­ter to not “pe­nalise” the To­ba­go peo­ple.

“This win should al­so be a sol­id mes­sage to the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment be­ing led by a To­ba­go-born Prime Min­is­ter. You can­not treat To­bag­o­ni­ans the way you want. We will re­ject that and we have re­ject­ed that,” Au­gus­tine said.

“Let this win be a strong mes­sage that To­ba­go has re­ject­ed your in­com­plete au­ton­o­my bill and we de­mand more. Let this be a re­sound­ing mes­sage, a strong mes­sage we have re­ject­ed your no­tion that we are on­ly good enough to earn $200 mil­lion per year and we must re­sort to be­ing beg­gars of the na­tion­al purse.”

Au­gus­tine was re­fer­ring to a state­ment dur­ing the cam­paign from Row­ley, who told To­ba­go that it con­tributed some $200 mil­lion to the cof­fers and salaries alone un­der the THA was more than that.

To­ba­go re­ceives over $2 bil­lion in bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions every year.

“Let this be a strong mes­sage, Mr Prime Min­is­ter, that we in To­ba­go have re­ject­ed your bul­ly­ing tac­tics and that the kind of bul­ly­ing that is part of the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture in Trinidad is not wel­come in To­ba­go,” he said.

De­spite those strong words, Au­gus­tine said he hoped that he and the Prime Min­is­ter could have a “cor­dial re­la­tion­ship.”

“Be­cause coun­try must come be­fore par­ty and coun­try must come be­fore self. I urge you, do not spite To­ba­go be­cause the To­bag­o­ni­ans I know are mighty enough to al­so get rid of you,” Au­gus­tine said.

“Let that be a warn­ing that you ought to re­spond to us in a dig­ni­fied man­ner and that we are will­ing to work with you to see this is­land de­vel­oped.”

Au­gus­tine said the To­ba­go peo­ple would not ac­cept any bias from the Prime Min­is­ter.

He al­so com­mend­ed the peo­ple who came out to vote.

“You have looked at both po­lit­i­cal par­ties, the two ma­jor par­ties and you weighed us, you found one want­i­ng and you have de­cid­ed to in­vest in the PDP, you de­cid­ed to give us an op­por­tu­ni­ty,” he said and promised, on be­half of his col­leagues, to not dis­ap­point.

“To­bag­o­ni­ans have been dis­ap­point­ed af­ter 21 years and we don’t need 21 years to fix it but we need to be­gin post-haste to rem­e­dy the prob­lems that we have cit­ed all these years,” he said.

Au­gus­tine re­in­forced the par­ty promis­es made on the cam­paign trail and said he would abide by the “covenant” they made to the peo­ple.

“We covenant­ed with you that we will give you a THA that is far more trans­par­ent and ac­count­able. We covenant with you that we will have a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach on cor­rup­tion. We covenant with you that peo­ple would ben­e­fit from To­ba­go’s re­sources,” Au­gus­tine said.

Au­gus­tine al­so took time to “pay trib­ute” to the par­ty’s leader, Wat­son Duke.

“Mr Duke is per­haps the biggest dream­er of all of us be­cause to get up and start one day in 2015 in­to 2016 as an in­de­pen­dent can­di­date and by 2017, to have a par­ty formed around him and by 2021 to push his younger deputy in­to the line of fire and ask me to lead. That kind of mag­nan­i­mous ges­ture should nev­er, ever go un­ap­pre­ci­at­ed in To­ba­go,” he said.

He called on the PDP and its sup­port­ers to now “set­tle down,” as To­ba­go was de­pend­ing on them to have a good Christ­mas and an even bet­ter New Year.

“We have had a long and bruis­ing bat­tle but now the bat­tle is over and now is a good time for To­ba­go to be­gin to heal and To­ba­go to be­gin to trans­form in­to the kind of To­ba­go we can all be proud of,” he said.