Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

Chief Sec­re­tary and To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) po­lit­i­cal leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine has told in­di­vid­u­als he de­scribed as “paid blog­gers from Trinidad” to keep their opin­ions out of To­ba­go’s po­lit­i­cal af­fairs, in­sist­ing that To­bag­o­ni­ans will de­ter­mine their own fu­ture.

Au­gus­tine made the re­marks while ad­dress­ing a TPP po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Mt St George on Tues­day night.

“And I want to say to all their paid blog­gers from Trinidad, we don’t care what you say,” Au­gus­tine said. “No Trinidad blog­ger will de­ter­mine how we vote. To­bag­o­ni­ans are smart enough. We don’t need an in­flu­ence.”

He went on to say To­ba­go did not want ex­ter­nal in­ter­fer­ence in its po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

“Keep your in­flu­ence down there for Laven­tille and Beetham. But this is To­ba­go, and To­ba­go for To­bag­o­ni­ans. We will de­cide for our­selves. Keep your stink­ing opin­ion to your­self. We don’t care about your opin­ion,” he said.

Au­gus­tine lat­er re­peat­ed the point, say­ing at­tempts to shape pub­lic opin­ion from out­side the is­land would be un­suc­cess­ful.

“They could pay all the blog­gers they want in Trinidad. We don’t care about your opin­ion,” he said.

Dur­ing his ad­dress, Au­gus­tine ac­cused his po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents of run­ning a cam­paign root­ed in fear and mis­in­for­ma­tion, con­trast­ing it with what he de­scribed as the TPP’s pos­i­tive vi­sion.

“They are run­ning a cam­paign based on fear. We are run­ning a cam­paign based on hope,” he said. “They are run­ning a cam­paign based on al­le­ga­tions. We are run­ning a cam­paign based on as­pi­ra­tion. They are run­ning a cam­paign based on fic­tion. We are run­ning a cam­paign based on facts.”

He al­so ad­dressed claims cir­cu­lat­ing about the car­go ves­sel is­sue, sug­gest­ing these were be­ing used to stoke pub­lic anx­i­ety.

“And so they try, and have been try­ing, to dri­ve fear about the car­go boat,” Au­gus­tine said. “And I came out and ad­dressed that very night.”

Au­gus­tine fur­ther al­leged that sup­port­ers from Trinidad at­tend Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) meet­ings in To­ba­go to give the im­pres­sion of broad lo­cal sup­port, a prac­tice he said did not oc­cur at TPP events.

“When I look here, you don’t have a sin­gle Trinida­di­an in this au­di­ence,” he said. “This is an au­then­tic To­ba­go au­di­ence, an in­dige­nous To­ba­go au­di­ence. These are au­then­tic To­ba­go crowds.”