Sto­ries by Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine made it clear yes­ter­day that he has no in­ter­est and does not feel ac­count­able for the feel­ings of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

At a post-Cab­i­net brief­ing on Thurs­day, Row­ley said he still hadn’t got­ten over Au­gus­tine’s al­le­ga­tions that he and se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers were plot­ting to dis­rupt the THA ex­ec­u­tive.

How­ev­er, Au­gus­tine de­clared yes­ter­day that he was firm­ly com­mit­ted to ad­vo­cat­ing for the needs of To­ba­go, re­gard­less of how his ap­proach might be re­ceived by the Prime Min­is­ter.

He added that he was im­pa­tient about the is­sue of To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my.

“I am not re­al­ly con­cerned about the feel­ings of a big man. That’s not my con­cern. I have a lit­tle daugh­ter, I care about her feel­ings ... of a wife, I care about her feel­ings. I have a res­i­dent pop­u­la­tion in To­ba­go of 65,000, I care about their feel­ings. I don’t have time to sit and care about the feel­ings of a big man.”

Au­gus­tine said un­der the THA Act, reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the Chief Sec­re­tary and Prime Min­is­ter was nec­es­sary. How­ev­er, he stressed that his role as a leader was not to make friends but to do what was best for To­ba­go.

“I’m not here to make friends, in the words made fa­mous by Mr (Wat­son) Duke, but I am here to do a pro­fes­sion­al ser­vice to the peo­ple of To­ba­go. So in­so­far as the needs are con­cerned, I will con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate for those,” he said.

“The Prime Min­is­ter may not al­ways ap­pre­ci­ate the tone or the force of strength with which I ad­vo­cate for these is­sues but one must un­der­stand that at my gen­er­a­tion, hav­ing seen my par­ents’ gen­er­a­tion fail to get au­ton­o­my, my par­ents’ par­ents’ gen­er­a­tion, peo­ple who dead be­fore I come here, failed to get it.

“At this point, my gen­er­a­tion is quite frankly im­pa­tient and so nat­u­ral­ly the tone of that con­ver­sa­tion will be el­e­vat­ed be­yond pitch lev­els at deci­bel points that we heard pre­vi­ous­ly.”

Au­gus­tine added: “We are at a point—and this in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice is al­so show­ing it up—we are at a point where To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment and To­ba­go schools from this point to the next place is re­al­ly be­ing stymied by the au­ton­o­my ques­tion. So to be fair to the Prime Min­is­ter, he’s free to feel what he feels, is free to not get over my ac­cu­sa­tions and al­le­ga­tions against him. I am con­fi­dent in the truth that I have told.

“I am do­ing the peo­ple’s busi­ness. That doesn’t get in the view of my feel­ings at all. There is a time for pol­i­tics, and there’s a time to do peo­ple’s busi­ness time and place for every­thing.”

Au­gus­tine said he was will­ing to fa­cil­i­tate meet­ings and work with all gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, re­gard­less of his per­son­al feel­ings to­wards them.

“Feel­ings will not get in the way of me do­ing To­ba­go’s peo­ple’s busi­ness notwith­stand­ing the chal­lenges we face with the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment,” he said.