Clay­ton Clarke

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

With pres­sure mount­ing on To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine in the wake of a damn­ing au­dio clip, pur­port­ed to be mem­bers of his ex­ec­u­tive dis­cussing a pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign to be paid for with As­sem­bly fund­ing, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s To­ba­go Coun­cil yes­ter­day upped the ante by call­ing for his im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion.

The call came from PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil chair­man An­cil Den­nis, who al­so called for the res­ig­na­tion of Au­gus­tine’s Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy Zor­isha Hack­ett dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the To­ba­go Coun­cil’s of­fice in Scar­bor­ough.

“I was flab­ber­gast­ed on Tues­day when I heard that voice record­ing. I am pre­pared to call for the im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tion of the Chief Sec­re­tary and al­so the Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion. All of To­ba­go has sig­nalled their dis­ap­point­ment and shock, even peo­ple who sup­port­ed them and vot­ed them in­to of­fice, and some of them still con­tin­ue to sup­port them de­spite of the sit­u­a­tion,” Den­nis said.

He said Au­gus­tine should now en­sure he ho­n­ours his word in keep­ing with the so­cial con­tract he and the then Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots can­di­dates gave to To­bag­o­ni­ans in the 2021 THA Elec­tions.

“Does the Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine still abide by the pro­vi­sions of this so­cial con­tract? And I wish to re­mind the peo­ple of To­ba­go that the Chief Sec­re­tary, then a can­di­date in an elec­tion, did in­di­cate that any­body who breach­es that so­cial con­tract will find them­selves out­side of the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil.”

The au­dio clip sur­faced over the week­end. In it, two voic­es, a male and a fe­male, are clear­ly heard dis­cussing a strat­e­gy to hire per­sons as blog­gers to post pro­pa­gan­da on be­half of the THA. Fur­ther­more, the pro­pos­al was for the per­sons to be hired full-time with­in the THA to do so on a sus­tained ba­sis.

To­ba­go East MP Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy, who was al­so at the con­fer­ence along­side To­ba­go West MP Sham­fa Cud­joe, sup­port­ed Den­nis’ com­ment.

“This ad­min­is­tra­tion, elect­ed by To­bag­o­ni­ans, has failed to stand by the ba­sic so­cial con­tract that they es­tab­lished with every sin­gle To­bag­on­ian,” Web­ster-Roy said.

Adding that the cur­rent THA Ex­ec­u­tive should demit of­fice if the mem­bers feel they are no longer able to gov­ern the is­land, she said, “If you are not ready to put aside lit­tle boy and lit­tle girl be­hav­iour and re­spect ba­sic re­la­tion­ships that we need to en­sure that To­ba­go is able to thrive with­in this union, please step aside and give those who tru­ly care about To­ba­go the op­por­tu­ni­ty to take this for­ward.”

Cud­joe said it was high time that Au­gus­tine and Hack­ett break their si­lence on the con­tro­ver­sy.

“To­ba­go de­serves to hear from those voic­es. To­ba­go de­serves to hear from the Chief Sec­re­tary, Mr Far­ley Au­gus­tine. To­ba­go de­serves to hear from Miss Zor­isha Hack­ett,” Cud­joe said.

“To­ba­go de­serves to hear from who­ev­er is the third voice be­cause there is a third voice in that record­ing. To­ba­go needs to hear from those who sat down and plot. This was not a slip of tongue. This is a meet­ing called or a cau­cus called to de­lib­er­ate­ly plot against, not for, not to­wards the de­vel­op­ment, against To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment.”

Mean­while, for­mer THA pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer and In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA) leader, Dr Denise Tsoiafatt An­gus, said the fact that the leaked au­dio of two THA ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers had not been de­nied af­ter cir­cu­la­tion for more than two days was telling.

“We can safe­ly con­sid­er it to be au­then­tic,” she said.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Dr Tsoiafatt An­gus said while THA rep­re­sen­ta­tives have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to hire who they want with­out any re­cruit­ment prob­lems, the con­cern is the al­leged plan to hire peo­ple through the THA to do po­lit­i­cal blog­ging.

“Now clear­ly, there is in­tent to utilise pub­lic funds for elec­tion­eer­ing and that is a no-no,” she said, adding this does not speak to any type of prop­er pro­cure­ment or re­cruit­ment process.

Dr Tsoiafatt An­gus al­so said there must be some kind of crack with­in their camp to leak such sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion.

“And maybe we should thank who­ev­er it is for al­low­ing us to see the true colours of the per­sons we have in of­fice,” she said.

She said what al­so needs to be cor­rect­ed is the hir­ing process­es cur­rent­ly be­ing utilised by the THA. (With re­port­ing by Chester Sam­bra­no)