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Thursday, July 10, 2025

PNM slams Farley for comments he made under Olympian Ahye’s tweet

by

Camille McEachnie
1437 days ago
20210802
PDP Assemblyman Farley Augustine.

PDP Assemblyman Farley Augustine.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is drag­ging one of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots’ (PDP) deputy lead­ers, Far­ley Au­gus­tine, over the coals for com­ments he made about Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympian Michelle-Lee Ahye.

Au­gus­tine, in turn, is ac­cus­ing the PNM of tak­ing his com­ments out of con­text, say­ing they were di­rect­ed to the Gov­ern­ment and sport­ing of­fi­cials, not the ath­lete.

On Ju­ly 31, Au­gus­tine re­act­ed on Face­book to Ahye’s Twit­ter post, ques­tion­ing why fa­mous T&T-born rap­per Nic­ki Mi­naj on­ly com­ple­ment­ed the Ja­maican women sprint­ers’ per­for­mance in the 100 me­tres Olympic race.

“Guess I need­ed to win a medal for @nickim­i­naj to rec­og­nize her own coun­try flag,” Ahye had tweet­ed.

She lat­er delet­ed the tweet stat­ing “That tweet got peo­ple heat­ed” and when some­one sug­gest­ed that Mi­naj made her delete it, she replied, “Made me?? Ain’t no­body could make me do any­thing.”

Au­gus­tine was one of many who com­ment­ed on Ahye’s tweet.

“I don’t un­der­stand how peo­ple who are fail­ing, ex­pect­ing recog­ni­tion. What Nic­ki tweet­ing her to say? We car­ried the worse Olympic team in years and ex­pect ado­ra­tion?” Au­gus­tine said in the now-delet­ed Face­book post.

The PNM’s To­ba­go West Youth League (TWYL) wad­ed in­to the PDP’s area rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Par­latu­vi­er/L’ Anse Four­mi/Spey­side.

T&T sprinter Michelle-Lee Ahye

T&T sprinter Michelle-Lee Ahye

“Far­ley Au­gus­tine’s dis­gust for na­tion­al ath­lete, Michelle-Lee Ahye, for not medalling at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is taste­less and crass with no re­gard for our ath­letes who qual­i­fied for the in­ter­na­tion­al games.”

“The mem­bers of the Youth League be­lieve that the As­sem­bly­man’s deroga­to­ry com­ments seek to di­min­ish our ath­letes...,” the league added.

“The To­ba­go West Youth League stands strong in sup­port­ing all our ath­letes who are com­pet­ing at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Whether they medal or not, they con­tin­ue to do our coun­try proud, and we raise our flag in hon­or of their ser­vice.”

The league’s chair­man Rachel Gre­goire said: “...The phys­i­cal and men­tal pres­sures of these ath­letes can­not be mea­sured by those who are not in their shoes.”

Re­spond­ing to the league, Au­gus­tine said the PNM was “dis­hon­est.”

“The PNM took a small piece of con­ver­sa­tion that I had on­line with To­ba­go pro­fes­sion­al foot­baller Ken­nya “Yaya” Cord­ner about Michelle Ahye de­mand­ing a tweet from Nic­ki Mi­naj,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

He added: “And while it is easy to see how what was said can be mis­in­ter­pret­ed, it is dis­hon­est to pull piece of the thread, omit im­por­tant de­tails and give it a slant.”

He con­tin­ued: “Even to­day, Ken­nya “Yaya” Cord­ner, who is a pub­lic sup­port­er of the PNM made an an­gry stat in re­sponse to where PNM has tak­en the con­ver­sa­tion...At no point did I blame the ath­letes for our fail­ures... I blamed TTOC, gov­ern­ment poli­cies, and us the na­tion as a whole.”

The tweet posted by T&T sprinter Michelle-Lee Ahye before it was deleted from Twitter.

The tweet posted by T&T sprinter Michelle-Lee Ahye before it was deleted from Twitter.

Twitter

He said for years To­ba­go’s ath­letes have been dis­ad­van­taged.

“Imag­ine we have six To­bag­o­ni­ans in the Olympics this year, but for years the Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um re­mained in­ac­ces­si­ble to our ath­letes.... We have ath­letes pick­ing up in­juries at Shaw park’s un­even turf...” Au­gus­tine said.

Mi­naj did not re­spond pub­licly to Ahye’s com­ments and Ahye, who is in Tokyo, Japan for the Olympic Games, could not be reached for com­ment.


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