Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Pro­duc­er

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

Activist Wen­dell Ever­s­ley is lam­bast­ing the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine for “in­ap­pro­pri­ate and un­ac­cept­able con­duct” in of­fice and has de­liv­ered a let­ter to Au­gus­tine call­ing on him to re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly and call elec­tions.

“Far­ley got to go!” Ever­s­ley said dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence out­side the Vic­tor E Bruce Fi­nan­cial Com­plex in Scar­bor­ough, mo­ments be­fore he de­liv­ered the let­ter.

Ever­s­ley’s call comes in the wake of an au­dio clip leaked on­line a week ago that pur­ports to be THA ex­ec­u­tives dis­cussing a strat­e­gy to hire peo­ple un­der the aegis of the THA to spread pro­pa­gan­da via so­cial me­dia for the To­ba­go Peo­ple Par­ty.

In the au­dio clip, a male voice is heard say­ing, “Find the plan. Cre­ate the plan, the strat­e­gy or what­ev­er. Bring it here once you get ap­proval. Where it is you have 13 peo­ple now, you might need five or sev­en to do the strict PR. You could use some to do some pro­pa­gan­da. Whether you go­ing to use fake pro­files, whether they go­ing to use their own pro­files, what­ev­er they do. What you would have to con­sid­er is find­ing a way to em­ploy peo­ple on the THA side. Could be me­nial tasks.”

It is this clip Ever­s­ley finds egre­gious and yes­ter­day he rhetor­i­cal­ly asked the Chief Sec­re­tary, “You say you go­ing to fix it, but what fix­ing you do­ing, you fix­ing your­self?”

He added, “Let To­bag­o­ni­ans go back to the polls be­cause To­bag­o­ni­ans didn’t vote for this!”

He al­so made it clear he was mon­i­tor­ing the re­spons­es from oth­er po­lit­i­cal ac­tivists and com­men­ta­tors, in­clud­ing Ho­choy Charles, Dr Vanus James and most telling­ly, Dr Win­ford James. Of the lat­ter Ever­s­ley said he found his si­lence most con­cern­ing.

“Win­ford James com­ment­ing on all sort of things, but here it is, Win­ford James ent say a word. I don’t know if it is Win­ford James gone dumb,” Ever­s­ley said.

Dr James had been vo­cif­er­ous in his sup­port of the PDP and Au­gus­tine in the past, and wel­comed their sweep­ing 14-1 de­feat of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment in the THA elec­tion of De­cem­ber 6, 2021.

Dr James had been ap­point­ed to the Stud­ley Park board but was re­moved af­ter a pub­lic out­cry. He is now the chair of the THA-Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Eq­ui­ty Fund. His broth­er Trevor James is the Sec­re­tary of Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and De­vel­op­ment.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, how­ev­er, Dr James ad­vised Ever­s­ley that he need­ed to re­view lo­cal me­dia again, since he (Dr James) had in fact shared his thoughts on the mat­ter with To­ba­go Up­dates.

Ad­dress­ing the au­dio clip, Dr James said it lacks suf­fi­cient con­text.

“I formed the opin­ion that it was in­co­her­ent and in­suf­fi­cient for me to use as a ba­sis to make a judg­ment.” On the is­sue of the THA hir­ing per­sons to spread pro­pa­gan­da on so­cial me­dia, James de­scribed it as a type of make-work scheme, say­ing, “If the clip has the House of As­sem­bly em­ploy­ing peo­ple for po­lit­i­cal gain, I would say that I know of no ju­ris­dic­tion where that does not oc­cur.”

Nei­ther Chief Sec­re­tary Au­gus­tine nor any of his ex­ec­u­tives have com­ment­ed on the va­lid­i­ty of the au­dio clip to date.