Even as an­oth­er stake­hold­er yes­ter­day called for To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine to break his si­lence in the leaked pro­pa­gan­da au­dio record­ing fi­as­co, con­stituents in Au­gus­tine’s elec­toral dis­trict are stand­ing be­hind him.

Since the scan­dal of the au­dio clip, pur­port­ed­ly in­volv­ing two THA mem­bers dis­cussing strat­e­gy to hire per­sons un­der the THA’s aegis to spread pro­pa­gan­da, broke last week, Au­gus­tine has re­fused to ad­dress the mat­ter and kept a low pro­file, avoid­ing calls from the me­dia.

There have been re­peat­ed calls from sev­er­al quar­ters for Au­gus­tine to ad­dress the is­sue but up to yes­ter­day, nei­ther he nor any of his THA ex­ec­u­tive had come for­ward to ver­i­fy whether the per­sons heard on the au­dio record­ing were ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers.

Yes­ter­day, the To­ba­go Civ­il So­ci­ety Net­work (Civ­il Net) joined the list of groups putting pres­sure on Au­gus­tine and his team, say­ing he and Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion Zor­isha Hack­ett “owe it to the To­ba­go pub­lic to come for­ward with­in at most one week of the leak­ing of the al­leged au­dio ac­cept­ing or deny­ing the ve­rac­i­ty of the leaked au­dio.”

In a re­lease, the or­gan­i­sa­tion added that it “con­demns the all-too-com­mon use by politi­cians and po­lit­i­cal par­ties vy­ing for of­fice or in the seat of pow­er as our gov­ern­ment, of us­ing fake pro­files to push pro­pa­gan­da with the sole in­tent of de­ceiv­ing an un­sus­pect­ing so­ci­ety.”

It said it “strong­ly con­demns the use of the peo­ple’s purse to fi­nance the very de­cep­tion against them, by those en­trust­ed to use that purse to bet­ter the lives of the peo­ple they have sworn to serve.”

De­spite this call, res­i­dents from Au­gus­tine’s vil­lage of Lucy­vale, Spey­side, yes­ter­day said they are back­ing him.

Cyril Adams said he was of the view that this “is a fight down where they fight­ing down the young man.”

God­frey Gray, of Cra­paud Vil­lage, Spey­side, an­swered on­ly, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

In near­by Char­lot­teville, a woman who on­ly gave her name as Kel­ly Ann, added, “Yes I am but there are trai­tors on board.”

Kosa added, “I sup­port him to the fullest.” —Re­port­ing by Clay­ton Clarke