Sto­ries by GAIL ALEXAN­DER

The Far­ley Au­gus­tine-Wat­son Duke re­la­tion­ship is over and it’s a ma­jor blow from which To­ba­go will take a long time to re­cov­er. It al­so re­mains ahead if Duke’s Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots par­ty will hold to­geth­er.

These were the views of To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber head Mar­tin George, econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James and for­mer pub­lic ser­vice head Regi­nald Du­mas, af­ter PDP leader Duke re­signed as THA deputy chief sec­re­tary fol­low­ing months of pri­vate ten­sions and one re­cent pub­lic fall­out.

Duke, in a fiery ad­dress yes­ter­day, tar­get­ed Au­gus­tine and sig­nalled var­i­ous moves.

Duke’s res­ig­na­tion was a par­tic­u­lar dis­ap­point­ment for Dr James, a PDP as­so­ciate who’d tried at length dur­ing the im­passe and up to yes­ter­day, to get Duke and Au­gus­tine to talk to re­solve the is­sue.

At 9 am yes­ter­day, James had ex­pressed con­fi­dence a res­o­lu­tion could be reached, since both had in­di­cat­ed to him they’d ap­proach “the sit­u­a­tion with wis­dom.”

But James said Duke’s res­ig­na­tion had changed the whole dis­cus­sion. “Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion can no longer take place from with­in the PDP - this is the end of that dis­cus­sion and this is a ma­jor blow to the fu­ture of the progress of the peo­ple of To­ba­go. It’ll take a long time for To­ba­go to re­cov­er from this.”

Cham­ber boss George said it ap­peared that de­spite the best ef­forts of peo­ple - in­clud­ing him­self - to try and bro­ker peace be­tween Duke and Au­gus­tine, “they re­main com­mit­ted to a col­li­sion course: a clash of egos, wills and per­son­al­i­ties.”

“From a busi­ness per­spec­tive, po­lit­i­cal per­spec­tive and a gov­er­nance per­spec­tive, it isn’t good for To­ba­go or the na­tion. In the in­ternecine war­fare that’s been go­ing on in the PDP’s bel­ly and bo­som, it doesn’t ap­pear they can re­main to­geth­er with­in the par­ty,” he said.

George said Au­gus­tine had thrown down the gaunt­let to Duke in re­la­tion to call­ing a no-con­fi­dence vote.

“Clear­ly, he’d been prepar­ing for this, was ready and en­sured he had in ad­vance the num­bers on his side,” George said.

“I guess Mr Duke ‘read the tea leaves’ and recog­nised that if he called the no-con­fi­dence vote, he could be the one end­ing up be­ing vot­ed out. So he’s now flipped the script by re­sign­ing and it’s over to Mr Au­gus­tine on what he’ll do.”

George pro­ject­ed that Au­gus­tine would try to give the im­pres­sion that it’s busi­ness as usu­al.

“How­ev­er, the frac­tures in the PDP ap­pear, at this point, to be be­yond the point of no re­turn and reached what au­thor Mal­colm Glad­well’s spo­ken of as a ‘tip­ping point’. In those cir­cum­stances, it doesn’t ap­pear this re­la­tion­ship is sal­vage­able. It seems for what­ev­er rea­son that it’s gone past the point of no re­turn. One or the oth­er has crossed the Ru­bi­con. It’s been the Wa­ter­loo - they can­not come back from this.”

George added, “Even if they try to give the im­pres­sion of uni­ty lat­er, the pub­lic will be very sus­pi­cious and think this is a case of two men hug­ging each oth­er, each hold­ing a long knife be­hind his back wait­ing for the mo­ment to strike.

“This, un­for­tu­nate­ly, ap­pears to be the end of the Wat­son-Far­ley re­la­tion­ship at this time. Bas­deo Pan­day fa­mous­ly said pol­i­tics has a moral­i­ty of its own. So maybe lat­er we might see a rap­proche­ment and these two com­ing back to­geth­er.

“We wait to see how THA nav­i­gates its way un­der Mr Au­gus­tine’s lead­er­ship out of this cri­sis and de­ba­cle.”

He said his body hopes for a smooth ef­fec­tive tran­si­tion to en­sure To­ba­go’s busi­ness can con­tin­ue and “To­bag­o­ni­ans aren’t dis­en­fran­chised or suf­fer as a re­sult of the clash of per­son­al­i­ties.”

For­mer pub­lic ser­vice head Du­mas said Duke’s res­ig­na­tion doesn’t af­fect the THA’s func­tions and he con­tin­ues be­ing an As­sem­bly­man - but won’t have any port­fo­lio re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

Du­mas not­ed that as deputy Chief Sec­re­tary, Duke had as­pects of his port­fo­lio - like Di­as­po­ra re­spon­si­bil­i­ties - that weren’t in THA’s Act.

“More­over, we’ll have to see what ac­tion he takes next re­gard­ing his par­ty. He’s dis­missed three deputy lead­ers and has to re­place them. We’ll have to see if the PDP as we know it will hold to­geth­er at all or if a new par­ty will be formed,” Du­mas said.

“Much would de­pend on what hap­pens in the next few weeks and re­la­tions be­tween them and whether that leads to break up of the par­ty. We have to watch the im­pact on the is­land and the self-gov­ern­ment thrust.”