The abun­dance of po­lit­i­cal good­will which helped Far­ley Au­gus­tine at­tain the high­est elect­ed of­fice in To­ba­go pol­i­tics is rapid­ly erod­ing, as he dodges ques­tions about the con­tro­ver­sial au­dio clip that has been cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia for the bet­ter part of this week.

Mr Au­gus­tine’s me­te­oric rise to be­come the fifth Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) seemed to ush­er in a new era in T&T pol­i­tics, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause To­ba­go is con­sid­ered to be a bell­wether of elec­toral trends in the coun­try.

It was not all that long ago that he was be­ing hailed as the gold­en boy of To­ba­go pol­i­tics, af­ter join­ing forces with Wat­son Duke to lead the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) to a his­toric 14-1 win in the THA elec­tions.

Un­seat­ing the PNM af­ter more than 20 years of pow­er on the is­land was no mean feat and Mr Au­gus­tine’s suc­cess in the De­cem­ber 2021 polls was his­toric, not on­ly be­cause of the re­sound­ing de­feat in­flict­ed on the for­mer rul­ing par­ty in the THA but be­cause he be­came the youngest ever Chief Sec­re­tary.

How­ev­er, Mr Au­gus­tine’s as­cent, once seen as a much need­ed chang­ing of the guard, now seems to be crum­bling.

The Chief Sec­re­tary now needs to em­bark on some ur­gent dam­age con­trol to have any chance of si­lenc­ing the calls for his res­ig­na­tion which have been in­creas­ing in just the past few days. He cer­tain­ly has not helped mat­ters by avoid­ing the me­dia and re­fus­ing to re­spond to the many ques­tions be­ing asked about the voice clip now in the pub­lic do­main.

In it, two per­sons, who sound like se­nior THA of­fi­cials, are heard dis­cussing hir­ing per­sons to work to pro­mote po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da.

It was wor­ry­ing that rather than face the mu­sic — af­ter all these damn­ing al­le­ga­tions that have sur­faced — Mr Au­gus­tine seems to be shirk­ing his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as the high­est-rank­ing THA of­fi­cial.

When he opt­ed to en­ter and leave the THA cham­ber by the back en­trance on Thurs­day, rather than speak with the jour­nal­ists wait­ing out­side, the Chief Sec­re­tary squan­dered an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty that he had pre­vi­ous­ly promised would be the hall­mark of his ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Those are not the ac­tions of a ris­ing young politi­cian who, in his first few months in of­fice, was por­trayed as pro­gres­sive and peo­ple-fo­cused.

On the day in De­cem­ber 2021 that he was sworn in­to of­fice, Mr Au­gus­tine spoke about plans to es­tab­lish an an­ti-cor­rup­tion bu­reau fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of a THA in­ter­nal au­dit.

At that time, he was quot­ed as say­ing: “I am no longer in­ter­est­ed in us just cit­ing the ex­am­ples of cor­rup­tion and mak­ing po­lit­i­cal heavy weath­er about it.”

The time has come to live up to that promise. With al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion hang­ing over his ad­min­is­tra­tion —yet an­oth­er con­tro­ver­sy com­ing on the heels of his part­ing of ways with Mr Duke — Mr Au­gus­tine needs to come clean and ful­ly ac­count to the peo­ple who vot­ed him in­to of­fice.

The si­lence, which he has dogged­ly main­tained for the past few days, is not the best op­tion in this sit­u­a­tion. He must lead by ex­am­ple, demon­strat­ing the qual­i­ties ex­pect­ed of a hold­er of high po­lit­i­cal of­fice.

Mr Au­gus­tine owes To­ba­go, and Trinidad, an ex­pla­na­tion.