All things equal, it seems as though the fates of both Far­ley Au­gus­tine and Wat­son Duke on the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil may be de­cid­ed to­day, when the mem­bers meet in what is ex­pect­ed to be a tense meet­ing.

The 13 mem­bers of the coun­cil, Far­ley in­clud­ed, are fi­nal­ly hop­ing to hear from Duke in per­son on what has prompt­ed his re­cent at­tacks against Far­ley and the coun­cil, and whether he will move a vote of no con­fi­dence in Au­gus­tine.

If we are to read the signs be­ing laid down by Mr Duke since the pub­lic spat that led to this sit­u­a­tion de­vel­oped, it would seem this is Duke’s ul­ti­mate plan, he hav­ing al­ready re­moved Au­gus­tine as a Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) deputy leader.

How­ev­er, from what Mr Au­gus­tine telegraphed yes­ter­day, it would seem Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil mem­bers are ready to call Mr Duke’s bluff. Au­gus­tine has now dared Duke to bring a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in him, coun­ter­ing, how­ev­er, that if Duke were to lose such a mo­tion, he, in turn, must make his de­par­ture from the THA.

This is be­cause the THA is in­su­lat­ed from the machi­na­tions of the PDP, so what Mr Duke has done to Au­gus­tine with­in his par­ty holds no sway with­in the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil. What that means is Duke could al­so find him­self a lone wolf if the oth­er coun­cil mem­bers do not sup­port him and could al­so find him­self fac­ing a sim­i­lar mo­tion.

Yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine al­so re­it­er­at­ed a pre­vi­ous in­ten­tion to re­view Duke’s As­sis­tant THA Sec­re­tary port­fo­lio with a view to strip­ping him of the ma­jor­i­ty of re­spon­si­bly he (Duke) now has. Au­gus­tine, as Chief Sec­re­tary, can do so with­out need­ing the sup­port of any of the oth­er As­sem­bly­men.

And of course, while cit­i­zens are look­ing on at this im­pend­ing im­plo­sion of the PDP, it all seems the event that led to this—a group of To­bag­o­ni­ans in dis­tress in New York—was a com­plete red her­ring.

As we stand now, the Rox­bor­ough Folk Per­form­ers, head­ed by for­mer min­is­ter Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin, must al­so clear up a grey area with­in the sto­ry. That is to say the group seem­ing­ly left here for a tour of New York with­out the fi­nan­cial where-with-all to do so—no con­firmed ac­com­mo­da­tion or per diem on which to sur­vive—hence their call, via Duke, for help. How­ev­er, from all ac­counts, Duke sought to get the THA to send mon­ey via wire trans­fers and with­out go­ing through the reg­u­lar ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­to­col for such ac­tiv­i­ty. Al­so, it is now clear that the THA of­fered, and the folk group agreed pri­or to its de­par­ture, on­ly to fund their air­line tick­ets to the tune of $300,000, but then had to fork out a fur­ther $100,000 when the group found it­self with­out board­ing or food and Duke made his call.

Even more dis­con­cert­ing has been how Duke has at­tacked Au­gus­tine and by ex­ten­sion the THA, of which he is a part, as the in­ci­dent played out, sug­gest­ing this mat­ter is the back end of some­thing long fes­ter­ing.

What has tran­spired since last week has cer­tain­ly brought con­ster­na­tion to the thou­sands of peo­ple who vot­ed for the PDP in last De­cem­ber’s elec­tion hop­ing for a change in gov­er­nance. Hope­ful­ly, Mr Au­gus­tine and the THA Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil will get it right for the good of all To­ba­go.