Davidson-Celestine to PDP: Stop the lies and innuendoes

PNM Tobago Council political leader Tracy Davidson-Celestine has again slammed the Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP) for peddling “lies and innuendoes” about the party based on the contents of a management letter from the Auditor General’s Department to the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) for 2016.

The letter, Chief Administrator Bernadette Solomon-Koroma, was dated November 12, 2020.

During a PDP drive-in meeting, last Sunday in Scarborough, the party’s deputy leader Farley Augustine produced a copy of the letter, which, he claimed, raised questions about Davidson-Celestine’s role in a zipline project planned for the Main Ridge Forest Reserve.

Davidson-Celestine was the Secretary of Tourism and Transportation in the THA at the time the project was announced in 2015. But it was never completed.

She has denied “mismanagement” of the project, saying work had barely started when she left to become ambassador to Costa Rica.

But speaking at a PNM meeting at Milford Park, Bon Accord, on Wednesday night, a fiery Davidson-Celestine trained her guns on Augustine and the PDP for accusing her and the party of corruption.

“There is a group going around Tobago looking to pilot a lot of lies and innuendos to the people, telling Tobagonians that this PNM is involved in corruption and things that are untoward and trying to link me to ziplines,” she told supporters.

Davidson-Celestine, who is contesting the Lambeau/Signal Hill seat, claimed the management letter Augustine had in his possession did not point to any wrongdoing on the part of any THA member or public servant.

She said: “I wish to indicate to all of you tonight (Wednesday), ladies and gentlemen, that a management letter is a document written to a member of staff within a particular division, indicating that by through the auditing process that they would have not received some information, and in order to make a reasonable conclusion about the state of affairs of the division, they need additional information in order to make decision.”