TPP leader urges PM: Call general election now!

ENERGISED by the enthusiasm of supporters on Sunday night, interim political leader of the Tobago People’s Party (TPP) Farley Augustine has challenged the Prime Minister to call a general election.

Augustine issued the challenge as he began his address at the launch of the TPP on the "stage in the sea," Milford Road, Scarborough.

The party’s symbol is an anchor.

“Tobago, how yuh feeling?” he asked the crowd, which included former Tobago Organisation of the People leader Ashworth Jack.

“With this kind of energy....Tobago, I understand that your Prime Minister is on the island tonight (Sunday)...although he has an election in Trinidad tomorrow (Monday), he is in Tobago tonight.

“But now might be a good time to tell the Prime Minister, just prorogue (sic) the Parliament and call a general election, because we ready. We ready.”

The next general election is constitutionally due in 2025.

Augustine, who is also the THA Chief Secretary, added, “Mr Prime Minister, the law does not give Farley Augustine the authority to call an election. But the law gives the Prime Minister the authority to call a general election…Call it, nah, call it, nah, call it because we ready!”

He described as “disappointments” the strained relations that havedeveloped between himself a Dr Rowley for much of his tenure so far as chief secretary.

Augustine said, “I have come tonight to symbolically take a travel up to Mason Hall (where Dr Rowley was born), because there is a navel string there that I want to dig up and I am going to take it down to White Hall and deliver it to a baldhead man down there and say, ‘Keep your navel string, it no longer belongs to Tobago.

“Because Tobago, I am now convinced that the worst thing to happen to Trinidad and Tobago since the coming of Christopher Columbus was the coming of Keith Christopher Rowley.”