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Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is be­ing called a “cow­ard” and “liar” by his po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents, who are dis­miss­ing his claims that he would per­son­al­ly de­stroy the radar in To­ba­go if it were used by the Unit­ed States to at­tack Venezuela.

Au­gus­tine, in an in­ter­view with To­ba­go Chan­nel 5 on Wednes­day, said he would “mash up” the radar if it threat­ened To­ba­go’s “neu­tral” stance in the on­go­ing ten­sion be­tween the US and Venezuela. But Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) To­ba­go Coun­cil leader An­cil Den­nis dis­missed the re­mark as mere “speed talk”.

“The Chief Sec­re­tary has once again demon­strat­ed to the peo­ple of To­ba­go that he’s a cow­ard; he’s not will­ing to speak up for them, and he’s not will­ing to put the in­ter­ests of To­bag­o­ni­ans first. And af­ter hid­ing be­hind this is­sue, say­ing very in­ac­cu­rate­ly and un­for­tu­nate­ly that the radar is not hav­ing an im­pact on our tourism sec­tor, say­ing as well that the radar does not neg­a­tive­ly af­fect the safe­ty of the peo­ple of To­ba­go, he’s now com­ing to say that he will mash up the radar him­self,” Den­nis told Guardian Me­dia.