Chief Sec­re­tary and To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine says he was “sur­prised” by Wat­son Duke’s pub­lic en­dorse­ment of the TPP ahead of the 12 Jan­u­ary THA elec­tion, but he is wel­com­ing the sup­port.

Au­gus­tine re­spond­ed in a so­cial me­dia re­port af­ter Duke an­nounced yes­ter­day he and his re­main­ing PDP sup­port­ers would ral­ly be­hind the TPP. The two men have been po­lit­i­cal­ly di­vid­ed since their 2022 fall­out, which led to the col­lapse of the PDP and the for­ma­tion of the TPP. “Well, I was sur­prised. And I mean, I ap­pre­ci­ate the sup­port and the en­dorse­ment,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said dis­agree­ments in pol­i­tics do not pre­vent col­lab­o­ra­tion once To­ba­go’s in­ter­est is in­volved. “You know, we are say­ing To­ba­go is we, and part of that means from time to time peo­ple dis­agree on some prin­ci­ple mat­ters, but it does not mean when it comes to To­ba­go we can’t find grounds to agree and work to­geth­er.”