Camille McEach­nie

The po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) and To­ba­go East can­di­date Wat­son Duke can­celled the planned meet­ing with One To­ba­go Voice.

One To­ba­go Voice said, “The meet­ing might have been a sham.”

Duke told Guardian Me­dia he had re­scind­ed the in­vi­ta­tion to the par­ty be­cause he had “un­masked their true in­ten­tions in con­test­ing the elec­tions.”

He spoke with Guardian Me­dia, about the sta­tus of the meet­ing, soon af­ter a live Face­book broad­cast on Mon­day la­belling One To­ba­go Voice’s steer­ing com­mit­tee chair­man Ho­choy Charles a “colos­sal fail­ure.”

Last week, Duke wrote the par­ty re­quest­ing a meet­ing to dis­cuss how the two po­lit­i­cal par­ties could fight as one against the PNM.

Last year, Duke re­ject­ed their call for uni­ty and speak with “one voice” on To­ba­go’s be­half.

One To­ba­go Voice is a group of three par­ties—To­ba­go For­wards led by Christlyn Moore, the To­ba­go Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Peo­ple led by Ash­worth Jack, and The Plat­form of Truth led by Charles.

Speak­ing about the PDP’s planned meet­ing with the group on Fri­day, Duke told Guardian Me­dia the “PDP want­ed Charles to fo­cus on the com­mon en­e­my —the PNM, and stop bash­ing the PDP.”

Hochoy Charles, Chairman of the One Tobago Voice Party.

Charles had ac­cused the PDP of be­ing “an agent of the UNC (Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress).”

Charles had al­so said Duke should not of­fer him­self as a can­di­date in the Au­gust 10 gen­er­al elec­tion un­til he is cleared of a sex­u­al as­sault charge.

On Mon­day, Wat­son, who is al­so Mi­nor­i­ty Leader in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly claimed the coali­tion par­ty is split­ting votes.

“They (One To­ba­go Voice) are con­test­ing...to as­sist the PNM. They are not en­ter­ing to win the elec­tion but to pre­vent the PDP from get­ting suf­fi­cient votes to win the elec­tion,” Duke al­leged.

“Mr Charles and One Voice are treach­er­ous and dan­ger­ous to the se­cu­ri­ty and wel­fare of To­ba­go. They have com­mit­ted an un­par­don­able sin by spite­ful­ly con­test­ing the elec­tions,” Duke told Guardian Me­dia.

Re­spond­ing to Duke’s claims, Charles re­it­er­at­ed his a state­ment that “the PDP is part of the na­tion­al voice—the UNC, and there­fore not a To­ba­go Voice.”

He added: “They wrote to us be­cause they know our stance so, maybe the meet­ing was a sham.”

One To­ba­go Voice is yet to re­veal the can­di­dates rep­re­sent­ing them in the up­com­ing elec­tions.