Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots leader Wat­son Duke has in­vit­ed To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Sec­re­tary Tashia Bur­ris to “come back home” to the par­ty. His in­vi­ta­tion came fol­low­ing a heart­felt re­flec­tion from Bur­ris on the an­niver­sary of her se­lec­tion as the PDP’s can­di­date for To­ba­go West for the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Both Duke and Bur­ris con­test­ed the To­ba­go East and West seats for the PDP but lost against the PNM’s Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy and Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis. 

In her emo­tion­al post, yes­ter­day, Bur­ris marked five years since her can­di­da­cy an­nounce­ment, which she de­scribed as “one of the proud­est mo­ments of my life then as I felt I was walk­ing the path that God laid be­fore me.”

Bur­ris said uni­ty is need­ed to fight for To­ba­go’s fu­ture.

“To­ba­go needs all its fight­ers, now more than ever,” she wrote. “We may not agree on the meth­ods, or even the path, but what we can­not af­ford to lose sight of is the des­ti­na­tion. To­ba­go’s self-de­ter­mi­na­tion has al­ways been the goal.”

She al­so shared a per­son­al mem­o­ry of stand­ing along­side Duke, stat­ing that al­though they have since gone sep­a­rate ways, she still hoped for him to be the leader she once be­lieved in.

“I re­mem­ber the per­son who I stood next to, flawed as he is and was, who back then I be­lieved tru­ly want­ed bet­ter for this is­land and the peo­ple of To­ba­go,” Bur­ris re­called.

How­ev­er, when asked about rec­on­cil­i­a­tion she told a com­menter it was “not the pur­pose of my post. I choose to for­give, move on and live in grace.”

Bur­ris and oth­er mem­bers of the THA ex­ec­u­tive re­signed from the PDP on De­cem­ber 1, 2022 months af­ter a very pub­lic feud with Duke.

How­ev­er, Duke has praised Bur­ris’ on­go­ing sup­port for To­ba­go’s self-de­ter­mi­na­tion. But he said he is con­cerned about her cur­rent align­ment with the Far­ley Au­gus­tine-led THA Ex­ec­u­tive, which he be­lieves has un­der­mined the true fight for full au­ton­o­my.

Duke en­cour­aged Bur­ris to con­sid­er whether her cur­rent po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment is aligned with her prin­ci­ples.

“As a con­scious in­di­vid­ual, I am sure you must recog­nise the dis­so­nance be­tween your prin­ci­ples and the de­ci­sions be­ing made by those you cur­rent­ly work along­side,” he said.

He then in­vit­ed Bur­ris to re­turn to the PDP.

“Come back home to the PDP, where the mis­sion for To­ba­go’s full self-de­ter­mi­na­tion re­mains at the PDP’s fore­front,” Duke wrote. “To­geth­er, we as a To­ba­go-con­scious peo­ple can con­tin­ue the jour­ney that be­gan five years ago, reignit­ing the hope and promise that brought To­ba­go all to­geth­er in the first place.

—Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les