Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les 

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent 

Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke has cau­tioned prime min­is­ter-des­ig­nate Stu­art Young not to get ahead of him­self, re­mind­ing him that he has yet to be of­fi­cial­ly ap­point­ed.

Speak­ing in a so­cial me­dia video, Duke took is­sue with Young’s re­cent re­marks at an In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day (IWD) event last week, where he pledged to strength­en do­mes­tic vi­o­lence laws once he as­sumes of­fice.

Duke claimed that Young’s state­ment in­di­rect­ly un­der­mines the work of his pre­de­ces­sor, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who has served as Prime Min­is­ter for the past decade.

Speak­ing at the PNM’s IWD event last Fri­day, Young vowed to cham­pi­on women’s rights, promis­ing stronger pro­tec­tions. He pledged tougher do­mes­tic vi­o­lence laws and bet­ter vic­tim pro­tec­tion, call­ing for the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ sup­port. At an­oth­er event the fol­low­ing day, he promised leg­is­la­tion against so­cial me­dia at­tacks on women, call­ing so­cial me­dia a tool for cow­ards.

But Duke warned Young against im­ply­ing that Row­ley’s ad­min­is­tra­tion had not done enough to pro­tect women.

“Your Prime Min­is­ter, my Prime Min­is­ter, has been in pow­er for 10 years. They have made many leg­is­la­tions to pro­tect women, and those de­ci­sions are good. You were there in Cab­i­net. You were al­ways his right-hand man. And to think about it—af­ter all he would have done—you are say­ing, by not say­ing, that enough was not done and you will make more. That is not a good sign for some­one who is wait­ing to be knight­ed.”

Duke ac­cused Young of hav­ing a case of “ver­bal di­ar­rhoea” and en­cour­aged him to tread care­ful­ly.

“Be very care­ful as to how you be­gin to tread on your Prime Min­is­ter’s gar­ment. Re­mem­ber, you have not been giv­en the oil on your fore­head, as you are just not prime min­is­ter—you’re hop­ing to be. Do not try to throw shade on the work of your Prime Min­is­ter. Con­grat­u­late him. “Stay away from the laws that he would have su­per­vised. Stay away from the laws that he did not fix. Wait un­til you get the stamp of ap­proval, and then you could talk. But you’re talk­ing out of time,” Duke said.

He ad­vised Young to fo­cus on oth­er is­sues af­fect­ing women, such as bet­ter wages and work­ing con­di­tions for do­mes­tic work­ers.

“If you want to do some­thing for women, do that. That’s a new way. That’s some­thing that you will get a round of ap­plause for. The do­mes­tic work­ers of this coun­try are not clas­si­fied as work­ers ac­cord­ing to law. They are not cov­ered by the law of this land. We need to pro­tect them.”