A po­lit­i­cal storm is brew­ing in To­ba­go, af­ter Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day ac­cused the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of us­ing state agen­cies to tar­get his team.

The com­ment came in the wake of the raid on the home of Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Sec­re­tary Trevor James on Thurs­day.

With elec­tions on the hori­zon, Au­gus­tine is now warn­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans to brace for es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions. 

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence with James at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine said, “I re­al­ly am baf­fled as to why this heavy-hand­ed op­er­a­tion, save and ex­cept, it has the DNA, the fin­ger­print of the PNM all over it.”

How­ev­er, Au­gus­tine said his team won’t back down from what’s un­fold­ing.

“I am ex­pect­ing in the com­ing weeks and months, as the coun­try moves to­wards a gen­er­al elec­tion, it will get worse. I ex­pect sleep­less nights.”

He ac­cused the po­lice and Li­cens­ing of­fi­cers of us­ing ex­treme force against James while ex­e­cut­ing a war­rant in an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of James’ ve­hi­cle in­spec­tion stick­er.

Au­gus­tine said he’s cer­tain the PNM is launch­ing an­oth­er witch hunt against his ex­ec­u­tive.

“Then it moved to Au­dio­gate, and then it moved to an­oth­er, and an­oth­er, and then this. When will this stop?” he asked.

“The rest of the team is pre­pared to fight this mat­ter to the very end and en­sure it comes to a res­o­lu­tion quick­ly. We don’t in­tend to al­low it to fall by the way­side.”

How­ev­er, PNM’s To­ba­go Coun­cil leader An­cil Den­nis con­demned Au­gus­tine for turn­ing a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a po­lit­i­cal bat­tle­ground for a third time.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Den­nis said the po­lice, as they have done with oth­er politi­cians in the past, in­clud­ing for­mer PNM of­fi­cials, have not hes­i­tat­ed to charge, ex­e­cute war­rants and pros­e­cute per­sons.

He said To­bag­o­ni­ans should fo­cus on the on­go­ing at­ten­tion this ex­ec­u­tive has been re­ceiv­ing from law en­force­ment.

“No one is above the law in this coun­try. Their usu­al strat­e­gy is to blame the PNM and link any ac­tion against them to po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion, which is ab­solute­ly ridicu­lous.”

Den­nis added that To­bag­o­ni­ans should not be used as a shield for al­le­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing and should let the chips fall where they may.

Mean­while, Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots leader Wat­son Duke had a word of cau­tion for his col­leagues.

“Please, take lit­tle and live long. Be con­tent with your salary. Do not make deals with peo­ple—they will record and out you. Be very care­ful with your of­fice.”

Duke then called for an ear­ly elec­tion.

“Why, the con­stant la­belling or fin­ger­ing them out is con­cern­ing To­ba­go and af­fect­ing their cred­i­bil­i­ty. Truth or lie, it is not a good look,” he said.

“I don’t think it is po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed. I think for very good rea­sons, there are peo­ple look­ing at their con­duct and lis­ten­ing to their con­ver­sa­tions. They have to un­der­stand that their con­duct must be cir­cum­spect now they are in of­fice.”