Tobago PNM schools Duke in Maths

The Tobago Council of the People’s National Movement (PNM) wants the leader of the Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP), Watson Duke, to stop referring to the constituency of Tobago East as a marginal seat.

The Tobago Council of the People’s National Movement (PNM) wants the leader of the Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP), Watson Duke, to stop referring to the constituency of Tobago East as a marginal seat.

Duke is facing the PNM’s Tobago East Ayanna Webster-Roy for the second consecutive general election.

They first went head-to-head for the seat in 2015.

Back then, Webster-Roy won by over 6,000 votes.

Since the August 10 election bell was rung, Duke and some political pundits have labelled the seat as marginal.

However, the PNM said it cannot be relabelled.

Leader of the Tobago PNM Executive Council, Tracey Davidson-Celestine.

On Tuesday July 21, the Tobago PNM council’s leader, Tracy Davidson-Celestine, dubbed Duke as a character in an English nursery rhyme for “his marginal grasp of Arithmetic”.

“Like Humpty Dumpty and Alice in Wonderland, Mr Duke seems to think that a word can mean whatever he wants it to mean. In Mr. Duke’s case, that word is ‘marginal’… Obviously, he is not paying attention to the facts and figures,” she said in a release.

PNM candidate for Tobago East, Ayanna Webster-Roy, incumbent MP for the constituency.

Incumbent MP, Ayanna Webster-Roy also questioned whether Duke understood Maths.

“Those numbers—69.4 percent—do not describe a marginal seat,” Webster-Roy said in the release.

She also said she would win the seat again.

“I am confident that the quality and consistency of my representation has retained public confidence in me as the voice and face of Tobago East in Parliament,” the PNM candidate said.