Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Orville Lon­don fol­lowed in the foot­steps of his par­ents and be­came a teacher. He was nev­er ac­tive in par­ty pol­i­tics but when ap­proached in 1995 af­ter a teach­ing ca­reer span­ning close to 30 years, he ac­cept­ed and nev­er looked back. Lon­don, 67, is the chief sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA). He has held that po­si­tion since con­test­ing the elec­tions in 2001.

He served as teacher and prin­ci­pal from 1966 to 1995. Lon­don stud­ied his­to­ry and so­ci­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and pur­sued post­grad­u­ate stud­ies in ed­u­ca­tion and in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions. Many may be sur­prised to know that he dab­bled with sports jour­nal­ism and used to be an avid lawn ten­nis play­er.

The Par­latu­vi­er-born Lon­don joked, "I was not an ex­cep­tion­al­ly good play­er, I just liked the game." Lon­don was sec­re­tary and pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion, sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go Foot­ball League, ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the T&T Crick­et Board of Con­trol, sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go Sec­ondary Schools' Ath­let­ics Com­mit­tee and co-founder of the To­ba­go Lawn Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion.

He has five chil­dren-three sons and two daugh­ters; two grand­chil­dren; two broth­ers and two sis­ters-one of whom died; while his moth­er will cel­e­brate her 88th birth­day on Christ­mas Day. Lon­don, who paused from his busy sched­ule on?No­vem­ber 23 to speak with the Sun­day Guardian, said the po­lit­i­cal cli­mate was of con­cern to him since politi­cians now will do just about any­thing to de­stroy their op­po­nents.

Lon­don said while he faced some chal­leng­ing times, the jour­ney has so far been an in­ter­est­ing one.

'Pol­i­tics has changed'

Lon­don is con­cerned about the man­ner in which pol­i­tics is con­duct­ed. He feels politi­cians will do any­thing to de­stroy each oth­er and the at­tacks are now be­ing per­son­alised. He said, "Since I be­came chief sec­re­tary there are times when you be­come dis­ap­point­ed in the way in which some as­pects of the pol­i­tics are con­duct­ed.

"I think at this point in time, I have se­ri­ous con­cerns about what is hap­pen­ing in pol­i­tics now be­cause through­out my po­lit­i­cal ca­reer my po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents have not been my en­e­my, in oth­er words we were able to have dif­fer­ences and high­ly crit­i­cal of one an­oth­er. It was not per­son­alised. There was not the feel­ing that be­cause some­one was your po­lit­i­cal op­po­nent that you would de­stroy them. It is be­com­ing like that now."

He said now politi­cians will do any­thing to get rid of the op­po­nent, even if it meant de­stroy­ing them pro­fes­sion­al­ly or per­son­al­ly. He said it was glar­ing in the run-up to the THA elec­tions which will be held ear­ly next year. "Don't take my word for it, but you will see how the rhetoric has den­i­grat­ed with all the per­son­al at­tacks and so on and I find that quite trou­bling," Lon­don said.

Asked if he had any re­grets, he said they were more like mo­ments of in­tro­spec­tion. Be­ing an ed­u­ca­tor helped him to over­come many of his try­ing times. Not want­i­ng to sound sanc­ti­mo­nious, Lon­don said, "We politi­cians need to ask our­selves what are we do­ing to our­selves.

"We need to ask our­selves if we are un­jus­ti­fi­ably den­i­grat­ing our­selves by cre­at­ing an im­age which is not valid." He said one trou­bling as­pect for him was be­ing brand­ed a politi­cian.

THA?elec­tions ex­cit­ing

Lon­don said the mo­men­tum and en­er­gy lev­els for the up­com­ing elec­tions have been high­er than ever be­fore and once that con­tin­ues, "we should be in good shape." He said, "This to me, is one of the more ex­cit­ing elec­tions. "For the first time in a long time we are fight­ing an elec­tion and not to­tal­ly on the de­fen­sive, since most of the oth­er elec­tions the PNM was in pow­er and you would have to de­fend your track record.

"You were fight­ing against an un­known force and ba­si­cal­ly say­ing what you can do and what you can't do." He said To­bag­o­ni­ans could now com­pare the THA, PNM and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship which com­prise the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple.

He said, "Peo­ple have a point of ref­er­ence. We now have a sit­u­a­tion where we can com­pare track records and that gives us a bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ty to make a case than pre­vi­ous times. "That is caus­ing us to ap­peal to some peo­ple who were ap­a­thet­ic or skep­ti­cal."

Find­ing strength in fam­i­ly and friends

So how ex­act­ly does he deal with the pres­sures as­so­ci­at­ed with pub­lic of­fice? He has a strong fam­i­ly base and an ex­cel­lent sup­port group. "My daugh­ters are sup­port­ive and high­ly crit­i­cal. They tell me things as they are, so even though they sup­port, they don't pam­per me," he said.

Lon­don al­so seeks ad­vice and in­for­ma­tion from his friends and said hav­ing them around keeps him bal­anced and ground­ed. He man­ages to stay calm though faced with some very stress­ful and vex­ing sit­u­a­tions at times. His fa­ther was al­so an An­gli­can priest and so Lon­don grew up in that faith, though he's mar­ried to a Ro­man Catholic.

"My wife and daugh­ters are very staunch Ro­man Catholics and be­cause of my job I have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to get in­volved in a num­ber of de­nom­i­na­tions. I have grown to re­spect all de­nom­i­na­tions and re­li­gions. I move around but I re­al­ly com­mu­ni­cate a lot of the times on an in­di­vid­ual ba­sis with God," he said.

He be­lieves his pri­vate mo­ments com­mu­ni­cat­ing with God helps him get through the day, if not, he said he doesn't feel right. When he en­tered the po­lit­i­cal are­na in 1995, he said the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment was un­pop­u­lar in To­ba­go. The PNM hadn't won an elec­tion there for about 20 years.

"One of the rea­sons why the PNM was suc­cess­ful in 2001 is that it was able to keep that core of hard­work­ing, ded­i­cat­ed, fo­cused work­ers and sup­port­ers. "We were able to sig­nal to To­bag­o­ni­ans that the PNM?had re­struc­tured and re­con­fig­ured it­self so that they could feel com­fort­able that this To­ba­go/PNM will be pre­pared to fight the cause for them even against the na­tion­al PNM." He said it was To­bag­o­ni­ans first and PNM af­ter.