Q: Mr chief sec­re­tary, isn't it too ear­ly to start the cam­paign for the 2013 THA elec­tions?

A: (At his Calder Hall, Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go, of­fice Tues­day morn­ing) As far as I am con­cerned the prepa­ra­tion for elec­tion nor­mal­ly starts the day you are elect­ed, the chal­lenge comes when you fo­cus on elec­tion­eer­ing as against prop­er gov­er­nance. In those cir­cum­stances I think in some ways I have seen more elec­tion­eer­ing than gov­er­nance.

On the part of the THA?

(A quick re­sponse) No. No. Def­i­nite­ly on the part of the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Doesn't it work both ways?

The point is when that hap­pens you have to re­spond be­cause you def­i­nite­ly have to pro­tect your turf po­lit­i­cal or oth­er­wise.

Ah...I love that ter­mi­nol­o­gy, pro­tect­ing your turf. Isn't that what all this con­fu­sion or bac­cha­nal be­tween the THA and the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment is about?

Def­i­nite­ly, be­cause it is about the THA pro­tect­ing it­self and we have gained a lot in To­ba­go over the past ten years and those gains must not be al­lowed to be erod­ed.

Mr Lon­don, if the PNM was in con­trol of Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment would the sit­u­a­tion have reached the stage it is to­day?

It would not have been pub­lic but I want to tell you that even when you had a PNM con­trolled THA and a PNM con­trolled cen­tral gov­ern­ment, there were ar­eas of dis­agree­ment. Some of the min­is­ters would tell you that when Mr Man­ning was Prime Min­is­ter he would tell some of his min­is­ters: "When you deal­ing with To­ba­go leave it to me (Man­ning) be­cause you don't un­der­stand the To­ba­go sit­u­a­tion and you are like­ly to make mis­takes..."

Dr Row­ley for ex­am­ple re­cent­ly re­mind­ed me that when he was min­is­ter of Hous­ing, com­ing to To­ba­go with­out in­form­ing us and want­i­ng to vis­it hous­ing set­tle­ments...he had to go on his own.

Is it that the PP Min­is­ters can­not come to To­ba­go on of­fi­cial busi­ness with­out get­ting the per­mis­sion of the THA?

(Fur­rowed brow) That is not the rea­son...the rea­son is when you in­ter­fere in ar­eas in which you know are un­der the am­bit of the THA...

What ar­eas are they ma­li­cious­ly in­ter­fer­ing with?

(Heavy grin) I will not say ma­li­cious, maybe mis­chie­vous­ly, yes... For the time be­ing, mis­chie­vous. But you have the re­cent re­nam­ing of Crown Point Air­port where there was an at­tempt to hi­jack the process which we had be­gun.

Why would they want to hi­jack such an ex­er­cise?

Well, it goes back to your very first premise about the cam­paign has start­ed...and there­fore, you want to paint your­self in the most pos­i­tive light or con­verse­ly, por­tray the PNM-run THA in the most neg­a­tive light.

So a some­what mun­dane act of re­nam­ing an air­port some politi­cians see this as a means of get­ting a few more votes?

(A cyn­i­cal smile) The re­nam­ing of Crown Point is a big plus be­cause Mr Robin­son is a favourite. You will get a cer­tain amount of hype and re­mem­ber peo­ple vote for you some­times be­cause of ac­cu­mu­la­tive ef­fect.

There is a school of thought which be­lieves that the THA elec­tion is cru­cial to the ex­is­tence of the PNM, do you see it in that light?

(An ap­prov­ing nod) Yes. Def­i­nite­ly. The THA elec­tion, as some­body put it, could be a be­gin­ning of an­oth­er leg of the resur­gence of the PNM, or it can al­so sig­nal an­oth­er dis­ap­point­ment (a grim ex­pres­sion) and can re­al­ly make the re­cov­ery that much more chal­leng­ing.

Speak­ing re­cent­ly to a very ar­dent, in fact much more than an ar­dent sup­port­er...but some­body very se­nior in the PNM, I was told that the elec­tion will be bit­ter­ly fought as the PNM is on its last leg?

I think it will be bit­ter­ly fought for two rea­sons-one, be­cause as I said, the PNM is see­ing this as very cru­cial to its re­cov­ery and the PP sees this as the cul­mi­na­tion of the com­plete takeover of Trinidad and To­ba­go...po­lit­i­cal­ly, and there­fore pro­pose to fight it vig­or­ous­ly. Yes, it will be bit­ter­ly fought and based on what is hap­pen­ing it is go­ing to be to run for quite some time...like the fight has al­ready start­ed.

From where you sit, what could be the ul­ti­mate re­sult to the par­ty if the PNM should lose in 2013?

(A con­tem­pla­tive blank stare) I think it would mean the depth of the in­tro­spec­tion would be­come even greater but the PNM as a po­lit­i­cal par­ty will not die. I am cer­tain of that and the ex­tent of the re­sus­ci­ta­tion, res­ur­rec­tion, what­ev­er, that is some­thing that would chal­lenge the par­ty in a way that noth­ing has chal­lenged the PNM in a very long time.

I am not con­sid­er­ing that (the PNM los­ing) be­cause I be­lieve that in the fi­nal analy­sis, and every day you are see­ing it, that the PNM is go­ing to be suc­cess­ful in To­ba­go.

Why?

Be­cause To­bag­o­ni­ans are be­gin­ning to un­der­stand that even though the PNM is not and has nev­er been a per­fect par­ty, that when com­pared to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship it is a much bet­ter choice in their own self in­ter­est.

Wouldn't that (a loss by the PNM) re­flect neg­a­tive­ly on your stew­ard­ship as the leader of the par­ty in To­ba­go?

Well of course. Every time you go up for elec­tion it is a test be­cause you know the peo­ple are our em­ploy­ers and what they do is that they mark your copy book, as it were, once every four years in the case of the THA, and re­gard­less of the rea­sons you might give, you have to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as the leader when you lose be­cause you al­so take the cred­it when you win.

Mr Lon­don, to the sur­prise of many, the PP snatched both par­lia­men­tary seats in To­ba­go inthe 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion. Can the rul­ing coali­tion sus­tain that mo­men­tum in the THA ex­er­cise in 2013?

One of the things we did af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion was to de­ter­mine why did that hap­pen, and I think it hap­pened be­cause of sev­er­al an­ti-things, one of them of course is the an­ti-Man­ning sen­ti­ment, the an­ti-es­tab­lish­ment.

An­ti-Orville Lon­don?

(Philo­soph­i­cal­ly) May be, but I don't think that as­pect of it was im­por­tant be­cause it was a na­tion­al elec­tion and I re­al­ly think the ques­tion of in­cum­ben­cy and peo­ple want­ed change; they want­ed some­thing new, some­thing dif­fer­ent. Nor­mal­ly in To­ba­go more peo­ple would come out for a THA elec­tion than na­tion­al elec­tion and the vot­er turnout was 63 per cent, the high­est for any elec­tion in To­ba­go. We did some in­tro­spec­tion and recog­nised that we were not push­ing our achieve­ments as ag­gres­sive­ly as we ought to have done. (Lon­don lists sev­er­al of the THA achieve­ments un­der his stew­ard­ship so far).

It is in­ter­est­ing to hear about those pos­i­tives, but how do you ex­plain that in the con­text of a let­ter pub­lished in all three dailies to­day where your lead­er­ship of the THA has been brought in­to ques­tion with the au­thor point­ing to sev­er­al projects not yet com­plet­ed or hav­ing failed?

Well, let me just say that once you are talk­ing about de­vel­op­ment, one can al­ways find some­thing that has not been done prop­er­ly or not done as yet.

As a deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM, have you had time to think about the sug­ges­tion thrown out by your par­ty's chair­man that the time had come for the PNM to look at coali­tion arrange­ments?

(A mod­er­ate sigh) I will not go for this as a first choice at this time.

Does the PNM have the time to re­build it­self in time for the next con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due gen­er­al elec­tion?

Yes. And you know it is said that some­times the choice is not be­tween good and bet­ter but be­tween bad and less bad? (Laughs). And I think that we are get­ting some as­sis­tance from the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (laugh­er once more). But re­al­ly, they are com­ing over as be­ing quite disin­gen­u­ous and the ex­am­ples of that are quite ob­vi­ous. You have the Resh­mi af­fair, you have the...

Would those is­sues be still alive four years from now, Mr chief sec­re­tary.

Yes. Be­cause the PP is mak­ing so many mis­takes so quick­ly that you for­get the last one, so you don't have time for it to soak in an­oth­er mis­take is made. But there will come a day of reck­on­ing when we can now go back and list those in­stances and then you will get the ac­cu­mu­la­tive ef­fect.

Are you ques­tion­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty or in­tegri­ty of the PP Gov­ern­ment against that of the PNM?

Peo­ple are be­gin­ning to ask them­selves that, be­cause it is a ques­tion of com­par­i­son and be­cause of the way these peo­ple (PP) are car­ry­ing on the peo­ple will say "hey we don't think the PNM was a dis­as­ter af­ter all." Now that they have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pare both teams.

The re­cent walk or march by Man­ning ap­peared to have shown some cracks in the lead­er­ship of the PNM...

He has a right to do what he did but I am not go­ing to waste any time or en­er­gy on an ex­er­cise that last­ed sev­en days. At the end of the day, the PNM lead­er­ship is who would de­ter­mine the PNM's des­tiny. In six weeks time I don't know if that march would be ma­te­r­i­al or not.