Gail Alexan­der

Chief sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Orville Lon­don said yes­ter­day his new term in of­fice will be his last. Lon­don, 68, would be mark­ing a fourth term and would have gov­erned the is­land for 16 straight years by the end of it. "This is def­i­nite­ly go­ing to be my last term and I want to say it in pub­lic so that it would be very dif­fi­cult for me to re­nege on that," Lon­don said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, as he was prepar­ing for his in­au­gu­ra­tion to­mor­row.

He as­sured there would be no glitch­es when the time came to change lead­er­ship, as mea­sures would be put in place for sys­tems to run smooth­ly. PNM chair­man Franklin Khan al­so echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments yes­ter­day, say­ing a suc­ces­sor may be con­sid­ered dur­ing the course of the term.

On the PNM's mo­nop­oly of the THA now, Khan said there was an is­sue over who would be mi­nor­i­ty leader and whether there would be the op­er­a­tion of a prop­er democ­ra­cy. The THA Act says the Pres­i­dent shall ap­point a mi­nor­i­ty leader–some­one sup­port­ed by the ma­jor­i­ty of those who did not sup­port the rul­ing par­ty–af­ter ap­point­ing a chief sec­re­tary and a deputy.

Khan said the vic­to­ry ob­vi­ous­ly would strength­en PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley's lead­er­ship. "The PNM was sound­ly de­feat­ed in the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion and re­sound­ing­ly de­feat­ed in the sub­se­quent lo­cal gov­ern­ment poll, so the last stand­ing pil­lar of PNM for pub­lic of­fice was the THA. Un­der no cir­cum­stance would we have al­lowed that to crum­ble," he said.

"But this re­sound­ing vic­to­ry is clear in­di­ca­tion to us that To­bag­o­ni­ans dis­like T&T's gov­er­nance. This is an in­dict­ment on Gov­ern­ment. We hope to take the vic­to­ry in­to lo­cal gov­ern­ment polls and as a plat­form in­to 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion." On this is­sue, Lon­don said he was aware there would be crit­i­cisms and con­cerns, but said the sit­u­a­tion al­so pre­sent­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for dis­cus­sion and for every­one to work hard­er to de­liv­er bet­ter re­sults.

"The fact that we don't have an op­po­si­tion, it means that all the crit­i­cism would be cen­tred around you," he said. "But it does give us an op­por­tu­ni­ty by which we can in­volve the com­mu­ni­ty and all in­ter­est groups...it is go­ing to be a chal­lenge but if we treat with it dif­fer­ent­ly, we can gain some ad­van­tage."

How­ev­er, he said he was wary that a gov­ern­ment which won by an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty, in most cas­es, even­tu­al­ly be­came "un­pop­u­lar." "That gov­ern­ment ends up be­ing un­pop­u­lar some­where around mid-term be­cause of the weight of ex­pec­ta­tion ...we have to be very wary of that." In his speech in To­ba­go on Mon­day, Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so raised the is­sue of no op­po­si­tion.

"Gov­ern­ing with no op­po­si­tion is go­ing to be dif­fi­cult be­cause you don't want to feel as if you have all the an­swers," Row­ley said.

Par­ty will en­sure good gov­er­nance–Al-Rawi

The PNM would be hold­ing dis­cus­sions to en­sure checks and bal­ances are in place so that good gov­er­nance pre­vail in To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly with the ab­sence of an of­fi­cial op­po­si­tion, Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi said yes­ter­day. He de­scribed Mon­day's vic­to­ry as "over­whelm­ing," adding it paved the way for oth­er ma­jor suc­cess­es, in­clud­ing the lo­cal gov­ern­ment and gen­er­al elec­tions.

He said what was equal­ly stun­ning was Jack los­ing his seat–Prov­i­dence/Ma­son Hall/Mo­ri­ah–to Shel­don Cun­ning­ham.