The his­to­ry of coun­tries is of­ten writ­ten ex­clu­sive­ly about kings and queens, prime min­is­ters, ex­tra­or­di­nary con­trib­u­tors such as sports­men and women, and out­stand­ing acts of brav­ery and chival­ry. Mar­tin Ter­ry Ron­don, the late for­mer chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, which al­so has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for To­co, dis­played in his time dili­gence and com­mit­ment to the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of an ex­tra­or­di­nary kind.

In a pre­vi­ous pe­ri­od, the peo­ple of those coun­try ar­eas would have been con­sid­ered to be liv­ing “be­hind God back”.

In his 27 years as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive and chair­man of the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion, Mr Ron­don found liv­ing space for poor peo­ple; he de­ter­mined ways and means to as­sist his burgess­es to re­gain their bal­ance and to re­build their homes and lives af­ter one dis­as­ter or the oth­er.

In his time in the cor­po­ra­tion, he was the voice and the ac­tion man of or­di­nary peo­ple who need­ed as­sis­tance from the State; sin­gle women with a “string band” of chil­dren to feed, clothe and ed­u­cate could de­pend on rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ron­don to find a way to as­sist them.

In all of the above and more, it did not mat­ter to this man who was or­di­nar­i­ly de­vot­ed to his par­ty, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, whether those seek­ing his as­sis­tance vot­ed for him, or whether they were sup­port­ers of the par­ty he be­longed to; if they lived in the ge­o­graph­ic of the To­co/San­gre Grande area, that was all that mat­tered for him to some­how find food­stuff, wa­ter, dry mat­tress­es, and school books for chil­dren.

In do­ing all of the above and more, it was nev­er re­port­ed that Mar­tin Ter­ry Ron­don was rude, un­car­ing, abu­sive or dis­re­spect­ful to those who sought his as­sis­tance. Be­cause of his ster­ling work in the San­gre Grande/To­co area, when his par­ty seemed in trou­ble in na­tion­al elec­tions, there were voic­es raised in favour of Ron­don be­com­ing the can­di­date.

Ul­ti­mate­ly though, this man of con­science, un­der­stand­ing and car­ing about the needs of peo­ple, was not re­moved from the ground floor and in­stalled at the lev­el of the na­tion­al Par­lia­ment. His per­son­al­i­ty would not have fit­ted in­to that role; he was not the typ­i­cal talk, talk, talk politi­cian; he was a man out in the field seek­ing al­ways to ad­vance the con­di­tion of peo­ple on the ground; Mr Ron­don would have been ham­strung by be­ing con­sis­tent­ly decked off in par­lia­men­tary garb; more than that, be­ing in the leg­isla­tive cham­ber meant that he was not in the field look­ing af­ter the prac­ti­cal needs of peo­ple.

De­tails of Mr Ron­don’s work as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of peo­ple at the lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­el ought to be re­searched and made known in a per­ma­nent form. Such a project of the self­less work that rep­re­sen­ta­tive/chair­man Ron­don did for peo­ple in com­mu­ni­ties can lay down a mod­el for rep­re­sen­ta­tive pol­i­tics.

To the fam­i­ly of Mar­tin Ter­ry Ron­don, who will­ing­ly served his peo­ple way up North in the coun­try dis­tricts of San­gre Grande and To­co, the thanks of the peo­ple re­sound. And this is in a po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment when the most fre­quent­ly heard com­plaint of burgess­es and con­stituents is that they do not see their elect­ed ones out­side of an elec­tion sea­son.

Mar­tin Ter­ry Ron­don lived amongst his con­stituents and was at their ser­vice when­ev­er need­ed.