To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple leader Ash­worth Jack last night said he would soon meet with the ex­ec­u­tive of his par­ty to de­cide on his fu­ture, in the wake of the PNM's land­slide vic­to­ry in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion. Speak­ing at the press con­fer­ence at the par­ty's head­quar­ters in Scar­bor­ough, mo­ments be­fore the PNM be­gan cel­e­brat­ing an his­toric win, Jack said he would not be an al­ba­tross around the neck of the par­ty he helped form.

"The out­come of the elec­tion was a lit­tle shock­ing, but that's how democ­ra­cy works," he told mem­bers of the me­dia. Asked if he felt he would still have the con­fi­dence of his par­ty, giv­en the mag­ni­tude of the de­feat, and the fact that the TOP lost de­spite hav­ing the sup­port of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, Jack said, "I would not want to be­come an al­ba­tross around the neck of the par­ty. If that's how the par­ty feels then I would grace­ful­ly leave it alone."

He ad­mit­ted that his de­ci­sion may de­ter­mine the par­ty's sur­vival. "The fu­ture of the par­ty will de­pend on the de­ci­sion I make in the next 48 hours or so. I would not want to haz­ard a guess about where it goes from there," he said. He said, how­ev­er, that he did not be­lieve the re­sult in To­ba­go was an in­dict­ment against the lead­er­ship of the PP. "The re­sult of the THA elec­tion does not af­fect the gen­er­al elec­tion."