Gail Alexan­der

T&T's High Com­mis­sion­er to the UK Garvin Nicholas says he will re­turn to T&T be­fore the end of the year to fo­cus on rep­re­sent­ing the peo­ple of Diego Mar­tin North East.Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian over the week­end, Nicholas, who is back home on a short va­ca­tion, sig­nalled that he in­tends to re­turn to T&T be­fore the end of the year and will con­cen­trate his en­er­gies on rep­re­sent­ing con­stituents in the con­stituen­cy who sup­port­ed him in 2010 and con­tin­ue to do so.

Diego Mar­tin North East is now held by Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment MP Colm Im­bert.Nicholas came with­in just over 400 votes of win­ning the con­stituen­cy with some 8,076 votes when he con­test­ed against Im­bert in 2010.He said he is de­ter­mined, once his Lon­don du­ties are over, to re­turn home to work to­wards be­com­ing "the best rep­re­sen­ta­tive the con­stituen­cy has ever seen."

He said the re­cent suc­cess of Jack Warn­er in Ch­agua­nas West "has made it clear that we have en­tered in­to a new era of rep­re­sen­ta­tive pol­i­tics where trib­al loy­al­ties no longer take prece­dence over rep­re­sen­ta­tion."Nicholas, who had been the Prime Min­is­ter's press sec­re­tary in 2010, was ap­point­ed by the end of that year as T&T High Com­mis­sion to Lon­don, where he has had a very suc­cess­ful stint.

His post­ing is for three years and will be up by the end of the year. On his re­turn, a new High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T will be ap­point­ed, an Of­fice of the PM of­fi­cial said yes­ter­day. On who might be ap­point­ed, the of­fi­cial said that "was a long way off."Nicholas was vot­ed Am­bas­sador of the Year ear­li­er this year and has made sig­nif­i­cant strides in ad­vanc­ing T&T's cul­tur­al, tourism and in­vest­ment prod­ucts. He al­so broke ground in suc­cess­ful­ly pi­lot­ing a cul­tur­al vil­lage in Lon­don last year, as well as sev­er­al oth­er projects through­out the UK.

On his fu­ture en­deav­our with Diego Mar­tin North East, Nicholas said he will be set­ting up an of­fice in the con­stituen­cy and will seek the as­sis­tance of his gov­ern­ment col­leagues as well as mem­bers of the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al pri­vate sec­tor to bring ser­vices to the peo­ple. "I'm re­al­ly ex­cit­ed at the thought of re­turn­ing to what I re­al­ly en­joy–con­stituen­cy rep­re­sen­ta­tion," he said.

"I've been keep­ing a hand in the ar­eas, so to speak, through the con­tacts and ac­tivists I orig­i­nal­ly inked up with."I vis­it­ed the area while I was on va­ca­tion and I found that I re­al­ly missed it, so I'll be back."I hope to bring the same lev­el of rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the peo­ple I have en­gaged while as am­bas­sador–and which has re­ceived favourable com­ment from many in the UK–to the DM East com­mu­ni­ty."Nicholas re­turns to Lon­don to­day.