When Taharqa Obika was drafted into the UNC, I wondered why? Was it because he had an African name and was also reminiscent in looks of a some primordial Shaka Zulu character deliberately left out of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness book because it was not intended to be a scary novel or why really?
When Panday was attempting to colorized the party, he brought in US Congressman Mervyn Dymally, FIFA’s Jack Warner, Olympian Ato Boldon, national icon Carlos John among others, but when Kamla inducted into her black hall of fame, Obika, one asked if that is the best pick a pan a pan choice she could make?
Show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are and birds of a feather flock together explains it all. Kamla could not have seen in Obika anything special except that she is of the same ilk: Kamla jumped from Robinsonian politics to NAR to the UNC to the Partnership and to the Siparia political narcissism of Kamla herself. Kamla has been doing the political danse macabre of crapaud politics for a long time. Would it be to bizarre to think that she is next in line to jump over to the PNM and leave her sycophants in the political desert? Wait and see.
Nonentity Obika has been, he gets credit for leaving a party that has become steeped in scandal of promiscuity thus reducing the house of the rising sun to just a house of increasing darkness – i.e. a ho house where the sun is setting.
Obika brought nothing to add to the assets of the UNC and has left without taking anything from it. When a ship is sinking, it is said the lowest level critters are the first to jump ship as courtesy their instinct they know it is time to do the crapaud dance.
There are others who might do the dignified and noble thing and follow Obika and save the UNC which they call great and which via their presence in it makes it a great waste. I don’t have to call out Wade Mark in this context, but self-respect is not one of his trademark, so Obika is way ahead of him in this respect.
In British politics, it is the backbenchers who keep the frontbenchers in line via their quintessential threat to revolt and bring down the leadership of their party for misbehaviour. How many light years away are we from that ideal?
L. Siddhartha Orie