Ah, Carlos Boy
We will know tonight who the new deputy political leader of the UNC is (by the way, who is the incumbent?), and if it is or isn't Carlos John, there will be hell to pay in the UNC.
The elections for posts within the UNC have been interesting, not because the party and the nation want to see who will be Panday's deputy and, consequently, the person to replace him as political leader should he become incapacitated, but rather because Carlos John is one of the candidates. And what's so special about John? Not the fact that he brings private sector operational speeds and efficiencies to his ministerial portfolio (though that is special enough), but, grossly and primordially, that he is an Afro-Trinidadian (and a visibly successful one to boot) seeking the post closest to the one held by the untouchable Panday in a party numerically dominated by Indo-Trinidadians.
As Trevor Sudama, who cannot hide his baser meanings, has said, There is room in the UNC house for John, but he must know his place. Sudama and others have explicitly argued that John is a Johnny-come-lately and an opportunist with a suspicious PNM history, and they would have the voters and the rest of the public believe that John's quest for the post of deputy leader is premature for he has spent far too little time in the UNC anti-PNM trenches. But Sudama has not said the same of Kamla Persad-Bissessar who is vying for the post as well and whose occupation of those trenches has not been appreciably longer than John's. Two clear differences between John and Persad-Bissessar are 1) the former is Afro-Trinidadian while the latter is Indo-Trinidadian and 2) the former is visibly more efficient as a minister than the latter.
Couldn't it therefore be that Sudama's subtext is that John, as an Afro, should not be aspiring to be the deputy in an Indo-dominant party, especially as he is of recent vintage?
The conditions for the inference are strong and insistent, and they contaminate Ramesh Maharaj's platform of unity and inclusiveness. The UNC need the Afro vote on the corridor to achieve a parliamentary majority that would enable them to pursue a certain legislative agenda, and John, like it or not, is the candidate most likely to attract that vote, being an Afro himself in a political context where race-based ethnicity is the single most important determinant of support for a political party. If an Afro is out of place to aspire for the job of deputy, then doesn't that make the Maharaj platform talk of unity and inclusiveness very hot, deceptive air?
Maharaj himself has not condemned Sudama's remarks for the inference that they hold for Afros in and out of the party. He has preferred to focus on the claim that big business money backs John, to say that the campaign for the position is not a tea party, and to imply that John should be tough enough to handle the remarks. But the latter must have troubled John enough to make him wonder, not only about his belonging in the UNC, but about the belonging of other Afros as well. They must have troubled other Afros as well. Indeed, Jack Warner has been moved to say that he would not be able to tolerate UNC racism.
The matter of electing a deputy political leader in the UNC has turned out to be a contest between the party's boast of ethnic inclusiveness and the party's reflex of Indo dominance and control. If John loses, the boast will take a beating within and without the party. And if he wins, the hardline forces of Indo dominance will see red, er, black, and will seek to destabilise the party.
In any event, it will take a special kind of politics to redress the balance, whatever balance there was in the first place.
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