Ah, Carlos Boy Part 2
Despite the brave public face Carlos John is presenting in the wake of his defeat to both Ramesh Maharaj and Kamla Persad-Bissessar for the post of deputy political leader in the UNC, he must be hurting badly. As Trevor Sudama might say, the UNC voters gave him enough votes for him to stay in the UNC house but put him in his place; that is, they left him post-less.
How could they reject him from the post of deputy in the face of Panday's boast of, and call for, ethnic inclusiveness? Did they not see that they would have lifted the party's Afro profile by using the one-person-one-vote franchise to make him second in command? Did they not see that ethnic protectiveness was not the critical factor at this stage of UNC and national democracy? Did they not see the threat to the expansionism of the UNC into the Corridor of an ethnic ganging up? Did they not see the value of his high national and business profile?
He had declared himself unambiguously against the PNM. He had passionately treated Panday's wishes as his commands. He had brought big business money and Afro leadership resources into the UNC. He was a red tape-sidestepping performer. What more did they want? A long sojourn towards seniority? An ethnic makeover?
How was he to explain that he was routed, not by one of the Indos in the race, but by both of them? Was it not abundantly clear that the Indos did not want to take the chance of an Afro acceding to the post of political leader?
He would ponder these things privately, but publicly, he would say that he had done well, given his recency of membership in the party. After all, he had said throughout the disconcerting campaign that, whatever the outcome, the party was more important than he and his quest for office and he would keep supporting it. And further, the Indos had voted according to their conscience.
But his confidence in the rainbow coalition that Panday and the opportunists promoted as developing in the UNC must be badly shaken. Would he have the heart to try again? Or would he think he would be outdone, not by personal incompetence and ineptitude, not by personal corruption, but by the simple fact that he is an Afro? But if he were to let himself dwell on the thought, then he would ineluctably come to the conclusion that he is valuable as supernumerary but neither as star nor co-star.
The conclusion would be a personal crisis for him. He would be torn between his heartfelt loyalty to Panday and the organisational logic of putting distance between himself and the unserviceable ethnic stasis of the Indos in the wider party. I suspect that the loyalty will triumph for the rest of the Panday season.
But the crisis would be good for him. Seriously. It would teach him a lesson in sociology that he has badly needed since he was catapulted into the high profiles of NCC chairman, TIDCO chairman, and government minister. He revealed himself as being performance-driven - as seeing life as a series of visible, measurable material results. He seemed to have little or no sense of the sociology of stasis, development and change. He seemed to have little patience with the social inheritance and transmission of conditions that impeded material advancement, but plenty of faith in the ability of the private sector business approach to change the mindset of centuries of debilitating psychological habit.
Indo tribalism has not only stopped him in his tracks, but also given him the opportunity to reflect on the inadequacy of his business values for the negotiation of political change.
He should welcome the education.
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