Michael Del­blond

It might have been a fa­mous philoso­pher who was cred­it­ed with hav­ing favoured us with the very self-ev­i­dent max­im that, "Those who fail to learn from their mis­takes are doomed to re­peat them." Which leads me to ask my­self why some peo­ple are so in­clined to look at the cur­rent for­tunes of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship through the prism of the late un­la­ment­ed NAR.

There may well be an im­por­tant dis­tinc­tion that they're all miss­ing. In its ori­gin, the NAR was, as far as I gath­er, what I choose to call a "top-down" ven­ture, or mis­ad­ven­ture, if you care to be more ac­cu­rate, where­as the PP seems more like at "bot­tom-up" ex­per­i­ment, or il­lu­sion, you might say, pro­vid­ing com­ic re­lief and mus­cle-flex­ing po­lit­i­cal midgets punch­ing above their weight.

Let me ex­plain and for­give me if I'm on­ly telling the tale as it was told to me. Now Lloyd Best is on record as say­ing that a lawyer/politi­cian and for­mer uni­ver­si­ty col­league of his (not ANR Robin­son) ap­proached him, claim­ing that a group of them had every­thing in place and all that they were miss­ing to form a for­mi­da­ble po­lit­i­cal force to match the PNM was "the brains" and Lloyd and his Tapia Move­ment could fit that bill.

I can't re­call whether Best then gave an un­equiv­o­cal com­mit­ment to lead a help­ing hand or, shall we say, "a help­ing brain." But I haz­ard the guess that this might have been the po­lit­i­cal em­bry­on­ic ef­fort lead­ing to the full-fledged NAR. That's what I mean by "top-down" po­lit­i­cal ven­ture.

On the oth­er hand, one needn't the polls to tell us that there was a groundswell of re­sent­ment and frus­tra­tion at the po­lit­i­cal op­tions then on of­fer. It might not have been that they love Kam­la more but that they loved her ri­vals very much less. I mean no dis­re­spect to Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar when I aver that it is with­in that con­text that she vir­tu­al­ly shot in­to promi­nence and me­dia at­ten­tion from nowhere as "the dark horse" in the po­lit­i­cal race. She seemed at first shy and re­luc­tant to throw her hat in the po­lit­i­cal ring, an­tic­i­pat­ing per­haps that had she mis­cal­cu­lat­ed, then dust would have been her po­lit­i­cal dis­uni­ty. The rest, of course, in his­to­ry; she gam­bled and she won.

When the NAR came in­to its own, the ca­lyp­so mo­tif ap­peared to be "Cap­tain, the ship is sink­ing, tell us what to do." At a sub­se­quent time it be­came "Sink the ships to be rid of the cap­tains." As known, or should be known, I hold no briefs nor do I have any dogs in the hunt. It's my ever so hum­ble view that, in the pro­tract­ed shad­ow of his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive, one should, as far as hu­man­ly pos­si­ble, ex­hib­it a bru­tal clar­i­ty of vi­sion and an un­re­lent­ing ob­jec­tiv­i­ty and who vex, vex.

The facts, as I un­der­stand them, are that, hav­ing played sec­ond fid­dle for such a long time, Kam­la's as­pi­ra­tion to be heir ap­par­ent to high­er of­fice in the UNC was no bet­ter than "a snow­ball's chance in hell." She had, like oth­ers be­fore her, suf­fered such hu­mil­i­a­tion at the hand of her po­lit­i­cal leader (re­mem­ber no woman, no cry?) that no one an­tic­i­pat­ed that she would have been able to sum­mon the tes­tic­u­lar for­ti­tude (not my words) or the ovar­i­an for­ti­tude to "beard the li­on in his den."

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, a num­ber of po­lit­i­cal­ly "de­tes­cu­lat­ed eu­nuchs," a species that has long emerged on the po­lit­i­cal land­scape, thanks to the ef­fete po­lit­i­cal cul­ture, cling­ing to the li­on's shirt­tail for dear po­lit­i­cal life, were not averse to pledg­ing their undy­ing po­lit­i­cal "love" for the wound­ed li­on who was de­ter­mined to show the world that he was nei­ther a "pa­per tiger" nor the prover­bial "ass in a li­on's skin."

When Kam­la had won the lead­er­ship of the UNC, the next hur­dle was the lead­er­ship of the Op­po­si­tion in Par­lia­ment. Any­one who choos­es can cor­rect me if I'm wrong, but it was the pres­sure put on the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans by their con­stituents that gave her the of­fice of Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. So she wasn't be­hold­en to that lot.

I'm not about to gloss over some of her egre­gious blun­ders as "mis­steps," al­though I cheer­ful­ly ad­mit that, like PMs be­fore her, in­clud­ing the "ven­er­a­ble" Dr Williams, she en­tered of­fice, pos­si­bly un­ex­pect­ed­ly and "man­go green," hope­ful­ly will­ing to ad­just to the req­ui­site OJT (on-the-job train­ing). I mean no of­fence here.

Like Kam­la's style or not, she has at­tract­ed, not sur­pris­ing­ly, a num­ber of po­lit­i­cal bar­na­cles, grasshop­pers and boll wee­vils sim­ply look­ing for a home. Some­one ex­plained the cur­rent kan­gatang tak­ing place with­in the PP as "grow­ing pains" and con­tend that Kam­la is the glue that keeps them con­nect­ed to their "re­spect­ed po­lit­i­cal leader." Give me a break! Those fel­lows re­spect no one or noth­ing but are sim­ply mus­cle-flex­ing and po­si­tion­ing them­selves for what­ev­er hap­pens when what­ev­er hits the fan. Ah done talk.