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Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Obika says racial tension partly led to exit from UNC

‘I couldn’t contribute to the organisation anymore’

by

Gail Alexander
767 days ago
20230622
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley speaks with former United National Congress (UNC) senator and executive member Taharqa Obika, centre, while National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds listens last Friday.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley speaks with former United National Congress (UNC) senator and executive member Taharqa Obika, centre, while National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds listens last Friday.

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Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Ex-UNC ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Tahar­qa Obi­ka says he was not of­fered any­thing to join the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, since he was the one who called the PNM. How­ev­er, he ad­mits that racial in­tol­er­ance was among the rea­sons he de­part­ed from the Op­po­si­tion.

“I moved as a free agent,” Obi­ka added yes­ter­day about his de­ci­sion to leave the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

Af­ter func­tion­ing as a mem­ber of UNC’s ex­ec­u­tive and the chief econ­o­mist at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader, Obi­ka sud­den­ly quit the Op­po­si­tion par­ty and “de­buted” with the PNM last Fri­day. Since then, he’s been the tar­get of ver­bal UNC jabs.

Obi­ka had been an of­fi­cial UNC mem­ber since 2017, when he was made a UNC Sen­a­tor. But he said he made his de­ci­sion to leave af­ter se­ri­ous re­flec­tion when he turned 40 at the end of May.

“…Se­ri­ous­ness of ap­proach to gov­er­nance is ba­si­cal­ly the be­gin­ning, mid­dle and end—the cu­mu­la­tive ef­fect,” he said.

Of his rea­son for leav­ing, Obi­ka said, “It had reached a point where I didn’t feel I could con­tribute to help­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion ‘course cor­rect’.

“I de­cid­ed I couldn’t con­tin­ue with an or­gan­i­sa­tion which as a whole lacked a se­ri­ous ap­proach to gov­er­nance. Peo­ple would have seen me com­ply­ing out­ward­ly, but in­ter­nal­ly I com­plained over a pe­ri­od of time to lead­ers in UNC who I felt could have ef­fect­ed the change I was con­cerned about.”

He added, “When one con­sid­ers the kalei­do­scope of com­plaints from peo­ple who left in re­cent years, I don’t think I need to ex­plain what I mean when I say there was a lack of se­ri­ous ap­proach to gov­er­nance—and gov­er­nance in­cludes many fac­tors.”

“There was a UNC po­lit­i­cal meet­ing where the mes­sag­ing of some speak­ers ap­peared to be in­sen­si­tive when us­ing the term ‘black’. In this so­ci­ety, we have to be very sen­si­tive to the ways we treat is­sues where peo­ple may be hard done by them.”

“All that goes back to lack of se­ri­ous­ness of the ap­proach to gov­er­nance,” he added

“The job I felt I had in the UNC was to help to pro­vide per­spec­tive on things I’m knowl­edge­able on, giv­en my back­ground in NJAC, since some­one could make a re­mark of­fen­sive to oth­ers with­out know­ing it.”

In 2020, Obi­ka said he al­so had to ad­vise a UNC unit to re­frain from us­ing im­agery that paint­ed African peo­ple in a poor light.

Obi­ka was al­so irked by sit­u­a­tions con­cern­ing some such as a mem­ber ac­cused of wrong­do­ing and an al­leged af­fi­davit con­cern­ing a young per­son.

“As a son of a moth­er, a hus­band to a wife and fa­ther to a daugh­ter, I felt it be­yond ac­cept­able that the per­son could be there with­out clear­ing their name and be­ing promi­nent­ly fea­tured at ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing can­di­date se­lec­tion,” he said.

He al­so cit­ed re­marks made about him by a speak­er at UNC’s Mon­day Re­port, where a par­al­lel was al­leged­ly drawn be­tween pin­ning the Bal­isi­er on his jack­et and pin­ning the tail on a don­key.

Obi­ka had post­ed a re­ply to this say­ing, “This is an­oth­er thing that I ad­vised them against. That it is rep­re­hen­si­ble to re­fer to hu­man be­ings as if you’re de­scrib­ing an­i­mals—I see they haven’t learned.”

Obi­ka added, “I gave it every­thing I had—and then some. One thing they can’t ac­cuse me of is not giv­ing my all. You could ask any MP, I was there when­ev­er there were pre-Bud­get con­sul­ta­tions from Ma­yaro to To­co to Diego Mar­tin, Mon­day Night Fo­rums—I was al­ways present. In some cam­paigns, I was dri­ving from Point Fortin to To­co and back.

“Now, I’m giv­ing my all to the PNM. The things I felt that need­ed to be im­proved in that par­ty, I’ll do my best on, and put my shoul­der to the wheel in ser­vice to the par­ty and coun­try.”

He said his be­lief that the PNM is se­ri­ous about gov­er­nance ap­proach­es is ev­i­dent by his de­ci­sion to join.

On how he may be viewed af­ter speak­ing out against the PNM while he was in UNC, Obi­ka said, “I’d like to be­lieve apart from plat­form pi­cong and of­fi­cial par­ty mes­sag­ing, my com­ments on the PNM were ev­i­dence-based crit­i­cisms.”

He said he in­tends be­ing an agent of poli­cies.

“My fo­cus as an econ­o­mist is on pol­i­cy, job cre­ation and lo­calised eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. How­ev­er, I’m al­so do­ing work in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment cam­paign in Mara­bel­la.”

Obi­ka said he isn’t con­cerned with any post and is fo­cused on his ca­reer, at­tain­ing a PhD and work­ing with cred­it unions on wealth cre­ation. How­ev­er, if of­fered a po­si­tion he would con­sid­er it, once it’s some­thing he can de­liv­er good gov­er­nance on.

“I wish T&T a safe Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion sea­son. My fo­cus re­mains on my job and I’d as­sist the par­ty in any way I’m re­quest­ed—we move on,” he added.


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