PNM SAFE SEAT FOR OBIKA

DEFECTOR politician Taharqa Obika is likely to be selected as the PNM’s candidate for either La Brea or Point Fortin.

Obika, who was in the official party of Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley that visited Ghana, is strongly favoured to contest a PNM safe seat.

“He is popular with the Prime Minister,” a PNM insider said.

The current MP for La Brea is Stephen McClashie, the little-known Minister of Labour.

The representative for La Brea is the even more obscure Kennedy Richards.

Obika, who lives in Point Fortin, switched political loyalties from the UNC to PNM in June last year, ahead of the local government election.

He was warmly embraced by Rowley.

He travelled to Ghana with Rowley as a member of the Reparations Committee.

Interestingly, the chair of the committee, Dr. Claudius Fergus, was not in the travelling team.

PNM sources say that Obika could emerge as a rising PNM star.

Unlike several other Caricom countries, Trinidad and Tobago has been silent on the matter of reparations for chattel slavery.

There was no official committee for several years.