From the desk of our Publisher Dr. Danny Johnson
The first two weeks of October are dedicated to Obie, my fallen colleague and friend- his life, the times and so many reveries. Gone too soon.
I want to properly do my part in telling Obie’s history of struggle - his endurance and regret over so many degrees of separation from his political ambition, the triumphs and the defeats. His steps were ordered.
I will use this space during this period to look at Obie’s contribution to his country and party. They are substantial, provocative, novel, bold and all encompassing.
I am from the School of Writing for the public record. Let my written words be debated and discussed and let my story on Obie be one of many which will hold for posterity, my truth; my personal opinion and reflections.
Angels have long flown Obie to Paradise and in a few more days; we mortal men; God willing - will take Obie to his final resting place in West End Grand Bahama. There he will be entombed with his late father and mentor Jackson Wilchcombe.
Sudden departure plays havoc on our mental and physical control board.
Lights that never flashed start going off and on.
Metered dials start plunging and rising simultaneously.
New emissions clog the exhaust.
Eerie warning sirens … bling…bling-ing; and can’t be located or shut off.
If we were AI robots or mechanical engines; we could check ourselves in or hook ourselves up for diagnostics testing and await the print out report. Alas we are Human. And Death hurts. Death impales. Death Stings. Death disturbs. Death takes pieces of varying proportions away from all of us. In mourning we mask our cowardice for words spoken or unspoken, deeds done or undone and we showcase our humanity with tears.
I will never forget the feeling which came over me when I was awakened to the news of his passing. Some said; Obie did not die. God took him. Gentle in our grief.
Obie Wilchcombe, as one writer as put it, was an Angel flying too close to the Earth. In his brief span of 64 years the son of Jackson and Mary (nee Arthur) carved out an illustrious, enviable and immoveable legacy. He hailed from Grand Bahama. His dad from West End and his mother with roots in Turks and Cacios Islands. He grew up in Marco City Freeport. He was Grand Bahamian to the core with all of those clannish prejudices and good manners and held this dream of one day getting elected to the House of Assembly for the West End Grand Bahama constituency. This would make his dad proud and give the Wilchcombe name in West End the reputation for distinguished service.
Obie came to High School in Nassau and lived in the dormitory at Queens College. There is a snide little story on this point I shall raise later in this series.
In this first submission I wish to examine the political evolution of Obie Wilchcombe:-
THE PROGRESSIVE LIBERAL PARTY
The general elections of 1992 were cataclysmic for Obie. He was Assistant General Manager in charge of News at the Broadcasting Corporation of the Bahamas ZNS for about a year before the PLP was voted out of office and the reign of Hubert Alexander Ingraham began.
Obie along with Sophie Butler, Andrea Jenoure, Katie Longley and Stanley Pinder- all attached to the News Department at ZNS resigned their ZNS jobs.
We all know how vicious and brutal politics in this country can be. The FNM Victory was volcanic inferno at 3rd Terrace Collins Avenue and Rusty Bethel Way for Obie and company. Reporters, whose names I shall not call were leading the vitriol and personal attack to drive Obie out of office from the night of the FNM victory. The very same persons Obie thought were colleagues and friends, even though their politics differed; were no longer “red and scared”, but rather red and politically entitled.
Let’s go back a few pages as to what Obie was doing at ZNS before the General Election of August 19th 1992. Obie was assigned to cover the former Prime Minister Lynden Pindling, very much the same way the American news and cable stations attach a particular reporter to exclusively cover a serving politician or a candidate for political office. The PLP in Government turned ZNS into its own private fiefdom. The very same way the former United Bahamian Party (UBP) Government utilized ZNS to crush the PLP in Opposition. The PLP in office refused to shelf that playbook. Staff knew the jaundiced policy and suffered professionally for it. The FNM and the Opposition attacked and maligned ZNS for its partisanship. This came to an efficient uproar when ZNS refused to give radio or television coverage at a Banquet in 1983 hosted by the FNM to honour the first Woman to be elected to the House of Assembly Mrs. Janet Bostwick. The defeat of the PLP in 1992 accordingly brought this new liberation to ZNS and staff that supported the FNM who felt they had been marginalized for promotions and exposure and were stepping forward to claim “we things”.
Bahamians can go far beyond just marking their ‘X’ in a secret ballot election when it comes to dramatizing their political personality. It can get really filthy and nasty. Obie and Company came to experience these niceties. The argument for the FNM supporters was simple. The PLP having lost the election had its people in the executive posts at ZNS. These folks needed to be sent home so the “ long suffering and much deserving FNMs could get dey things”. Sounds familiar?
There have been arguments that Obie should have remained at ZNS and thugged it out under the FNM administration. We can all sensibly conclude that Obie’s decision to leave ZNS was the biggest decision he would ever make in his life.
Let’s look at it. Here was a talented and very young broadcaster. ZNS was the only broadcast facility in the nation. Whilst the FNM talked about private broadcasting in their General Election Manifesto of 1992; it wasn’t amongst the top 100 things the country wanted or desired change. For argument sake; even and when private broadcasting came; it held out no hope that Obie could benefit. After all he was painted with the PLP brush- wearing the brand and uniform of the PLP; and there was nothing for him in the FNM fable or table.
Obie was walking away from a career that he truly loved, excelled in and had great promise There would be no more “I’m Obie Wilchcombe reporting live,” back tags or intros on television or radio.
He must have been a very frightened and intimidated young man driving out of the ZNS gates on the afternoon he quit. People were pulling on him to “study law” which could land him a lucrative career. Obie toyed with the idea. The broadcast journalism bug had compromised his focus and drive and he was searching for new ways to stay in the game.
Private Broadcasting would be introduced by the Ingraham FNM Administration two years later. Cable Television was a new hot button item on the horizon.
Prior to the advent of Cable Television the national dish of the country was; as the old joke went, was no longer pease n’ rice but- SATELLITE.
Every property in Nassau from the 15 feet by 45 feet five pound off Kemp Road lots; to the sea side estates, upper and middle class communities, the inner city and the compounds of the wealthy had a satellite dish. Some residences had two and three satellite dishes on their property so the sports enthusiasts or adult movie sneakers did not have to compromise with family television time.
The Satellite stations also sold broadcast space on several channels. Obie and Company set up their News and Public Relations and Marketing Company at the bottom of Sears Road and except for Sophie Butler; Obie, Katie, Andrea and Stanley began their private news feature productions. I think they named it Hercules Management and Marketing, using Obie’s middle name.
The company struggled to find advertisers and subscribers in a challenged market where FNM businesses were weary of “being friendly with the enemy”. And PLP businesses were scared to show their support.
It may seem quite ordinary now so many years later but it was Obie in this new private television format; broadcasting on satellite - who began to sell to the world the concept of “Eco-Tourism” in the Bahamas- how it worked and why the Bahamas had so much to offer in this market. This would hold Obie well and become a vibrant part of his Tourism agenda when he matured into an even larger role.
Away from the political hum drum regimented focus of ZNS in that period leading up to 1992, Obie now had to think outside the box and find novel and exciting news to moves subscribers and be ahead of the curve. Those who for a second doubted his journalistic antenna were reminded of his tenacity at ZNS and his pursuit of excellence. He read voraciously. Practiced his voice. Was attentive to other international news broadcasters and usually wrote extensively on paper before he put his finger on a keyboard.
This new programming in this private news market was a struggle for Obie and Company. Office rent and utilities. Renting other persons equipment to augment their own limited analog cameras and VCRs and sound apparatus was expensive.
The departure from ZNS now gave Obie the independence and clarity he needed to openly chart his political course. He was PLP and now out of the Corporation he no longer had to side step gingerly on his political affiliations. But things were also changing in the PLP. My former Father In Law Sir Lynden was wrestling with the idea of his own political retirement and the party was for the first time in 40 years confronted with the possibility of new leadership. A PLP without Pindling at the helm.
The PLP; post 1992 - in defeat found no bed of roses. The national press corps found nothing uplifting or transformative about any of the critical and crucial foundational layers the PLP had put in play over 25 years in power. Politicians like Errington Watkins joked that to shout or whisper the word “PLP” should be treated as using obscene language to the annoyance of a Police Officer and be written into the Penal Code.
Obie was a marked man. He had been this refreshing broadcast voice for the Pindling Government and the PLP. The fall from office and grace had accrued these numerous disadvantages to Obie that even today people shudder when they discover what he was made to endure.
He was only 32 years old. Well into his career and it was all being upended.
He had covered the PLP as a reporter for ZNS but he had no seat at the table. He was not yet a Member of the Party and he did not know how the Party functioned or worked and the thousands of little pieces which turn a cumbersome turbine for a political Colossus. His baptism would not be easy.
The PLP almost a year out from their 1992 defeat was the Tinman from Oz overdosed on poison barracuda and steroids. From the shock of their defeat; to gradually accepting it; but holding out this anticipation that Ingraham would stumble and buck his toe; and the country would come on hands and knees begging for Pindling and the PLP to take back the reins of Government. Someone pinched someone and everybody got up from that hologram of a dream.
Pindling was testing a political Convention which said having led the party into election defeat he should step aside for a new leader. The Pindling soap opera began unfolding. He would not run for leader. Dr. Nottage was sufficiently bold enough or gullible enough to step forward and declare his candidacy. The Pindling base butchered him on his own operating table.
This conundrum had last been experienced on the “Night of the Long Knives” in 1977 when my dad Oscar Johnson was fighting to secure his PLP nomination to re-contest the Cat Island Seat as the PLP incumbent. But that is a story for another day. Another place and time.
This new energy in the PLP was creating powerful new factions. Perry Christie. Philip Galanis. Dr. Nottage. Obie had to grow up fast. The pleasantries and courtesies he got from PLP politicians as a ZNS Reporter now faded. He was seen as part and parcel of Sir Lynden’s camp and would and could not be trusted by any of the other factions.
This factionalism would very much follow Obie right up to his death.
He contested for National Chairman and was soundly defeated. He ran again and because of the “tie” in the votes the party passed a Resolution for two persons to serve as “Co-Chairmen”.
Private broadcasting was the new toy in town. The Leader of the PLP in the Senate was Obie’s former boss at ZNS Charles Carter. Carter was defeated for his Holy Cross seat in the 1992 general election and had served as Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Carter had given 40 plus years of his life to broadcasting at ZNS. With private broadcast licences like juicey carrots being dangled before a hungry rabbit; Mr. Carter wanted to chew. Oh yes Mr. Carter could have one, Prime Minister Ingraham said, but he could only apply for a private broadcast license if he was retired from active politics. Mr. Carter now had to make this decision- Continue to lead the PLP in the Senate or resign and munch the Ingraham carrot.
Mr. Carter resigned. The PLP now had a vacant Senate seat. Many had fallen on the PLP Battle field of 1992 and the new Senate seat vacancy had dead bones stirring to life. There was an active and aggressive campaign from former PLP Cabinet Ministers who could use the immunity of the Senate to put a distance between political problems and economic reality.
Don’t forget as all of this is unfolding the Ingraham government is managing two Royal Commissions of Enquiry on PLPS.
Sir Lynden chooses Obie for the Senate seat. Obie would join his other boss from ZNS Calsey Johnson on the PLP Senate team.
These points of history are very important. I made the point earlier on how the PLP administration had manacled ZNS under its watch in Government. In Opposition two of the Executive General managers of ZNS are appointed to the Senate by Sir Lynden. And on the resignation of one of these managers, Mr. Carter, from the Senate, the replacement is Obie, who was an Assistant General Manager at ZNS when the PLP got its clock cleaned in the 1992 general elections.
At the next PLP National Convention Obie would hold down the job of National Chairman winning in a landslide.
Some would think this ascent for Obie politically is such a blessing. It was actually a curse. He was now solidly latched to the Pindling faction and this could only spell trouble. The Christie and Nottage factions were bidding their time. These two men were serving as Co- Deputy Leaders. When Pindling took seriously ill in 1995 and was hospitalized in the USA, he appointed Christie as Interim Leader. The game was on and the stakes were high and the bettors were keeping their monies in their pocket.
Pindling had defied the political odds and would lead the party into the 1997 general elections.
Obie wanted to be a PLP Candidate. His business group now leased the Base Road Bar and Nightclub and Obie was a fixture in the area of Bain Town and had amassed a formidable political following. Obie had also expanded his wings into the Night Club business with the opening of “The Culture Club” in 1995 in what is now the Marriot Resort property on Nassau and West Bay Street. Some coins were coming in but rent and overheads in both businesses and the team’s lack of business experience was having a deleterious effect on bottom lines.
The Base Road Bar and the Culture Club gave Obie decent access and popularity to the inner city constituency of Bain’s Town. I can tell you that there is an amendment to the Proverb about a fool and the parting of his money just for politicians. As the count down to the 1997 general election approached; Obie and company were out of business.
Obie now had this daunting task of again having to find a way to make a living because the post of National Chairman did not come with a salary and even if it did, the powerful factions in the organization would have chosen not to comply. My thoughts exclusively. While Obie was trying to figure that out; election candidates for the PLP were lining up and falling over each other to contest the Bain Town constituency seat against controversy plagued Gregory Williams, the FNM incumbent . Seeking the PLP nod was Rodney Moncur, Charles C. B. Moss, and Harrison Petty.
The powerful factions would crowd the field and push Obie out of Bain Town where he had a very strong likelihood of winning the seat. The PLP gave Bain Town to Mr. Moss, who was also President of the Bahamas Christian Council at the time. Moss was soundly defeated and some years later when he was rejected for a PLP nomination in the 2007 General Election Mr. Moss left the PLP with a few choice words of scolding. I told you earlier how brutal this sport of politics is in this country. Political debts gather compound interest and are rarely satisfied.
Instead to save face for himself, Obie was sent to Freeport to contest the Marco City seat held by David Thompson. Thompson was the FNM Candidate in the 1990 by election in Marco City which became vacant at the death of then FNM Leader Sir Cecil Wallace Whitfield. That bye election I will have cause to comment on in a later Publishers’ Note. The FNM in Government merged West End and Bimini into one seat. Obie wanted it but again the PLP machine turned to the seasoned Bimini incumbent MP George Weech for the run. I should point out here now that the PLP also had an incumbent MP for West End in attorney Simeon Brown. He too was given the political boot. Weech was defeated by the FNM’s affable David Wallace and the FNM money which flooded the constituency.
With absolutely no campaign monies, no personal monies, no political sponsorships; Obie hunkered down in Marco City; knowing he would be beaten and hoping against all the odds that Pindling would make a comeback to Government and thus save the day. That genie had long since fled the bottle.
The PLP took a shellacking; for the want of a better word in 1997 and Mr. Ingraham had his second term.
Obie was devastated.
He returned to Nassau and the Special Called PLP Convention to choose a new leader to replace Sir Lynden who would demit office.
The Convention was at the Convention Center of the former Cable Beach Hotel.
Obie used his general election candidacy to win the confidence of the PLP base on the island of Grand Bahama. He was after all the party’s national chairman when he contested and lost the Marco City seat.
The Grand Bahama delegation was a large voting bloc. And Obie was supporting Philip Galanis the new PLP Member of Parliament elect for the Englerston constituency in Nassau and his former PLP colleague in the last Senate; to become party Leader. Galanis had become something like a rock star in Freeport and was generally well liked.
The lines were marked in the sand with a pay loader. The majority of former PLP Members of Parliament supported Dr. Nottage. Christie was the Pindling factions stalking horse. Galanis was dependent and reliant on the Grand Bahama bloc and what crumbs may fall from the table in the frenzy of the hour.
Dr. Nottage narrowly defeated Mr. Christie on the first ballot and Mr. Galanis finished a respectable third to Mr. Christie’s second.
The rules called for a run off between Dr. Nottage and Mr. Christie. Galanis was out.
The mad rush was now to secure and split the Galanis vote by the Nottage and Christie camps. Nottage refused to negotiate with Obie and Galanis. His handlers led by Bradley Roberts, Charles Maynard, Phenton Neymour, Gayle Lockhart, Bradley Crawley, Peter Bethel had their heads in a bubble. Well the bubble bust.
Nottage was still the recipient of the bile of the Pindling camp from 1993 when he rushed to announce he was Pindling’s replacement.
Nottage had also allowed his faction to be very vocal against Galanis sewing up the Englerston PLP nomination and had shown his hand in denying Obie, Moncur and Petty the Bain’s Town nomination. It was payback time.
Christie picked up every Galanis vote which came from the Grand Bahama syndicate to run past Nottage and clench the party’s historic leadership.
I am told and I verily believe that there was a back room deal that in exchange for the Galanis vote; Christie on becoming Leader would name Obie to the PLP Senate.
Obie would have to wait until the very last minute to get confirmation of that brokered Senate appointment for the opening of the new 1997 Parliament.
Factions do not dissipate nor disappear easily in the political arena. They find new bedfellows and interests and lay dormant to strike at the most inconvenient time for the ambitious; who would do well to first master Minefield on their desk top computer.
Obie was now Senator and National Chairman. The Party would go through two more grilling national conventions in which Dr. Nottage challenged for the leadership and was defeated by Mr. Christie.
Obie was rolling out his political agenda as party National Chairman. It soon became clear that friction was building between the new Leader and his National Chairman.
Oddly enough the time had come for private broadcasting to reach out to Obie. He took over the morning Talk Show on More 94.9 FM radio station- One of the first private broadcast licenses doled out by Mr. Ingraham to the Henry Saunders family.
Obie was comfortable and happy again. He was back in front of the microphone. In a studio. Working in perfect tandem with a producer. Interviewing news makers with his special flair and his recognizable laughter. He would break the story on the Anabacter virus at the premature birth and children’s ward of the public hospital; which the FNM government was shielding. Scores of Bahamian children died. Obie was telling the nation every day what the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta Georgia was disclosing about the outbreak of the infant killing virus.
Obie’s perilous walk to get the written confession of sorts of a condemned killer read on air would cause him his freedom for four days. Obie was not revealing his source. He was defended in the action brought against him by his life-long friend from high school, Glenys Hanna Martin. How did this document find its way out of the prison and into the hands of a journalist? The answer to the question had become most urgent because of a set of facts. The killer- the beautician, as they were called then, John Higgs, had killed his wife and stuffed her body into the concrete stair case of a home they were building in the posh eastern district. Higgs was scheduled to hang on the gallows for his wife’s murder having exhausted all of his Appeals. The morning of the execution Higgs was reportedly found dead in his cell at the prison with his wrists slashed and drenched in blood. Amazingly, the authorities did absolutely no investigation of the Prison Guards assigned to watch Higgs on death row but were all distracted by the Higgs letter which found its way into Obie’s capable journalistic hands. A Supreme Court Judge ordered Obie to comply with an Order from the coroner Winston Saunders and reveal how Higg’s letter came into his posession. Before Saunders, Obie again protested his right as a journalist to protect his source, and was sent to jail for 4 days. He wept openly as his friends and family met him outside the Prison gates on his release.
It was back to the politics.
Obie began a series of meetings and produced a number of party documents and paraphernalia in which he sought to rebrand the PLP and get PLPs more cognizant of the party’s history and contribution. To do this, of course, Pindling who had led the party for over a quarter of a century would still loom very large and this had to impact the maneuverability of the new Leader.
But with Nottage still in the ranks and readying his offensive for another storming of the Christie citadel, Obie was the least of Christie’s serious political worries. He still needed his National Chairman to keep the party administration impregnable from any run the Nottage camp could make.
In the final leadership encounter in 1999, Dr. Nottage packed his Georgie Bundle, so to speak, left the PLP and formed the Coalition for Democratic Reform or the CDR. He had been re-elected as the PLP Member of Parliament for the Kennedy seat in Nassau in 1997. The seat now identified as CDR. The more senior PLP former Members of Parliament and Cabinet Ministers who took Dr. Nottage’s bucket to the well in those conventions abandoned him at that juncture. Leaving the PLP was not in their tarot card readings.
Now they were all genuflecting and kissing the Christie ring.
The 2002 general election was on the horizon and the temperature for PLP Candidates as always was at quantum leap speed.
Sir Lynden passed away in 2000 after a short illness and his death magnetized the country on the accomplishments of the PLP. Once again the PLP was the essence of a fresh wind blowing.
The FNM after ten years of Hubert Ingraham was weary, dreary, leery, and fed up.
Just as they had let him into their party, the FNM brass was now showing Mr. Ingraham the back door. He would have to resign the leadership as the FNM went into a controversial special convention to give legal cover to his chosen replacements, Tommy Turnquest and Dion Foulkes.
As National Chairman Obie energized party branches all over the nation. Anyone who knows Obie can attest to the pages he fills every day with his thoughts and plans and ideas. I would venture to think that after his death his many writings would contain so many political ideas and resilient and much needed calls for change and a road map on how to achieve and arrive at these goal posts. Bradley Roberts was in office as National Chairman but he left the administrative work to Obie.
The South Andros seat or Kemps Bay Seat was Pindling’s seat which the FNM took off the PLP in a bye election when Pindling retired from the House of Assembly in 1998.
Businessman Whitney Bastian was openly canvassing for the PLP nomination in the constituency. Bastian was a frequent visitor to Mr. Christie’s office and seemed to have garnered the support of powerful members of the National General Council NGC for the PLP South Andros nomination.
But Bastian was steeped in controversy. It was a controversy that many PLPs wanted to avoid. Obie had given Bastian his public and private assurance he would support his nomination.
Christie had cooled on the idea and it was clear when the vote on Bastian came before the Candidates Committee it would be rejected.
Obie stood on principle and demanded the Party show evidentiary proof of any tangible fact that disqualified Bastian.
The move caused Obie his National Chairmanship.
The maverick in the PLP side of House of Assembly was Bradley Roberts. Roberts was publically vocal on his discomfort with how Obie was handling the Bastian nomination process.
In the National Convention; Roberts challenged Obie for the National Chairmanship. Christie had moved with political stealth over the three years as Leader to holster the Grand Bahama bloc to his utility belt. Obie’s base was evaporating before his very eyes.
I shall never forget the final evening of the Party’s National Convention on the day that Obie was defeated for National Chairman.
Obie strode onto the Convention dais, confidently took the microphone, paid his respects to the new National Chairman, declared war on the incumbent FNM Government and summoned PLPS everywhere to remain united and focused on winning the 2002 General Elections. He would go through the entire closing night as master of ceremony and in an amazing political performance; for a man who had just been defeated as National Chairman.
PLPs healed instantaneously. There was no room for rancor. Obie had mystically shut the door on the bickering and back biting which follows heated party elections.
The results of the 2002 General Election are history. Christie and the PLP cleaned the FNM’s clock. The new FNM leader Tommy Turnquest lost his parliamentary seat to a PLP new comer Keod Smith and the new FNM Deputy Leader Dion Foulkes lost to the PLP venerable “Pot Cake” Leslie O Miller. The FNM was only able to hold onto one seat in New Providence. That one seat was held by Brent Symonette, the party’s permanent reminder of its cross pollination with the UBP in 1971 to form the FNM. The victory was owed in a very large part to the canvassing and organization that Obie did in office as National Chairman. He and Party leader Perry G. Christie and Deputy Leader Cynthia “Mother” Pratt and National Chairman Roberts had transformed the party in five short years.
Obie Wilchcombe got the PLP nomination to contest the West End and Bimini seat, his only love and political passion and he won handsomely in 2002.
Prime Minister Christie appointed Obie as Minister of Tourism. Just five years earlier Obie was leaving Freeport, broke, unemployed, depressed and trying to figure out his chosen life in politics and where the road would lead. He had solid political friends in Artis Neely, L. H. Harris, Andrea Jenoure, Rhon Rolle, Katie Longley, Calsey Johnson, Judson Wilmott, Earlin Williams, Hilton Bowleg, Kirt Neely, Kayla Smith, Barbara Pierre, Felix Bowe, Charles Major senior, Vincent Skeeter Collins, Rufus Adderley and the Women’s Branch on Grand Bahama and the political generals in West End and Bimini. His mother, Mary was his prime motivator and mentor.
I must also report that Mr. Bastian contested the South Andros seat as an Independent and won the seat over the FNM incumbent and the PLP Candidate in 2002.
Dr. Nottage was defeated by new comer PLP Candidate Kenyatta Gibson in Kennedy.
This is a glimpse into the Obie story. In my next episode I will visit the spectacular transformations Minister Wilchcombe brought to the Ministry of Tourism.
Religious Tourism.
Eco Tourism or Green Tourism.
Sports in Paradise.
All of the above projects and ideas can be found right there in one of those books Obie scribbled in every day at his desk. The Wilchcombe diaries should be a political treasure trove. For a broadcaster, Obie was a prolific pen to paper person.
He was a worker, who never tired. From 1992 when he drove his white BMW sedan out of the gate at ZNS; to boldly go where I am quite certain he had no clear idea at the time; Obie became an icon and a fixture in PLP politics and one of the most recognizable political voices in the country. He was our first scholar of the spoken PLP history and he encouraged his comrades to study Pindling and the earlier party history.
I am not convinced as yet that Obie led or had a faction. I think factions just built up around him.
In Kennedy’s words, Obie dreamed of things that never were; and worked to create and have them bear fruit.
Rest in Peace buddy.