Those election observers

Having decided that more good than harm can come from the presence of more than one international election observer group for our April 28 elections, Prime Minister Young has now invited the Commonwealth and the Carter Center to play such a role alongside original Caricom invitees.

Caricom has already replied positively to the request, and I understand a process is already in train to constitute a team, develop its terms of reference, and initiate deployment at the collective expense of member states – as is usually the case.

Unfortunately, publicly expressed doubt as to the bona fides of Caricom involvement has had the effect of devaluing an act of regional fraternalism, denying the remarkable nature of the grouping’s past record, and fictionalising the extent to which any individual Caricom official is typically and influentially engaged in execution of the mandates of observer groups.

There are other reasons advanced in the public domain which, for me, are a source of much shame, and will not be addressed on this forum today.

The suggestion of potentially dishonourable conduct also casts defamatory slurs on past missions that have performed creditably in numerous Caribbean countries, including here, over the years. Only last week, associate member state Curacao hosted a Caricom electoral mission.

There are several other countries that have activated such support including those that have experienced highly problematic processes and outcomes.

It is a service Caricom has provided since 1997 when an observer group was deployed in Guyana.

Like other international guidelines for such teams, the main duties involve observing the entire process including the prevailing socio-political climate, monitoring election day activities, and observing and assessing the political environment following declaration of results.

Commonwealth guidelines developed in 1991 and revised in 2018 (it has been conducting observer missions since 1967) also make specific reference to a variety of rights and responsibilities.

These include scrutiny of the registration, nominations, and election days processes, the conduct of campaigns, and the behaviour of contestants and their parties. There is also a wide spectrum of other responsibilities that have to do with the communication of political messages, the neutrality of officials, ballot secrecy, and the conditions under which votes are cast with a special eye on the elderly and disabled.

Unlike Caricom where member states are invited to submit nominees for participation – usually elections officials and people with observer experience - the Commonwealth accesses a wider variety of skills directly, and mostly without reference to the governments of countries to which team members belong.

Additionally, a request for a Commonwealth mission, according to the revised guidelines of 2018 “can emanate from a variety of official sources, including the Head of Government, Minister of Foreign Affairs or Chair of the election management body.” The Commonwealth Secretariat secures the funding for the exercise.

In the case of the Carter Center, once invited, its team “must be generally welcomed by the major political forces and/or accredited by electoral authorities” in order to proceed.

These are just three of several creditable sources of international vigilance over electoral processes. There are others including the Organisation of American States (OAS) that have been active in the region.

One of the other things observer groups do is to examine the degree to which a wide variety of stakeholders including political parties, business, labour, NGOs, and the media, play roles in promoting and monitoring sound electoral practices.

I am spending some time on the role of election observers and the bodies that manage them because it is important that people understand what to expect from them. I have been an advocate for a greater role for media in providing at least basic guidance on such matters and not remain content to regurgitate outlandish claims.

There is also a role for academia in this and I am noting the paucity of adequately researched material and general instruction even on the work of observer groups.

Additionally, following our 2020 elections, there were three main recommendations from the Caricom group. These include campaign finance reform, digital transformation (!), and accessibility issues regarding the elderly and disabled.

The “observer” role thus extends to domestic spaces in the years between elections. Civil society vigilance is equally important to help guard the guards. But it’s a duty we citizens and ordinary folk all appear to have abandoned.

 

*Wesley Gibbings has covered numerous regional elections and trained journalists on election coverage throughout the Caribbean and in Fiji and served as a Commonwealth observer in Sierra Leone in 2023. He has also co-edited a manual for Caribbean journalists on coverage of elections.

Our Immigration Story

*First published in the T&T Guardian on March 19, 2025

By the time this is published, the country would have already entered a fresh and irresistible phase of intrigue, confusion, and general bacchanal as the natural outcome of another election season.

All of this is being packaged against the backdrop of current concerns about immigration practice and malpractice on the part of others. There has been no shortage of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Cheering and jeering in some cases.

I have however noted repeatedly that on this issue we, as a nation of migrants, can be described as both subjects and objects – victims and perpetrators.

The awkward management of Venezuelan and other migrant challenges, the general lack of public and even official awareness of the language of orderly migration, and the pervasive presence of xenophobic sentiment, even as political ammunition - “close de borders, close de borders” - all point to an unsatisfactory state of affairs at several domestic levels.

This inconveniently points to matters transcendental of occupation of political office. The three cases I reference today actually span political administrations. Electoral preference appears irrelevant. It has not mattered much who has been prime minister or line minister.

Indeed, the most significant areas of dysfunction and failure have defied the complexion of political office. Such issues earn only passing mention in election manifestoes and even more superficial reference on the hustings.

What, for instance, are the feelings of politicians about the fact that immigration practice appears to routinely defy the spirit of international conventions, domestic legislation, and basic principles of humane state conduct?

It’s discomfiting when you think about it. Our official posture on immigration, as expressed in administrative practice, is in fact not vastly different from what obtains in some other parts of the world where visas and other entry and resident rights are being deployed as tools of reward and punishment.

Here now are three examples of our own problematic approaches. The first is young creative, Omar Jarra, 26, who came to this country as a child with his father, Gambian medical consultant, Dr Ebrima Jarra. Omar was himself born in The Gambia.

Since the death of his father in 2013, he has been the victim of a bureaucratic maze that has left him, in the words of an online petition on his case, “without legal recognition” in the country.

I have met him several times and admire his outstanding work in drama and song but only Saturday came across the petition in support of his appeal to escape “statelessness.”

The fine details of his plight will require more space, but you can view the entire story in the Change.org campaign bearing the banner ‘Justice for Omar Jarra: End Statelessness & Bureaucratic Negligence.’

There are, of course, technical details to traverse – but certainly not more than a decade’s worth of paper pushing! What about the “processing” of his case should take this long?

Even so, this is less time than my second example which concerns a Guyana-born widow – her husband was a Trinidadian - who has been resident in this country for over 40 years and is yet to acquire full citizenship despite her best efforts.

Her adult children were all born here, she owns property, pays taxes, votes, and considers T&T her home. What takes decades to provide a proper response to such an application? How many pages constitute such an exercise? What is the size of her file?

Finally, and painfully, I have been withholding public exposure of the travails of highly decorated Guyana-born Caribbean journalist and professional mentor Rickey Singh.

The full story of his journey to eventual, shameful rejection by this country in the late stages of his life will someday be fully disclosed.

Not by him, because the once prolific writer/editor/press freedom advocate has been silenced by illness for some time now. But he spent the pandemic period languishing at the hands of administrative indifference in T&T and is now in Barbados in poor health.

Now, there are few other public figures in our region who have promoted the idea of a single Caribbean space as Rickey has over decades. In the end, the conditions to accommodate him here simply did not exist. We failed him and what he stands for.

In Omar’s “Innocence Proclamation” – penned as an addendum to his online petition - he speaks of an “end to bureaucratic negligence and statelessness.”

This, he contends, “is about the systemic oppression of the stateless, the displaced, and the wrongfully accused. It is about reclaiming human dignity and ensuring that no one is left without a name, a home, or a future.”

Are we prepared to leave it at that?

 

Caricom’s communication gap

Bear with me for this circuitous, but I think necessary, approach to addressing what is being dismissed by too many as an elementary issue regarding effective communication and the effort to manage the current barrage of challenges to Caribbean survivability.

Make no mistake about it, among the several features of the current global environment, dominated by superpower extortion and coercion, is the prospective dismantling of multilateralism and collective action as solutions to developmental needs.

Look today at where countries have long been rallying to the cause of shared resources and vision and witness the unravelling impacts. The challenges are nothing new but have intensified in recent times everywhere you turn.

Caricom’s longstanding embrace of open regionalism (maintaining a strong core while pragmatically embracing external opportunities) as a coping mechanism involving small, vulnerable states has predisposed its constituents to generally elastic approaches to changing external conditions.

In the process, and as part of the accompanying perils, anomalous global and hemispheric alignments have often proven disruptive. There is thus understandable room to agree to disagree on some things.

If it’s of any comfort, this is neither something unique to us nor new to integration movements wherever you find them. But the astute management of information flows is a constant, pervasive, mitigating requirement.

For us, in this small space and constantly confronted by questions of sustainability, there is a much more urgent need to ensure that conditions exist for sustained joint endeavour and that the populations involved are a knowledgeable part of it.

In the context of its indispensability to the region and given the importance of cohesive approaches to developmental demands, there have been successive examinations over the years of the work of the Caricom Secretariat as administrative centre of the integration project.

A few adjustments have followed, but insufficient to achieve the level of modernity, responsiveness, and leadership required under demanding circumstances.

As explained earlier, this is a lengthy introduction to the single point of effective communication as an institutional imperative indicative of the vital connection between the integration process and the people for whom it has been designed.

For example, it took a full week for the communiqué emerging from the Caricom summit in Barbados between February 19 and 21, to reach media and other interested parties.

By the time the document reached us, foreign ministers and other officials were scrambling to address several new and emerging issues. These included the Cuban medics and US visa threats on Caribbean officials, the cessation of Venezuelan oil licences, and that country’s incursion into Guyanese marine territory.

The outcome has been that some critical features of the belatedly released conference communiqué became lost in the immediate news agenda.

There has since been nothing to remind us of the continuing relevance of a few key points considered at the summit. Yes, there is a role for media and others in this and some of this has already occurred – Haiti, for example - but to focus on this responsibility would be to miss a major point.

Believe me, I am aware of the process to distil the proceedings of such meetings into a single, concise, publicly chewable document. I have been there myself.

Such an exercise must simultaneously meet the criteria of precision and timeliness and generate minimum discomfort among sensitive, self-aware hosts, participants who lead countries, their official contingents, and the numerous bureaucrats charged with ensuring that countries are not left angry, confused, or dissatisfied.

However, as has been the most recent case, the main purpose of such communication is too often lost in a maze of political and bureaucratic behaviours.

It must occur to all concerned that particularly in the current geo-political environment some principal elements of public communication need to be more urgently met.

This is why, in almost all other groupings of this kind, prompt accounts of discussions held, and decisions made are considered as almost important as the deliberations themselves, with communication teams forming an integral part of the proceedings.

Should the latter not be the case, information and communication departments become little more than post offices for dispatch. Resultingly, in the modern era, such a responsibility can be easily displaced by social media algorithm, propaganda, parochialism, and misinformation.

However, if from the start media are thought of as a needless, routinised bother and nuisance – as now seems to be the case - then all concerned should be prepared to confront the fallout.

Just a little advice.

Impunity in injury and death

Does our experience of violent crime constitute a public health emergency? Despite the cynical mockery in some quarters, it certainly does. It meets all the globally accepted criteria related to causes, effects, and possible responses.

However, since a Caricom resolution almost two years ago to employ such an approach, there appears to have been little effort anywhere to build appropriate levels of both public and official awareness to generate the required broad support.

In essence, such an approach recognises the impact of violent crime on high mortality and injury rates, negative psycho-social manifestations, and adverse implications for delivery of public healthcare.

There is a lot more to it than these principal elements, but I want us to spend some time considering the additional, and not entirely unrelated, crisis unfolding on our public roadways.

In many respects, acknowledgement of these two plagues – violent crime and road traffic mayhem - as critical challenges to national health, safety, and security is an important first step in recognising our joint responsibility for addressing them.

Among the last things people here want to be punished with are PR-nuanced statistics about reductions in the number of homicides and road traffic deaths.

Find a way of recording and acknowledging fear and you will better understand what I mean by this. People are witnessing the carnage daily. I have obviously not seen today’s reports yet but turn the pages of this very newspaper and you will understand what I mean.

There are people deciding not to go about what is expected to be their normal business because of the fear generated by the prevalence of both forms of violence, property loss, injury, and death.

In the process, public participation in defying the instinct to surrender is diminished.

In much the same way there are so many of us who know at least one person who has been affected by crime in its numerous manifestations, we can also point to a friend, relative, colleague, community member, or other acquaintance who has witnessed or been the victim of a horrible road experience.

Don’t look at the big turnouts at seasonal events alone to argue against these observations. They provide evidence of a resolve not to yield to pervasive anxieties about the prospect of harm and are not outright dismissal of pervasive realities and risks.

This is also not to point fingers at the poor policing of violent crimes and traffic laws, because the sustenance of fear is a joint enterprise that goes beyond the role of a single underlying factor. The police enter the picture rather late in the process of decay.

However, this is not to take them off the hook. People predisposed to violent or reckless behaviour thrive in an environment under which they are more likely than not to escape untouched (if they don’t suffer injury or death in the process), as opposed to being promptly intercepted, properly judged, and punished if responsible.

There is also the near complete absence of pre-emptive policing measures as contemplated by advocates of so-called “broken windows” theory (with all due provisos regarding its non-discriminatory implementation). For this, it is proposed that early symptoms of disorder in the form of ostensibly benign violations (Littering? Noise pollution? Public peeing?)  should be summarily nipped in the bud. (Yes, “nipped.”)

So, no objection from me regarding the prompt and widespread ticketing of drivers for everything from unlawful window tints to failed sobriety tests. No, there aren’t “more important things they should be spending their time and energy on.” If the authorities can’t meet their elementary mandates, then what’s the sense?

Ditto actions to address breaches of the public peace. I have been following the futile public complaints of one community regarding the loud noise generated by a single bar in the area. The police have a role to play outside of the limited actions related to the country’s Noise Pollution Rules. Hint: see what the Summary Offences Act [Chapter 11:02] says about “public nuisance.”

No, the amorphous “culture of noise” is a broken window to be repaired and the people who routinely break it need to be held responsible.

Even so, don’t get me wrong. A “solution” to the current mayhem is thus more than addressing a clearly deficient police response. While “terrorism” might be an appropriate metaphor and legislative stimulant it does nothing to address some fundamentals.

Impunity through ineffective policing bears tragic fruit elusive even of declared states of public emergency. Nowadays, we are experiencing its bitter taste.

Corruption chaff in the wind

Rather unsurprisingly, last week’s release of the 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) has gained very little traction in the public domain.

The report looks substantially at how corrupt public sector practices “undermine efforts to address the climate crisis, disrupt environmental sustainability, and hinder equitable progress toward a more sustainable future.”

In CPI 2024, Trinidad and Tobago scored 41 and was ranked 82nd of the 180 countries. The global average was 43 and our score in 2023 was 42. The higher the score, the “cleaner” the country. 

As far as I have been able to see, both on legacy and social media, there has been no serious engagement of some of the key assertions of this report which attempts to record perceptions by experts and businesspeople about the prevalence of corrupt practices globally, using 13 independent data sets from agencies such as the World Bank.

I think there are several reasons for the apparent indifference. And it’s not that I think there is a lack of general concern. As we witnessed last week, the subject was sensationally and absurdly invoked as part of a claim that the ethnic character of perceived chronic offenders is linked to strategies to gain political advantage.

And this excited so many of us that social media platforms remained lit and alive on the matter even through the Carnival fetes and constituency screening processes.

However, such a vulgar assessment of the corruption reality disregards the complex nature of the challenge and does not encourage engagement of the complex nature of what we confront.

There is nothing in the claim, for instance, that expresses a serious concern that corruption in all its manifestations - from the petty to the administrative to the grand corruption to which newspaper headlines are attracted – brings with it numerous threats to urgent developmental needs.

Little has been inserted in the public space to draw attention to the numerous economic, social, political, and environmental impacts.

Now, the latter (largely ignored) concern about the natural environment brings us back to the 2024 CPI and its concern about the climate crisis.

It is true, among other things, that the immediate lack of attention owes somewhat to the current heavy preoccupation with the ins and outs of the Carnival and election seasons – if you’re able to tell the difference.  

The public agenda is also justifiably, and simultaneously, preoccupied with the fact that the State of Emergency is not achieving the goals as set out in the core justification namely: to address anticipated heightened criminal activity involving high-power weapons and stimulated by “retaliatory acts between gangs.”

Who really wants to hear about the dissecting of systemic corruption and its impact on development at this time?

Additionally, and I think most importantly, the attempt by the Transparency folks to locate an intersection between corruption and the climate crisis comes up against several compelling phenomena.

These include the growing role of political anti-science. This is just a fancy way of saying that many political actors, both here and abroad, aren’t entirely convinced that human conduct plays as significant a role in changing climate conditions as is being proposed by most of the world’s leading scientists.

The climate crisis has thus been thrown by many in a public bin wherein also reside the remnants of the Covid-19 pandemic and actions to address it, lunar landings, universal human rights, and assertions such as the spherical nature of planet Earth.

There is a virtual global manifesto being authored to mobilise public action against scientific thought and action. So, any attempt to nuance the corruption case against the backdrop of challenged climate-related actions, is doomed to elude serious attention in some important quarters.

That said, in what I consider to be a major concession by the CPI authors, there is the assertion that even as some countries have impressive scores on the Index, there are practices related to the “washing” of corrupt money permitted with impunity in such places.

There is the accompanying question of the disproportionate, punitive emphasis on the practices of small economies such as ours when larger, wealthier countries with high CPIs are efficient facilitators of international corruption but are readily permitted to have their way. Marla Dukharan’s campaign for a global review of tax havens eloquently makes the point.

What, by way of political commentary, last week and over the weekend, explored these dimensions of the corruption question? There has been much chaff in the wind and little to indicate seriousness on these matters. We won’t reach too far with that.

 

A Question of Shelter

The recent demolition of squatter homes in Arima was bound to invoke mixed but strong feelings among those of us who have been following this recurring subject over the years.

The offer by the Sou Sou Lands Co-operative Society to assist in post facto relocation was also likely to generate even more intense emotions. For here was a once highly touted national solution in search of a durable, facilitative policy and regulatory environment.

From the early introduction of the “sou-sou” approach to the land and housing challenges of T&T in the 1980s, through its eventual burial under substantial political rubble, there has always been a concern by some (not many) that the time would come when amorphous aspirations to recognise a “right to adequate housing and shelter” would be exposed as the stuff of unrealistic, fanciful expectation.

Indeed, its place among the major components of economic, social, and cultural rights renders such a commitment a key part of developmental agendas wherever they are promoted and pursued. Yet, official policy is rarely matched by real action, and political narratives are routinely noted for their delusion or silence on this.

This goes far beyond concerns about abiding by the rules. It strikes at the heart of whether a duty of care is or is not embedded as a vital part of how we do business in this town.

It is clear to me that current efforts to deliver on this commitment, through a combination of state-constructed housing and land leases, together with open market forces, do not take several important factors into consideration.

Public initiatives are either woefully inadequate, bureaucratically inaccessible, conducive to corruption, and conducted in an unaccommodating climate. In the breach, families who cannot make the financial grade on the open market, and opt for the other available route, run the risk of evacuation with big guns trained on them.

Now, none of this is meant to endorse law-breaking with impunity. There are people who believe that, with some political posturing as a buffer, they can get away with wrongdoing. We are also all aware of the fact that in numerous instances, market speculation on and sale of state lands by cynical criminals boldly prevail.

This is among the wilful violations for which the force of the state can be acceptably applied … upon the perpetrators - with due consideration in the case of unsuspecting victims who are ignorant of the cautions of caveat emptor (let the buyer beware).

That said, even applicable laws acknowledge a favourable prerogative of the state. For instance, certificates of comfort are conditionally permitted in selected instances. But, in all this, people need to have knowledge of and confidence in the system.

The fact that it so often reaches the point of forcible expulsion and the destruction of homes also suggests to me that a measure of vigilance by authorities and the application of pre-emptive measures are disturbingly absent factors.

Amazingly, information released by the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) on the Arima site suggests there was access to construction data/images as far back as 2014 and 2018. Certainly, such monitoring mechanisms (satellite imagery mainly) could have detected work underway on some structures in recent months. Where was the action to ensure things did not reach the stage they eventually did?

I refuse to believe that people are generally comfortable, as is often suggested by some, with occupying domestic spaces over which there is such a high level of insecurity that they can be forcibly expelled. On this matter, people would much prefer, I am certain, to do things the proper way.

The sou-sou lands alternative offered an approach that acknowledged limited financial resources, pervasive unfamiliarity with cumbersome processes to get things done, and the acceptability of incremental development of the domestic space. It also revived interest in longstanding “gayap” practices to optimise the employment of community resources.

It was also meant, importantly, to be a pre-emptive intervention to extinguish the lure of lawlessness. I remember well the PR surrounding the projects. Did such an approach not work? Where are its main proponents today? Weren’t they close to centres of political power and influence?

Abandonment of such measures is among the reasons why the required trust in both the people and processes to meet our shelter needs is in massive deficit. Government boots and heavy artillery appear to be a preferred method. In the final analysis that’s guaranteed not to get the job done.

Pan vibes and hope

A good friend and valued colleague of mine asked me last Sunday why there isn’t more of a “vibe” in the Grand Stand of the Queen’s Park Savannah between Panorama performances.

I took this to mean that between the magnificent performances we were witnessing at Junior Panorama, there should have perhaps been loud party music, dancing, shouting across the aisles, and half-drunk groups conjuring up iron sections to incite riotous jams.

Then, on Monday, a fellow Caribbean journalist asked about the state of my (these days afflicted) legs after all the “wining down” at the show.

I am no prude, and I have grown to appreciate the revelry that occurs over in the North Stand and elsewhere in the vicinity (I shall not call its name) between performances. I seriously don’t mind - though I think a large, soundless screen on Chacachacare is more appropriate for those who go to party rather than to listen carefully to pan.

In all my 45 plus years of following the competitions and other steelpan shows, I have been in such company just once. Puke avoidance and paramedical assistance to the intoxicated are not my idea of fun.

And, yes, I get up to stretch my legs between performances and repeated playing of the various tunes of choice does help me flex even more.

Renegades Youth show their skills on stage (WG photo)

But I firmly believe I belong to a growing (not diminishing) category of people who go to pan shows for the pan and nothing but the pan – the greatest thing we do in all of T&T. My old Panorama liming partner, the late George John, would entertain not even the most hushed tones during performances.

A passing nutsman would earn the stare of agonising death, and the couple gossiping behind us as bands played would hear an untraceable “Shhhhh!!!” Whether on duty or not, we’d walk with notebooks scribbling points such as “too much banging of the pans”, “who but the audience is seeing the conductor?”, “that frontline tenor is shadowing”, and all the stuff I still do.

So, back to Franka. The music was loud when I responded – “The London Philharmonic. Do nutsmen pass by shouting ‘salt and fresh’ during performances?” The reference was appropriate for my once UK-based friend. She had surely been to the Barbican Centre and the Royal Festival Hall – and I am not at all saying what happens on stage there is superior to what we have on offer, but that there is clear respect for what is on show.

What I mean is that the evolving nature of the steelpan and what it is offering requires a greater level of regard even as it allows us to flex as Trinis between performances. I confessed to Desiree Myers of Invaders last Sunday that her band’s performance squeezed the season’s first pan tears from me.

Much of this is owing to my belief that the steelpan is the single most important asset of ours. I have also developed an appreciation for the value of competitions as one of the several activities to boost the durable, wider reach of the music. I did not always think so and it remains subject to the kind of change I recognise, as expressed below.

The fact is pan is greater than the competitions and even the national body which oversees its state and corporate assisted growth and development. It is a model for social development and a prospective, yet under-recognised, asset for economic diversification and prosperity.

And, if you think all of this today is to avoid confronting current dystopian descent home and abroad, think about what the instrument is bringing to us at this time. For close to 12 hours last Sunday, many (not all) of us were witnessing the great hope our young people are bringing to the table.

What is happening in pan is respectful of diversity, egalitarian in nature, and mindful of creative imagination as a resource of immeasurable value. We need to remain awake to this.

Additionally, I think there should be more about the (perhaps unprecedented) three ties in the 2025 Under 21 Final. Four bands tied for second, three for eighth, and two for eleventh.

Such tight placings can be interpreted to be implicitly flagging the true significance of the encounters as more than a mere competition. Ditto the other categories – wait till the Medium and Large bands come along to defy a notion of “judging.”

Once again, and through our children, hope has been laid on our tables. We ignore such an offering at our collective peril.