Pan’s renewable wealth

So, World Steelpan Day was observed yesterday, and we are in the midst of Steelpan Month.

By now we should all know that the instrument is much more than the music it delivers. That we frequently need to step back and ask ourselves: What in the manner in which we have clumsily begun to assemble a nation complete with intrigue, eternal conflict, and chronic confusion, have we done to deserve so handsome a bounty?

What exactly have we really done by creating this musical instrument here?

The answer, I propose, is not simply the development of a remarkable musical instrument. Nor is it merely the spectacle of Panorama or various spectacles throughout the year that fill venues and excite communities and people wherever and whenever they assemble here and all over the world.

This space has been frequently employed to propose value that extends to the productive mobilisation of human resources, creation of a model for social organisation, and establishment of a unique pathway for the generation of national wealth.

The fact is we have produced one of the world's most extraordinary renewable resources. It is not, sadly, that there generally exists in T&T any particular penchant for the sustainable. We have, as a nation, thrived on the expendable to the extent that when regenerative options present themselves, they are all too easily discarded.

But more on solar farms fed by a limitless input and expendable carbon resources at another time.

Exodus Steel Orchestra - Winners Panorama 2026

And, yes, I repeat for the umpteenth time my 40-year-old question to the late (great) journalist, Keith Smith, as we took a cigarette break along Independence Square: “When the oil is gone, what else do we have to keep us going?” (“Groan”).

And an identical query put to late energy guru, Barry Barnes, who responded that for as long as the planet remains viable, the oil and gas will continue to flow.

But the point of the questions was never really about hydrocarbons. It was about national imagination and wealth creation transcendent of the long-recognised and known. What, we now ask far more frontally, can we build that cannot run dry?

An answer appears to have lingered before us, without acknowledgement over all these years.

Less than a year ago, while paying tribute to pan revolutionary, Jit Samaroo, and referencing the great pan innovators, tuners, players and arrangers over the years, I suggested that the steelpan is one of the greatest available tools to have converted adversity into enduring national resources.

Think of it as an economic asset emerging from people with few material resources but with what has been manifest as unmatched ingenuity.

Its evolution created not only an instrument but entire systems of knowledge. Some essential ingredients include tuning, blending, arranging, composing, performing, teaching, organising and innovating.

Generation after generation has added to that inheritance without apparently exhausting it. If you have stuck around long enough you would have witnessed never-ending transitions. Renewal in its purest manifestation through the people who comprise the steelpan community.

Unlike oil and gas, every time we invest in pan, we increase the reserves. Isn’t this what renewable wealth looks like?

This is more than a steelpan and sticks on the national coat of arms – now subject to official indifference. It is getting to the root of important social, cultural, and economic conditions that may conduce to our advancement as a people.

A notion of national wealth must include a sense of economic potential especially in ways that are sustainable over the long-term. By associating such potential with provably beneficial elements such as capacity in steelpan manufacturing, enhancing the tourism experience, providing exclusive training grounds, and leading new initiatives in research and development.

As the indisputable Mecca of Pan, T&T cannot allow this momentous opportunity to pass. Happy Steelpan Month!

POST-SCRIPT: I join with the many others who are lamenting the loss of artistic genius, Willi Chen, in recognising his valuable contribution to Caribbean art in virtually all its facets. More than once, his work reflected the value of pan.

“But now we have triumphed with the steel pan as our renowned musical instrument indigenous of the century; through years of dedicated practice, and continuous innovative approaches, to make the invention more sophisticatedly improved, for the sonorous delicacy of its melodious rapture, the most cherished musical instrument in the modern world - our steel pan” – Willi Chen, Trinidad and Tobago Guardian July 20, 2011.

The survival game

One of the mistakes we make in assessing the value of the CARICOM project is to regard socio-cultural solidarity as its sole asset.

Such cohesion matters, certainly. It underpins regional integration everywhere, providing a foundation for collective action. But integration aimed at common development requires far more. It demands practical cooperation, particularly among small states confronting entrenched vulnerabilities and limited room for manoeuvre.

Despite occasional delusional pronouncements from some Caribbean capitals, if CARICOM did not exist today we would have had to conjure it out of a mangled mess.

Former CARICOM Assistant Secretary General Joseph Cox more or less makes that case in his latest Caribbean Financial Dispatch editorial, adding that operational effectiveness can hugely determine whether integration succeeds or fails.

He frames his analysis around challenges that both member states and the regional bureaucracy appear increasingly ill-equipped to manage, foremost among them being the need for urgent recognition of the imbalance between small Caribbean states and global power and the required remedies.

We are hardly unique in confronting this. Regional organisations worldwide are acknowledging the necessity of greater transparency and institutional resilience while recognising that short-term national politics cannot substitute for coherent long-term regional strategy.

CARICOM's 15 Full Members

Recent statements from Port of Spain appear insufficiently mindful of that reality. Caribbean leadership should strengthen public confidence in our capacity to pursue integrated development based on shared history, interests and values, not undermine it.

Very often, CARICOM has, with some justification, been criticised as bureaucratic, excessively ponderous and slow on implementation. Cox examines these shortcomings from the perspective of someone who served at a senior level within the system.

Yet institutions should not be judged solely by their imperfections, but also by the circumstances that produced them and the challenges they were created to address.

Much of the early literature on such matters portrayed CARICOM mainly as an expression of Caribbean idealism. Equally persuasive, though, is the view that it emerged as an instrument of Caribbean survival.

Former CARICOM Deputy Secretary General Professor Kenneth Hall sought to establish this when he led a series of publications and multimedia initiatives - some of which I was professionally associated with - under the banner “Integrate or Perish.”

He appeared to believe that the phrase captured the Community's essential purpose - even as many preferred more romantic narratives of Caribbean unity rooted in shared indigenous identities.

The publication of Integrate or Perish (2000) was followed by The Caribbean Community Beyond Survival (2001), which assembled reflections from many of the region's leading thinkers. Together they argued essentially that integration was not simply desirable, but indispensable.

Cox advances that argument. He suggests that this survival project has quietly lost diplomatic and political capital because member states have come to expect progressively less from it.

Increasingly, governments are responding to common external pressures through national rather than regional strategies, effectively discounting the value of collective action.

If that diagnosis is correct, it represents far more than an institutional problem. It is a strategic miscalculation that extends well beyond the Caribbean Court of Justice's forthcoming consideration of issues surrounding the reappointment of the CARICOM Secretary General.

The uncomfortable truth is that the external pressures confronting Caribbean societies have become more integrated than Caribbean policymaking itself.

Whether the challenge is geo-political conflict, correspondent banking, anti-money laundering standards, climate finance, food security, maritime transport or a just transition away from fossil fuels, no Caribbean country possesses sufficient economic or diplomatic weight to shape these developments alone.

None of us.

The mathematics of international affairs have not become kinder to small states. They have become far less forgiving.

This is where T&T occasionally risks misunderstanding its own place within the Community. Decades of relative prosperity - now under considerable strain - have sometimes fostered the illusion that national interests can be pursued independently of our Caribbean neighbours.

Yet our manufacturers depend on regional markets. Our security increasingly relies on intelligence cooperation (some of which is currently farmed out overseas). Our energy future is shaped by global environmental policy. Our food security is inseparable from regional supply chains and transport networks.

Our fortunes are becoming more, not less, interdependent. Expanded relations may complement but certainly not replace the core. Why do we have to learn this the hard way? Even CARICOM sceptic, former Jamaica PM Bruce Golding has recently been sounding an alarm on the subject.

External pressures rarely remain confined to their original targets. They spread, deepen and multiply. Caribbean solidarity must do the same. Not as an expression of nostalgia, but as an exercise in survival.

1990 – Memory and Myth

It is good that we turn annually to the attempted coup d'état in Trinidad and Tobago – often reduced to the shorthand “events of 1990” - to recall the epochal physical, emotional, and social violence experienced 36 years ago.

Through the haze of fast-moving time, there remains much to address from a space occupied by fact, trauma, and nurtured myths.

Only once since have I publicly offered personal reflections arising from my own experience as a journalist sitting at the press table in Parliament at 6.00 p.m. on Friday July 27, 1990.

I asked, in these pages on July 26, 2017: “1990 – Did we look for it?”

Before that, I had remained largely silent, apart from an enlightened but under-reported session hosted by MATT some years later. I chose instead to observe the competing narratives including those advanced by former colleagues.

The unreliability of memory is often influenced by ignorance, personal bias, mischief, and emotion.

Late journalist/hostage Raoul Pantin's
insightful account of what happened

However, having traversed the period once again over the past few days, we can now focus on the first post-coup sitting of the House of Representatives on August 10, 1990. For, what transpired immediately after the siege is also important.

The session was held at the Central Bank Auditorium under tight security. The press sat in that unusual setting as though attending the staging of a Raoul Pantin play.

What struck me was that the sharp political rhetoric of the period - much of it directed at the collapse of the NAR administration. This had continued throughout and after the crisis.

Some speakers compared the violent attack with the 1970 Black Power unrest. The late Basdeo Panday, then minority opposition leader - who had remained largely silent during the crisis - introduced the concept of political “alienation.”

But the looting and destruction in Port of Spain in 1990 could not reasonably be equated with the broad social movement and national transformation associated with 1970. Nor could it be compared with the conditions that produced accompanying changes.

Yet such arguments were heard as Parliament considered an extension of an existing state of emergency. Unlike today, few informed professionals seriously questioned its legitimacy relative to constitutional requirements.

Panday is recorded in the Hansard as saying: “They (government) brought this nation to where it is by their treachery.” The implication was clear: that the government had, in some way, “looked for it.”

Over time, through rhetoric of this kind, many came to interpret the murderous attack not as a narrow conflict between the Jamaat al Muslimeen and the state, but as an expression of wider political discontent.

Attorney General Anthony Smart had attempted to introduce the debate above party politics, asking the House to view the violence as “an attack on the democracy of this country” and not a partisan issue.

Opposition Leader Patrick Manning responded that he was “not in a particularly combative mood” though this posture did not hold throughout his contribution.

Opposition MP Kelvin Ramnath, unlike Manning and Panday, had himself been a hostage and had genuine grievances about the treatment of survivors. Yet he used his contribution to allege a plot to allow hostages to die so that the government could “organise a counter right wing coup.”

Trevor Sudama, who had been wounded and held throughout the siege, raised legitimate questions about the delayed declaration of a state of emergency and called for accountability.

Manning also asked about the accumulation of arms and ammunition used by the insurgents.

But there is a difference between demanding accountability and using catastrophe as a platform for political grievance.

Prime Minister ANR Robinson had been seriously wounded and was absent for the sitting. I had heard, more than once, the view expressed that he should have died. There was no sharp condemnation of such statements from major opinion leaders then and even now.

Others did die. Families mourned. Soldiers guarded a legislature at the Central Bank because the parliamentary chamber had been damaged.

In that setting, scoring political points was not principled opposition. It was politics dressed up as democratic vigilance.

Our current reality suggests that, across the political divide, we have not learned enough from this.

The Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the 1990 attempted coup includes (in vain) recommendations on legislative reform, amnesty provisions, and ex gratia compensation for victims and their families.

It also acknowledges the significant damage suffered by targeted downtown businesses. Someday, have a look at who the owners were. Then look at the full picture and see how much of 1990 resembles 2026.

Trust and AI infrastructure

Current public anxiety surrounding the establishment of AI data centres in T&T appears to be emerging from multiple phenomena.

There is first - and not to be ignored - a general, irrational mystique surrounding the value and quality of generative AI and its constituent components. Somebody messaged me last week with a simple query: “Cell tower debate again?”

There is however an accompanying absence of public trust in the conduct of state business. There are questions regarding where, precisely, such projects are situated on the country’s development agenda, especially given their prior absence. And there are also broad socio-economic questions to be addressed.

There is now a recognisable convergence of these discrete elements of the current AI data centre challenge.

The increasingly popular Syam Nath petition quite rationally addresses the specific issue of water usage. AI data centres are not, you see, ordinary warehouses for data. They are resource-intensive facilities that require comparably far more energy and cooling than other plants.

The petition also significantly includes a general appeal for “responsible planning, transparency, and evidence-based decision-making” when projects with implications for environmental instability – the management of water resources in this case - are being considered.

Yes, the petition has attracted some exaggerated fears over AI itself, but it also tangentially addresses the key questions of trust and the way orderly economic progress needs to be engaged, albeit with a primary focus on ecological viability. There are also broader socio-economic considerations that deserve attention.

We are no newcomers to such questions. For instance, our energy sector has over recent decades confronted questions of the contribution of industry-generated carbon emissions to global climate change.

This country is currently part of a wider, hugely challenging, effort to balance economic benefit against what scientists conclude is a need to reduce the carbon footprints of all countries. Few periods have presented comparable developmental dilemmas for nations such as ours.

They certainly did not arise when the first oilwell was excavated over 100 years ago, nor were there such questions in the boom years of the 1970s.

To emphasise this, the energy sector, in Guyana is indispensably assisting in the achievement of an unprecedented level of socio-economic development.

That neighbour’s language on the achievement of global carbon targets has thus become far more temperate than previous non-oil years, even when T&T was both tacitly and openly giving expression to the dilemma.

The question has become one of “net benefit” rather than of absolute hazard. The concept of “net-zero (carbon) emissions” and accompanying measures in part capture the quandary through tabulation of a notion of global “balance.” The activities of AI data centres have also recently joined the emissions discussion.

The focus for us, I would suggest, should be on net potential benefits based on science and transparency. None of the larger producers has completely abandoned their energy industries, even those who are benefactors in the framing of a new way forward.

Raising related questions on AI data centres should not, however, be dismissed through condescension or insult. These issues arise partly because of a sense that development is being engaged by “vaps” and improvisation.

Although there is now a Ministry of Artificial Intelligence - which is largely concerned with integrating digital tools into public administration - there is informed opinion suggesting that merely hosting AI infrastructure is not the same as pursuing national AI capacity.

To address this would require an answer to the question of whether the proposed projects can serve as the foundation of a sovereign, nationally controlled language model serving governance and, eventually, the public.

The difference between the latter and the mere hosting of remote facilities is enormous, and the country cannot meaningfully debate scope, risk, or net benefit until it knows which objective is to be pursued and the scientific metrics involved.

There is, meanwhile, no reason to needlessly hammer prospective partners. Hummingbird AI, for instance, has openly declared its interest as a corporate entity with a capacity to “originate, structure, finance and deliver nationally significant AI infrastructure projects.” Fair enough.

There is little doubt that the significant investment involved can and will, at least in the short term, generate the benefits of foreign currency inflows, jobs, skills acquisition, and infrastructure development.

There remain technical, contractual, and operational details, however, that should be disclosed, under conditions of full transparency to the public so that a rational assessment of net benefit can be made. There are undeniable pluses and minuses.

We are not there yet. Until we are, there is nothing unreasonable about identifying and debating the principal areas of concern.

 

Unfinished Caricom business

It has become absurdly fashionable in some circles to dismiss Caricom as a wasteful, irrelevant enterprise worthy of dissolution and relegation to the garbage bin of history.

Over the years, I have realised that even greater than the malice generated by false notions of socio-cultural, geographic and other forms of inherent individual strength and weakness is the pervasive ignorance surrounding the nature of the institution our community of nations has built, and the misplaced expectations that accompany it.

The process of “leaving” Caricom is more than getting up in disgust in the middle of an unsatisfactory stage performance. For, while doing so, attachments to various appurtenances of the theatre, including the main stage and other pieces of infrastructure, including the ceiling, do not remain undisturbed.

Over the past 53 years of Caricom, its mandates and institutional responses have grown to extensive and diverse degrees. There are now, for instance, almost 30 specialised and complementary autonomous and semi-autonomous institutions that serve as key pillars of the integration process.

I have offered the reminder numerous times that, among these institutions, is the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), headquartered in Port of Spain.

It serves as the legal forum through which 12 member states, including T&T, may resolve disputes arising from the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas. This is the mechanism now being invoked at T&T’s insistence in relation to the appointment of the Caricom Secretary-General.

Attorney General John Jeremie is familiar with CCJ processes, having appeared as attorney for Trinidad Cement Ltd in the 2022 case against the government of T&T. He also appeared, together with Keith Scotland and others, as counsel in a matter - [2022] CCJ 15 (AJ) GY - involving the appellate jurisdiction of the court at the height of the 2020 post-election debacle in Guyana.

Though the court currently serves as the court of final appeal for five member states: Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, and Saint Lucia, our country has, in this regard, been very much “in the CCJ”, albeit through other means.

The recent July 7 appellate judgment of the CCJ, to cite another example – [2026] CCJ 8 (AJ) BZ – features the prominent involvement of former Attorney General Anand Ramlogan in an election boundaries case related to Belize.

There are professionals far more qualified than I to challenge the nonsense surrounding T&T's alleged non-engagement with the court – “we not in the CCJ” - and I remain surprised that the Law Association has never undertaken a rigorous public awareness campaign to address this endemic ignorance, even at senior levels.

Among things to also be considered in the “get up and leave” sentiment is the fact that Caricom “entanglements” include intimate involvement in major institutions including the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) - which played a leading role in the COVID-19 pandemic - and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), to name just two.

Also consider the roles of the Caricom Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS), the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), and the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI).

There are others that play leading roles in important areas such as climate change, telecommunications, renewable energy, regional standards and quality setting, tourism, fisheries, and meteorology.

Now, if you find the time ahead of the World Cup Final, have a look at the communiqué emerging from the 51st Caricom Heads meeting in Saint Lucia last week.

There, you will find joint reflections on some of the more urgent matters of today, not the least being Caribbean's vulnerabilities and hazards that are transnational in nature. Consider the impact on our southern coastline from the earthquakes in Venezuela.

Hurricanes also do not respect maritime boundaries. Criminal networks move across jurisdictions. Climate finance negotiations are conducted in global fora where numbers matter. Digital transformation cannot be addressed through fragmented national policies. Food insecurity is shaped by conflicts occurring thousands of miles away.

Implicit in these observations alone, you find that the argument for integration has become stronger, not weaker.

At a time of deep geopolitical turbulence, climate vulnerability, democratic uncertainty and technological disruption, the proposition that some of us should somehow retreat from integration is not merely mistaken. It is absurd.

Importantly, and as I pointed out last week right here, the politics of integration do not match the energy and aspirations of young people and ordinary citizens.

The Caricom project also includes a considerable workload of unfinished business – most of which is specifically relevant to our ability to engage current and emerging challenges. We are horsing around with this at our peril, T&T!

Youth beyond seats at tables

I suspect few others noticed, before now, that the sharpest metaphor delivered at the 51st Caricom Summit in Saint Lucia came not from one of the political veterans, but from an eloquent participant in a largely overlooked Youth Dialogue.

I had been in active pursuit of alternative material for today’s dispatch - outside of the vexing, familiar themes of human rights blindness, racism, abundantly resourced online disinformation, steelpan disrespect, and overall official folly. They are all adequately covered elsewhere on today’s pages, I am certain.

Sunday, we had more than a small hint of what to expect when young Saint Lucian scholar, Rahym Augustin-Joseph, called on Caricom leaders to treat young people as partners in shaping the region's future rather than as passive beneficiaries of policy.

Then, on Monday, we heard Shakiah Lewis of Turks and Caicos at the dialogue. A teacher who serves as dean of the Caricom Youth Ambassador Programme, she delivered the telling line.

Emerging leaders, she argued, need to move from “asking for a seat at the table to building the table.”

I had followed much of what had transpired the previous afternoon at the launch of the summit and tried to capture as much as I subsequently could from regional media dispatches. Augustin-Joseph’s address continued to resonate as lasting memory not readily engraved in news pages.

While official attention shifted to Monday's contentious regional retreat and the plenary that followed, Lewis offered an arresting vision of constructive youth defiance.

Shakia Lewis, Turks and Caicos

Strengthening the youth voice, she argued, “isn't just about giving young people a microphone.”

She called for a shift from advocacy to executive power instead of “youth panels” whose recommendations are filed and forgotten. Ministries and regional bodies, she added, should embed young leaders directly into the work itself, with a real say when policy is being drafted.

Chiming in supportively was 23-year-old, Bahamas-born Guyanese Caricom Youth Ambassador and journalist, Shaquawn Gill.

Shaquawn Gill of Guyana

“When we establish boards and we establish committees, organising committees and special committees,” he argued, “it must be in every legislative effort that there is a youth representative as part of any conversation that we have.”

“It must not be a tokenistic matter,” he said. “It must not happen because we have to fulfil this responsibility and we want to make it look nice that young people are in the room, but it has to be about a specific and dedicated effort to make sure that (they) are involved.”

Other contributors included Sherwyn Stephenson (no youngster), Caricom Programme Manager, Crime and Security, Moesha Allen of Jamaica, and moderator Crista St Ange of Saint Lucia.

True, some of what was said is challenged by a few facts. Guyana President, Irfaan Ali, first entered parliament at the age of 26 and he is currently the youngest Caricom leader at 46. Dickon Mitchell of Grenada is not far ahead at 48 and Terrence Drew of St Kitts and Nevis is 49.

More than "giving young people a microphone"

So yes, younger people have reached positions of leadership. Sat at the head of the table. Roosevelt Skerrit of Dominica became Prime Minister in 2004 at 31.

So, it appears that the youth challenge does not occur purely as a concern regarding people and their ages but rather involves entrenched systems and a modus operandi that require dismantling. This has clearly not been our experience.

The panellists, however, appeared to agree that a distinction needs to be made between being heard and being empowered at a fundamental level.

The sluggish regional pursuit of digitalisation – for which young experts are uniquely positioned to lead – was cited as a glaring example of a refusal to part from tirelessly-navigated trails.

“The question is not whether or not young people are ready to lead,” Allen suggested. “The question is whether the systems are ready to trust, include, and allow for us to take our places rightfully where we belong.”

The picture that emerged from the discussion was that this generation is not waiting for permission. As Lewis put it, the young "will not wait for a formal invitation. They will not wait in the back of the line. They will start to create their own lines.”

This, in a sense, is what is already happening through the embrace of digital platforms for alternative sources and routes to information and informal instruction by the young.

Perhaps the region will finally discover that re-modelling the table matters more than simply finding another seat.

Our Haitian test

The resolution on Haiti adopted at the OAS General Assembly two weeks ago may eventually be remembered less for what it promises than for what it quietly acknowledges: that Haiti’s crisis has become inseparable from the future stability of the wider hemisphere.

Such broader recognition is long overdue, even as Caricom appears to have intimately engaged the journey for some time now. This is particularly so when it comes to nearby member states Jamaica and The Bahamas. But visa requirements for Haitians remain intact in a majority of Caricom states.

For many years, responses in the wider Americas have oscillated between expressions of solidarity and carefully managed distance, including complete silence.

Haiti has often been treated as a country somehow detached from the mainstream, despite sharing a history of colonial exploitation, economic vulnerability, and democratic fragility.

The latest OAS resolution abandons some of that pretence. For example, it accepts that Haiti’s multidimensional crisis cannot be addressed through security measures alone.

The OAS hosted its 56th General Assembly in Panama

Instead, it links security, political consensus, humanitarian relief, institutional reform, and long-term development within a single hemispheric framework while insisting that these efforts remain Haitian-led and respectful of national sovereignty. Those are not insignificant departures, provided the declarants are serious.

For Caribbean governments, the resolution also reflects responsibilities extending beyond diplomatic endorsement and posturing, though we too have had our share of negligence and/or incapacity.

Caricom has already assumed a prominent, if not under-resourced role in the current period. It continues to participate in the Standing Group of Partners overseeing the Gang Suppression Force while facilitating political dialogue through its Eminent Persons Group while working alongside the OAS and United Nations on the Haiti Roadmap for Stability and Peace.

This represents perhaps the most sustained, multi-dimensional, regional engagement with Haiti in decades. Yet, as hemispheric representatives conceded in Panama, the implications reach beyond Port-au-Prince.

If the hemisphere accepts that organised criminal violence can overwhelm a neighbouring state without a broad, coordinated response, it effectively lowers the threshold for similar instability elsewhere.

The OAS Secretary General, Albert Ramdin, is strong on that point as no country in the hemisphere remains untouched by the hand of transnational crime. This is manifest in domestic turmoil and instability.

Firearms trafficking, illicit financial flows, irregular migration, human trafficking, and transnational organised crime recognise neither maritime boundaries nor diplomatic sensitivities.

The resolution therefore serves another purpose. It is not simply about rescuing Haiti. It is about strengthening regional resilience before comparable pressures become unmanageable elsewhere. There is evidence this is already emerging, if not already the established case.

"Haitian Bus" - Wesley Gibbings watercolour

Equally significant is the resolution’s insistence that elections, while essential, are not sufficient. Democratic legitimacy requires security, functioning institutions, credible electoral administration, humanitarian relief, and broad political consensus. It rejects the comforting fiction that simply holding a vote automatically restores democracy.

That lesson deserves attention throughout the OAS landscape and perhaps beyond.

Across the region, political polarisation is deepening. Public confidence in institutions is weakening. Criminal organisations continue expanding their influence. Economic pressures increasingly test governmental capacity. And states have not always acted in accordance with accepted international human rights norms.

These may differ in degree from Haiti’s circumstances, but not necessarily in direction.

There is also another subtle message within the OAS resolution. It repeatedly emphasises transparency, coordination and accountability - not only for Haiti itself but also for the international agencies intervening there. It demands regular reporting, institutional review, and clearer coordination among the OAS, the United Nations, Caricom, and international partners.

This point represents an implicit admission that previous international interventions have often suffered from duplication, fragmented mandates, an absence of cultural awareness, and inadequate oversight.

People of the Caribbean should welcome that honesty.

Too often, external assistance has arrived in Haiti accompanied by competing priorities and short political attention spans. Sustainable recovery requires coherence rather than episodic interventions responding to successive emergencies.

Ultimately, this resolution asks governments to think differently about regional security itself.

Security can no longer be confined to military or policing responses. It now encompasses functioning democratic institutions, social inclusion, economic opportunity, humanitarian protection, and effective governance. Those elements reinforce one another.

Whether the new roadmap succeeds remains uncertain. Haiti has witnessed many ambitious international commitments before.

But failure this time would not belong to Haiti alone.