Thursday 14 March 2024

Caricom’s Haiti Moment

Despite Ariel Henry’s resignation offer - and it is provisional upon several important pre-requisites - Caricom deliberations and action on Haiti have still fallen short of an ultimate solution, but so has every other prescription from everyone else.

The main difference, though, is that the regional grouping is engaging the deadly situation fully mindful of the contagion of chaos, the requirements of enlightened self-interest, and a sense of fraternal responsibility.

The latter, of course, prevails even though Haiti membership had defied even CLR James’s notion of “natural (West Indian) unity.” But the regional movement has long crossed that important and seriously difficult Rubicon.

It is important that Caricom has also, at least now, recognised the slow, incremental nature of any lasting resolution of longstanding anomalies and dysfunctionalities in that country.

Invasions, even by invitation (whose?), do not have the best record of success, unless there are Plans A, B, and C that take street-level realities into account. The question of what happens next is thus of supreme importance.

The absence of Ariel Henry from the country provided both opportunities and challenges. It was felt by some that his questionable occupation of office since the murder of Jovenel Moise, including Henry’s dubious support base, helped suspend rather than encourage enthusiastic global support in the current crisis.

For example, growth in financial support for a Kenya-led UN Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti, up to Monday when Caricom met, appeared to have stalled.

With gangs, and their barely closeted political allies firmly in charge of major sections of Port-au-Prince, and open aspirations being expressed by known miscreants, there still appear to be few durable options available even in a post-Henry era.

This may come in the form of an internationally supervised, circumscribed or “defensive” democracy - meaning that the main tenets of liberal democracy would be made to adjust and match the limited ability of the country to function in accordance with such values.

This is, in fact, not an unknown Haitian reality, including the role of thugs and other criminals.

Easy for the rest of us to say, I suppose. But there are reality checks concerned onlookers to developments there need to undertake. Well-meaning naivete rooted in romantic notions of a first black republic have for the moment to be put aside.

Ditto the tendency to over-simplify the deeply intractable difficulties of Haiti. This goes beyond merely saying “I’m sorry” or calling on Caricom to fix things quickly.

For Jamaica and The Bahamas – both represented on the Caricom Eminent Persons Group (EPG) on Haiti – ongoing strife in Haiti is a lived reality in their respective countries given geographical proximity and relatively easy access by sea.

It has not helped that these two neighbours have not always managed the process of integrating fleeing Haitians, and some hard questions remain regarding the forcible expulsion (refoulement) of asylum-seekers (as has been the case of T&T and the Venezuelans, by the way).

Some may contend such responses are justifiable, given the fact of limited absorptive capacity – geographical, economic, social, and cultural in nature. Yet, they do nothing to alleviate underlying causative factors.

Among the “things to be done”, therefore, is for our countries to get such international commitments right. This extends beyond the crisis in Haiti.

We have been through some of this before. The advocacy of a few influential leaders back in 1995-98 to promote Haitian membership of the Caricom fold had offered implicit assurances of an ability to mitigate the possibilities for collateral regional injury. It simply has not turned out that way.

Regional diplomatic folk speak quietly of the numerous challenges, including uneven reciprocal support when required on hemispheric and international stages. This is that troublesome sibling at the dinner table.

Yet, there is cause to consider a meaningful role in ensuring that such a regional democratic hot spot is urgently attended to. Monday’s meeting in Jamaica may have led to a variety of conclusions in the public sphere, but it certainly signalled engagement of the quality some considered to have been beyond our capabilities.

There is a lot more to be done, both by us and others. The UN Humanitarian Needs Response Plan for Haiti, with a budget of US$674 million, now stands at a fraction of what is needed.

The Caricom meeting attracted attention and active participation from a wide cross-section of the international community. I have seen where it has been described as a mere “talk shop.” There are people who have clearly not been following what has been happening. This is a significant Haiti moment for Caricom. But it's not yet over.

Wednesday 6 March 2024

Art’s revolutionary ways

Emotional haze of Saharan proportions typically hovers over and permeates the season just ended - conditions under which it is best to be patient about many things. For example, few there may have been to have been discomfited by the Cro Cro judgment and now, regional political rulings on some musical content. But there should there be many more to consider measured caution on such matters.

For certain, crass, artless content is far less likely to engender open empathy once assaulted, than craft bearing subtle, instantly undetectable daggers aimed at the heart. Yet, even so, the application of justice and politics is capable of both rendering and rending fine coats of insulation over otherwise protected products of creative imagination.

The fine points of justice – an uncloistered virtue open to the outspoken comments of ordinary folk such as I – often crave fineries not easily found in the crudities of daily life. “People,” James Baldwin once famously said, “evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate.”

This is rather difficult, clumsy stuff that marks all areas of art. And we may note that literature and art have at times connoted aggressive subversion and revolutionary intent. Guyana’s President Ali, for instance, invokes Marley’s ostensibly benign messaging - even in the face of Marcus Garvey’s subversive anti-colonial inspiration woven into most of what the Jamaican artist had to offer.

Within “Trinibad” there are traces of Baldwin’s formulation of an alternative language to both understand and to describe current realities in what is being offered by these performers. It has been the same in other jurisdictions represented by different musical and artistic genres.

This is not to deny law its proper place. Incitement to acts of criminal violence is unacceptable under any circumstance. So, too, the willful defaming of people, or breaching of their (relative) right to privacy.

Most of us in the movement to promote freedom of expression globally agree this right is subject to permissible limitations – hate speech and defamation among them. But the boundaries to be drawn between such a right and acceptable exceptions invoke a variety of difficult considerations left in the hands of wise legislators and judges.

Surely, the Law Association is currently hard at work deliberating on such matters in the public interest and must be considering accompanying public debate and discussion. However, those of us who have been active on the question of removing all traces of criminal defamation from the statutes understand general ambivalence.

When the subject was debated in our parliament ten years ago, there was rare bipartisan agreement on the applicability of jail when sentencing for acts of criminal defamation. What followed was a half measure referencing “malicious defamatory libel known to be false.”

This is important to remember amid recent developments that have cast the subject of freedom of expression, through creative content, under the spotlight. There is not likely to be strong opposition to the imposition of criminal penalties for specified creative and other expression.

We are already used to “banning” as a coping mechanism. But this has become somewhat anachronistic as an option, since the arms of official prohibition are difficult to extend beyond the sitting ducks of traditional, domestic media.

There is also a certain nonsense associated with repeated references to “airplay”, and its bearing on the popularity of contemporary music, that belies the fact that young people are more abundantly keyed into online platforms than any other medium.

References to “airplay” also invoke notions of official control through outright banning, ill-advised content quota restrictions, and what I have long considered to be our ready resort to prohibition. In some countries we know well, such an instinct extends to other institutions such as libraries, schools, and art galleries.

There is also an opportunity for science to determine psychological triggers and impacts and the factors that predispose people differently across socio-cultural divides. This goes beyond amateur intuition.

Don’t get me wrong, though. Nonsense is nonsense. I however reserve the right to listen to, read, or view the nonsense of my choice. Additionally, people in government always want “positive” messaging to counteract the “negatives” they paraded while being out of office. In some instances, the “negatives” are the outcomes of their own inaction or incompetence.

Meanwhile, look around you and note instances in which books and art and music are giving the middle finger to the status quo. I say keep them coming!

 

Wednesday 28 February 2024

Disastrous Communication Gaps

Just back from a few days in Jamaica with Caribbean media colleagues, disaster response agencies, and associated institutions discussing relationships to be forged and/or strengthened as our region addresses a multiplicity of hazards and threats of both human and natural origins.

This was particularly significant in the face of the “Tobago oil spill” story and the extent to which the flow of information on the subject has been open to speculation, conspiracy theories, and mischief of various, cynical varieties.

The ease with which elaborate, obviously malicious narratives based on the slenderest threads of proof dominated the public space is instructive. Among other things, though, it points to signal failures along the information spectrum – both official and informal. In such an environment, innocent misinformation transitions easily to serious disinformation.

It is not advisable to regurgitate unverifiable or maliciously seeded speculation, and I won’t do so here, but people have appeared overly willing to assume the very worst even in the absence of basic truths.

So, back to the hybrid event in Jamaica, which followed a similar programme two weeks before, also coordinated by the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC).

There have been efforts by the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) – a partner in the Jamaican workshop – and the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM) on this matter over the years.

In fact, in 2018 when the ACM convened its Biennial Congress in Barbados, it was tied to the hosting of an intense examination of ways media professionals and communicators could have improved their coverage of a variety of crises, emergencies, and threats – not the least being hazards associated with extreme weather events, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

But what was different about the Jamaica workshop was its deeper elaboration of the multi-faceted nature of these challenges when placed alongside numerous chronic socio-cultural-political phenomena.

I paid particularly close attention to the illustrious Haitian/Canadian journalist, Nancy Roc, who spent considerable time identifying some key issues that affected proactive measures and responses to Haiti’s tragic earthquake of 2010 which claimed over 200,000 lives.

There are key social, political, and historical antecedents that are not common to our experience in the English-speaking Caribbean, but our more durable systems of governance and the survivability of our countries are not entirely immunised by such key differences. There are basic principles of disaster response and recovery to which the Haitian experience should have alerted us in 2010 and following.

For one, stakeholder recognition needs to be more deeply entrenched. This is expressed, in some instances, in the degree to which local authorities, communities, and civil society organisations, including media, have roles in response and recovery processes.

This does not require the elimination of creative tensions between the state and institutions such as the media and should not signal the end of journalistic scepticism and rigorous reporting.

Both journalists and emergency response agencies at the MIC event were however clear on stronger lines of communication based on trust, and on the basis of a clearer understanding of our respective mandates and roles.

This is too often not the case. In 2018, for instance, the ACM had proposed the elevation of journalists somewhere near the status of “first responders” - assisted at times of crisis by official agencies with reach and access to the epicenter of emergency events. This was with specific reference to regional journalists assigned to cover Caribbean crises. Sadly, nothing happened.

At that time, we had only recently been through Category 5 hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 which caused death and major destruction in several Caribbean countries under the watch of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA).

The point in all this is that in every instance – whether we speak about successive hurricane seasons, volcanic eruptions (as with St Vincent in 2021), earthquakes, and other hazards (such as the Tobago episode) there is a need for more intense, honest, and timely information sharing.

In countries such as ours that place so little emphasis on the discipline of crisis communication, we have witnessed how things go terribly wrong within a short space of time.

Journalists are a major, but not exclusive, group of stakeholders to address such a shortcoming. Sadly, too few expert analyses of what happened in our territorial waters three weeks ago have addressed this deficiency. But it remains an important and urgent issue, the relevance of which is surely to unfold as the seasons change over the coming months.

 


Wednesday 21 February 2024

Art and Our Packed Agenda

There are so many things on the current agenda, both pleasant and deeply tragic, that a public affairs newspaper column provided limited space will always fall far short of comprehensive or adequate coverage.

There is the fact of personal perspective and values with these media things as you know. Yet, I always navigate quickly to the op-eds to witness vast tapestries, the undersides of which almost always appear untidily stitched and patched, but where routinely resides actual meaning.

Today, I could have addressed the fact of our unitary state and positioned it alongside other regional archipelagos within our archipelago – St Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, St Vincent and the Grenadines, all of The Bahamas, and the several others - all different but representing similar social and political conundra.

We would have called that one ‘The Spill that Binds’ and helped define the “self” in “self-determination” and explored questions of unitary statehood.

Then there are the measured tiptoes around the perimeter of horror and pain that have defied legal technicality in the way a headless corpse requires a final declaration of death by a lingering DMO.

“Genocide” by other names. “Ethnic cleansing” as euphemistic “migration”. “Hamas” for the men, women, and children of Palestine.

Much like “Laventille” and “Caroni” as ethnic code and trigger for action, or no action. “Carnival culture” the same. “Beat pan, but don’t beat books.” A reduction of festival to “song and dance” and its practices as emblematic of terminal ethnic failure.

I am no real fan of the concept of Carnival’s ostensible cathartic or “safety valve” effect. To agree with this would be to concede to multiple civilisational failures.

Creative expression is also not the stuff of rotating seasons. I have explored pan and its value to our country numerous times and need not retrace those steps now.

There will always be those who do not understand what we mean, solely on the basis of either personal aesthetic appreciation or ready resort to a notion of tribal exclusivity.

So, let’s get that one out of the way. Ditto music. This year, the performers sought to address the prejudice of people like me who have gradually stepped away from the scene of what we considered to be serial creative crime. I made it through an entire Calypso Monarch competition after many years, including some of the supposed “good old days.”

I always thought more than 90 percent of it was disposable and have witnessed seemingly endless recycling, even back then. It’s probably around the same ratio now and talk of more frequent “sampling” is easily dismissed.

So, let’s also race past the mas’ – the less said the better, except that emotions surrounding the “playing” of mas’ are entirely valid as a form of self-expression, love, and pride. For example, we in T&T understood “body positive” in all its manifestations long before it became the stuff of an identifiable social cause or movement.

Okay, last but not least. At one time, long ago, I experienced Carnival art in the mas’ camp. I remember well, as a young boy, seeing the Eustace family of St Augustine at work. Follette did Art at school. I followed suit.

The mas’ camps continue to perform the same function – as outlets for the production of superb art and creative mentoring.

Celebrated artist, Jackie Hinkson, has in recent years added yet another perspective on the art of Carnival. Art as both a focal point and backdrop for street theatre and the employment of art as journalistic first and second drafts of history.

In a sense, Hinkson’s ‘Ah Sailing with the Ship’ murals at Fisher Avenue in St Ann’s, which closed on Monday, represented a credible artistic archive of life in T&T spanning decades. When he explains its role, outside of the need to display artistic excellence, any journalist or social scientist would immediately recognise common cause.

This, I thought, was as Carnival an experience as you can get – picong and commentary, pretty and ugly mas,’ pan and more pan, history, and recency, bacchanal and argument, politics and politricks, and love after love.

When we get serious, we will find permanent accommodation for ‘Ah Sailing’ and all other quality visual art the season produces. This calls for about as much space as we devote to naked walls, underutilised community centres, and an extensive list of prestige infrastructure projects.

This is much more than a centrally located Carnival Museum. It is a claiming of public territory by art in the way some major cities yield space to what helps define their past and their present.

See what I mean? Plenty things to talk about.

Wednesday 14 February 2024

De Carnival is Over

Listen to this here:

Eeef you know how allyou does get me vex this time of the year. Results does come een and like it had mad pills in your beer. The people and dem practise hard, hard for months, but quarrel is all you have in your response. The judges and dem try hard to be fair, yet when results reach is like louse run in your hair.

It must have a formula to get rid of this, something that work fast like Phensic or Vicks. Instead you keep kwart and head out Buccoo Reef, you bawling and screaming how the judge and dem t’ief.

Remember the time Machel win the Road March, and was like somebody iron your drawers with cornstarch. Everywhere you did turn was somebody grumbling, or behaving in ways that was extremely disturbing. A man pull a gun for a girl in a bar, a next one kneel down and pray to a star.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know how it can turn, you don’t need a rule book to express your concern. But it would help if you take a lil time, to acquaint yourself with how the rules line by line. The judges come from here and most try to be fair, yet you cussing and vexing like if they don’t care.

A time a man from Grande lose a bet on the pan, he had to run naked all the way Tableland. A next one he say Gypsy go beat them in song, lose all he money and selling chilli bibi in town.

Massy Trinidad All Stars en route to another win

Now some of you must be wondering and saying, that Wes take a drink or still jumping and playing, but oh lord I have now to declare, I can’t take the grumbling about how all things unfair.

Pan remains the greatest thing we does do, better than everything else we pursue. Whether is oil or gas or financial affairs, everything else does leave we in arrears. Congrats Renegades and All Stars you won our hearts, with excellence in the practice of musical arts.

XO we love you and for you it was hard, but coming third didn’t mean you were bad. BJ, Khan and Ainsworth you worked like a team, and this year’s arrangement soared high like a dream.

Not taking anything from Duvone or Smooth, to do that would be mindless and rude. These two genius have no limits on talent and skill, obligations to their great bands they always fulfil. I followed their arrangements from the prelims, the songs grew new torsos, organs and limbs, crescendos and flourishes melodious rifts, such wonders contained in your musical gifts.

Bp Renegades reaches 13 wins with this tie

Now that the storm has ended and calmed, and soon everybody will be waving a palm. Doh quarrel and fight about who win or lorse, collective creativity will always be boss.

On this quiet Ash Wednesday we know, we have a whole nation to nurture and grow. Pan, kaiso, street theatre and mas, a whole nation does be audience and cast. I was never a fan of much of this, outside of pan which brings so much bliss. But we can do all without being drunken or high, or believing in miracles that come from the sky.

We live in a place where love and imagination, is more than the passing tide of an undeclared vacation. For the rest of the year, the pans won’t go quiet, for music is something with a limitless diet. The kaiso need work and the mas’ could be better, a new Minshall can come and be the trendsetter.

Republic Bank Exodus - third
Ditto the kaiso that has started to move, in a direction to show that it can improve. New Machel, Karene, Chucky, Mical and Helon, lyrics and music sweet like a ripe melon. Actually, I prefer MM this style, so I haven’t paid attention in quite a while. How much jump and wave and wine you could make, when there are forms that nice like a hot shark and bake?

All ah this make me resort to couplet and metre, de Carnival fare was so much better and sweeter. I wasn’t there with scant clothes in the street, yet this was more than who did or did not compete. Now on this Ash Wednesday there is much work to be done, the real answers to which was a part of the fun.

Let’s do this!

Thursday 8 February 2024

Carnival defiance

Last weekend provided a good opportunity to sample, in small and large bits, the contradictions of a country said to be under siege from violent crime and social conflict, and the offerings of people bent on defiant creative expression through it all.

The one thing you realise when doing so in T&T is that those intent on challenging the odds do not comprise a marginal, monolithic minority. It seems that for as many who have yielded to fear, there are numerous others interested in claiming earned doses of freedom.

This is, perhaps, the spirit of “Kambule” as expressed by poet Pearl Eintou Springer – a veritable battle of wills between the mighty and the small that has found common metaphorical cause among all of us.

We should know that two Carnival days do not by themselves constitute the most important features of the season. No, “everybody” does not play mas’.  “Everybody” does not like soca and fete. And, though I cannot understand why, “everybody” is not into pan.

Maybe it is that the whole of these divided loyalties surpasses the sum of the variety of discrete, not always harmonious parts. Bits and pieces that somehow coexistent as in an expanding fragmented yet cohesive universe – as my astrophysicist niece Zahra would probably put it.

So, my friends and colleagues all know I do not like Carnival fetes. The music is too loud, and all the soca songs sound the same to me. Yet, there are sensible people who partake.

I also happen to believe that the share of nonsense lyrics and unoriginal music at calypso competitions has always vastly outstripped anything of value – so when they were on competitor number 150, or whatever, at Skinner Park last Saturday, I was on a folding chair in a panyard in the open air not listening, though I tried earlier.

Sure, there has been creative genius along the way, but I am also not keen on most of mas’ and never aspired to be a part of it – save for teenage Jab Jab in Curepe.

I am aware of existential value, though, and would never attempt to diminish the importance of such things. As a fledgling watercolourist I recognise colour and light and movement. The best costume designers can employ all these conditions to tell valid stories.

These are some personal contradictions of mine. You probably have yours too. You may, for instance, do not believe that pan is the greatest thing we do in T&T. That its role in musical expression, social organisation, and economic potential is the stuff of fanciful myth.

So, on Sunday, for me, it was the Medium Band final in Tobago, on television.

Some of you probably missed the fact that pan arrangements have crossed epochal points of excellence at the hands of a new generation of musicians. That for young Kersh Ramsey from Black Rock, Tobago, who arranged for repeat winners Katzenjammers, there is no turning back.

That, at one time one of his mentors, Duvone Stewart, was that “brilliant young man” who was bound for greatness. Preach nonsense about youth disinterest in pan!

So, that was it for me on Sunday. But, on Saturday, I did have the chance to do three Carnival things. First stop was to check in on artist Jackie Hinkson’s Carnival murals in St Ann’s, which was still under construction.

I recalled at the height of the COVID19 lockdown (I think it was 2021) a young lady I know parked her car, put on a costume, and chipped, chipped by herself along Fisher Avenue alongside masqueraders and various Carnival characters frozen in place by Hinkson. She was not to be chained!

Then, when I left Fisher Avenue, I heard music at the Savannah where the Red Cross Kiddies Carnival was wrapping up. No fan of mas’ per se, but a huge supporter of anything positive to do with children, I raced over to the Savannah with camera in hand.

There is an element of child sufferation at such events that turns me off, but there was also a sense of pride and joy on the faces of the children whose parents and guardians had not already whisked back home.

The only thing left to do when I left there was to find myself in the idyllic Supernovas panyard in Lopinot. I had by then noted that everywhere people were not yielding. The defiance of Carnival’s early, indigenous origins was clearly in evidence. There was a liberation being pursued. Defiance, and the hope that drives it. Let’s see what the rest of this brings.

 

Wednesday 31 January 2024

A Developmental Bottleneck

For me, what is remarkable about UNECLAC’s study on the impact of chronic road traffic congestion in T&T has been the virtual absence of sustained public outrage at the economic loss and psycho-social injury.

Instead, we have had the typical rote responses of public officials, business organisations, and politicians that have all sounded as patchy as the roadworks regularly on display. Then Carnival competitions began in earnest, and the rest of us forgot all about it.

An assessment of TT$2.26 billion in economic loss – 1.37 percent of GDP – and the evaporation of over one month of productive time is significant enough to merit more than passing attention. Just a reminder, and for contrast, even with new thrusts in food production agricultural output remains at just about 1.5 percent of annual GDP.

ECLAC also notes that its online survey of “social impressions” was conducted over the period June 20 – September 26, 2023. This means that school holidays, which usually provide an ease in traffic, and which in 2023 spanned July 7 to September 4, had to have been captured as a positive measure.

Could be all of this was considered. But I have the feeling that the traffic problem is actually worse than is reflected in the study. There is also an impact on our dignity that easily escapes the grasp of social research, even when assessing anger, frustration, and feelings of hopelessness.

For example, there is a small depression, let’s call it a small “hole” along the northbound section of the Southern Main Road in Curepe, near the OTB establishment. Once you’re free from the traffic lower down, at the fancy intersection with the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway, you can drop your guard and unwittingly take aim at the hole near the shoulder. It has been this way for years.

My son and I once witnessed a near violent crime when two hole-dodging drivers came out of their cars with murder on their minds over a tiny scratch on one of the vehicles.

It’s not irrelevant to the ECLAC study. There is considerable attention to the public policy implications of its findings. Fair enough. The buck probably stops at several points and public policy is one.

Widening and re-routing provide only temporary relief. People with fancy vehicles are also wont to declare the presence of “too many cars on the road” without offering a solution that includes a formula for determining who gets to keep their cars and who should be required to dispense with or suspend use of theirs.

Policy implications and conclusions recorded by the study focus heavily on public transportation services “including strategies to make public transportation services more accessible and attractive to commuters.”

Impressively, this suggestion is tempered by concerns regarding public safety, and the need to provide complementary “paratransit” services, ostensibly for people with disabilities and those who require off-route transits.

There is mention, as well, of the obvious, workable option of “telecommuting … to reduce the need for physical commuting especially among the professional categories of workers for whom this may be feasible.”

Now we’re talking. But this runs so afoul of current official and public culture that we may have to leave this for the next generation of public service and business leaders – lessons of the pandemic notwithstanding.

In any event, remedial measures are in most cases long-term. The ECLAC researchers remained conservative on the question of “better spatial planning” by restricting their concerns to annual and/or seasonal events.

There is clearly a need for a far more revolutionary approach. I remember discussions about this decades ago under the banner of “decentralisation.” Should local government reform in its truest sense occur, it would be natural to envisage the main cities, boroughs, and towns being disburdened from hosting central government offices and operations.

Admittedly, some of it has been happening over the years. The Ministry of Agriculture is now in Chaguanas. Passport offices now span more locations. But what are the ministries of Labour, Sport, Tourism, Rural Development, and Community Development doing in Port of Spain?

This is how governments can lead the way. But how can the private sector and other employers contribute? Telecommuting is on the menu, but so too other measures that can help transform the world of work.

All the while, and not that this should be of any comfort, but we aren’t the only ones confronting this massive monster of traffic congestion in the region.

Jamaica and Barbados are right alongside us, and in some ways even worse. They too can benefit from an ELAC reality check, even if life continues as usual beyond the initial headlines and soundbites, and this developmental bottleneck persists.

 

Caricom’s Haiti Moment

Despite Ariel Henry’s resignation offer - and it is provisional upon several important pre-requisites - Caricom deliberations and action on ...