The Joshua Factor

The announcement of a State of Emergency on Monday appeared to undermine my plan to spend time here stretching the Joshua Regrello metaphor to a place from where we could better understand the true state of T&T civilisation.

But maybe this does not have to be so, after all.

I had noted the fact that some people could simply not find in their souls the time and space to even acknowledge such an accomplishment. I believe there was difficulty in doing so partly because of emotions associated with low appreciation for the steelpan and what it means for all of us, together with a not disassociated assertion of ethnic under-achievement.

Today is not the day, and Happy New Year by the way, to restate all I have previously said on the latter, contentious point. But examine your heart while preparing to rebut and explain to a friend or family member exactly what you mean in plain language.

Let’s also be clear, 31 continuous hours on the pan was not “the greatest thing to happen to our country.” Would it be August 31, 1962? Or the football match on November 19, 1989, right? Or maybe not. Maybe elections on December 15, 1986? No?

Yes, we’ve heard the declaration before, but to be sure, that moment is yet to arrive.

However, what young Regrello did was to redirect achievement in, for some, the disquieting socio-cultural spaces occupied by the young, black men of T&T, employing the assets of a musical instrument born out of open defiance and victorious cultural revolution now claimed by all.

Even if you do not enjoy music as played on the pan (a shortcoming to which anyone is fully entitled … I don’t like the accordion), the display of human endurance and employment of an insanely vast musical repertoire alone is sufficient for accolades beyond those on offer from Guinness or Skiffle or PanTrinbago or T&T. 

Yet, there are so many who skipped effortlessly to arguments over SOE 25. Go back to the top to have a clue why this is so. There are disquieting connections on their part.

For those of us who champion human rights, even the mention of suspending civil liberties under legal authority is troubling. We’ve long opposed measures that curb free speech, reproductive rights, gender equality, and children's rights, together with the vast spectrum of civil, economic, social, and cultural rights.

Yet, disturbingly, some who were silent about the 2011 State of Emergency are now vocal about the current version, while others who disapproved of SOE11 are now doggedly supportive of SOE25. All without reference to the potential impacts of both on wider civil liberties.

Despite differences in context, the arguments for and against these States of Emergency are strikingly similar. In the end, what matters to many is the desire for an end to the violence, extortion, and corruption that plague us all.

In other parts of the world, extreme measures have been tested with mixed results. For example, in countries like Honduras, El Salvador, and Jamaica, the verdicts are not entirely impressive. El Salvador has seen some success at the daily street level, which absolutely boosts citizen and visitor confidence, but organised criminal activity remains largely undisturbed.

Honduras, on the other hand, faced an increase in extortion even in the early phases, and Jamaica’s years of SOEs have yielded results ranging from the limited to the ineffective. However, there remains widespread recognition of the daily violence that still characterises life there.

From these examples, it’s clear that no easy answers exist. This is a long, hard path to peace. Police performance here, for instance, does not inspire much confidence. State interventions need major upgrades, and there’s a pressing need for better cross-sectoral collaboration across the board.

People also do not believe they have anything to do with either the underlying causes or the actions required to frame the outcomes. After all, we elect governments to do that, don’t we?

Everywhere this challenge exists, they are all finding, as we must, that this is not an easy road paved with quick fixes. A Joshua Regrello level of endurance, skill, versatility, harnessing of collective assets, and self-belief are among the indispensable qualities. The young man and his supporting acts showed us how some of these qualities are not beyond our reach.

A Tall Christmas Tale

Joe and Marie lived on Bethel Road in Sandy Grandy with their son, Christopher. The couple had arrived in Trinidad 20 years earlier aboard the Admiral II from St Vincent. Six years later, Christopher was born in the wooden shack they called home, on a mattress in the space that doubled as dining and living rooms.

By the time he was 14, Christopher, skinny and tall, had already surpassed his short, chubby father in height.

Life was difficult for the family. Joe often found casual work, clearing grass verges and painting rocks white at the base of struggling palms. But such assignments were sporadic.

Adding to their struggles was the fact that Joe and Marie had entered Trinidad without their “papers” having hidden alongside crates of yams and sweet potatoes. They faced years of trouble securing proper immigration papers.

Fortunately, help often came from their neighbours, Judd and Trudy. Judd ran a successful used-car sales business, and Trudy, was a homemaker. They were childless.

On weekends, Judd would help Joe with yard work and, because he was tall, took on tasks like pruning the Chinese bamboo hedge that separated their properties. The chore became exclusively his after Joe fell off a ladder while cutting the bamboo, fell on the burning pile he had lit, broke his wrist and sustained second degree burns to his arms.

That time of year was particularly eventful on Bethel Road. When Christopher was about 10, he stepped on a rusty nail while laying linoleum on the uneven floorboards at home. The ensuing injury left him unable to wear shoes for years. At home, he wore rubber slippers, and for school or outings, his parents bought him leather sandals.

Judd was particularly present at Christmas time, helping to paint the house, boiling hams on outdoor fires in a Crix tin, and setting up decorations in areas Joe could not reach.

Though Judd avoided pork due to his belief that it was “nasty meat,” he made exceptions for Christmas ham and beef/pork pastelles, claiming they were “not exactly the same thing.”

Marie made new curtains every year. She spent hours at the old Singer sewing machine Joe had found discarded and repaired.

Arguments over curtains were frequent. The house was festooned with curtains - on windows, doorways, and one covering an untidy living/dining room wall. One curtain also hovered midway along the length of the bed Joe and Marie shared, serving as a barrier at times of unresolved disputes.

During one shopping trip for curtain cloth, Joe slipped away to watch an entire football match at a nearby bar. He drank too much, fell off a stool, was robbed by newfound “friends,” and ended up in the hospital with a concussion.

Marie visited him on the ward, shopping bags in hand, while Trudy, suffering from a back strain caused by heavy Yuletide groceries, occupied a bed in the women’s ward across the corridor.

After Christmas, the old curtains became rags for Christopher’s car wash job, where he earned weekend cash. Joe later bought him an Ego ST1511T Power+ 15″ Powerload weed whacker with a telescoping shaft and adjustable handle to expand his work.

Joe later got Christopher a PowRyte Electric Pressure Washer with a foam cannon, multiple pressure tips, and pushing a healthy 5000 PSI. The machine was so powerful it could strip paint off a car and the sound of the motor was capable of stimulating emotions up to one kilometre away.

Christopher’s early-morning work attracted complaints of “noise pollution” from Bethel Road residents, leading to frequent visits from the police and the EMA.

Seeking business elsewhere, he managed to do well every December, eventually employing up to a dozen casual workers. However, disputes over late and unpaid wages and responsibility for noise violation fines led to the eventual dismantling of the team – each member later acquiring their own washers and whackers.

Tensions on Bethel Road also increased over time. A major fallout occurred after Judd, while cleaning paint brushes with pitch oil after Christmas painting, threw the bucket’s contents over the hedge, drenching Christopher. Joe defended his neighbour, asking Christopher “what you doing there in the first place?”

Matters worsened that very Boxing Day when one of Judd’s “Roman Candle” fireworks landed on Christopher’s whacker and destroyed it.

Furious, Christopher, already estranged from his parents over financial disagreements and the pitch-oil incident, grabbed the burnt-out whacker and his pressure washer and stormed out of the neighborhood. “I coming back just now,” he told his mother.

Years have passed, but Christopher has not returned. Joe, Marie, Judd, and Trudy remain united in their hope for his return. Such expectation is disappearing.

Missed brain gains

It is one of the tragic shortcomings of Caribbean governance that hard data and statistics are not frequently considered, even when available, in national decision-making. Attitudes toward modern migration comprise one notable area.

As a consequence, public narratives on such matters are frequently over-populated with and influenced by uninformed official and unofficial opinions, politically flavoured intuition and mischief, isolated personal anecdotes, and general prejudice. In the process, the developmental possibilities missed are innumerable.

I have already written enough about the role of xenophobia, racism, and opportunistic political posturing in relation to the heavy inflow of Venezuelan migrants – many of them undocumented – to T&T over the last decade or so.

My commentaries have included mocking references to the “close de borders (with Venezuela) crew” and condemned the routinised stereotyping of men and women seeking a better life away from the country of their birth.

There is also the durable myth of politically engineered “small island” arrivals in time for elections in the 1950s that I have made the focus of personal research.

When I saw some responses to a proposed Caricom Observer Group for next year’s general election, it reminded me of how far a single, often repeated untruth can reach.

It is the constant lament of academics and regional and international development agencies present in the Caribbean that we live in chronically data-starved environments.

It is not that the infrastructure to focus on such matters does not exist. When it comes to migration statistics, for example, those of us with an interest in knowing more rely almost exclusively on external agencies to distill and evaluate raw information extracted from official figures.

Through this, for example, we know that in most cases, the English-speaking Caribbean, is a net exporter of migrants, unlike that period when we were arriving from elsewhere, populating our countries, and contributing to a net importation of people.

In other words: today, more people are leaving than are arriving (to stay) - the latter representing both documented and undocumented migrants, re-migrants (people returning home after prolonged absence), deportees (more of whom we shall soon witness), and intra-regional journeyers. UN data suggest that in 2020, close to 350,000 people born in T&T now live overseas.

As part of global outward migration trends, there has been a notable increase in the number of “high-skilled” Caribbean emigrants moving to developed countries. These include mainly people with tertiary level education/specialised training.

The 2010 estimate for T&T was in the order of 50 percent of our tertiary-educated/trained people. In some quarters, we are considered to be among the highest per capita Caribbean contributors to this regional “brain drain.” Add to this, the fact of our ageing population with more than 25 percent of us now over the age of 55.

Among the several things this means is that migrant inflows can contribute toward the required “brain gain” to fill important gaps in selected areas. I am certain the university folks are looking at this more closely than some of us mere journalists.

Now, having considered this, think about the political narratives surrounding the value or lack of value of Venezuelan and other migration into T&T.

There is imprecision in the manner in which state authorities have communicated this subject, and even less regard for what is provably true on the part of other political actors when it comes to things such as a significant contribution to crime statistics and a major role in the displacement nationals in the job market.

Of course, we do not stand alone in declaring the purported dangers of migrant arrivals - though they aren’t known to consume our pets. Stand by for action not far away. Plus, mere hours following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria last week, there were European countries promptly shutting the door on refugee claims and wondering when those already there would ever go back home.

You never know what might happen in the Caribbean when things eventually change in Venezuela or if peace and stability ever come to Haiti.

ILO Director-General, Gilbert F. Houngbo, says in the latest global report on migration:  “Migrant workers are indispensable in addressing global labour shortages and contributing to economic growth …ensuring their rights and access to decent work is not only a moral imperative but also an economic necessity.”

The ILO report notes (and we don’t have the figures for T&T) that the disparity in employment rates between them and non-migrants in many countries owes much to “language barriers, unrecognised qualifications, discrimination, limited childcare options, and gender-based expectations that restrict employment opportunities, particularly for women.”

What are the facts of our case? Does anybody know? Does anybody care?

Five-Year Election Campaigns

As campaigning intensifies for the next general election in T&T more citizens should be paying closer attention to at least three distinct features of the process amid desperate but fading tribal cleavages.

As an aside: I think the contest will come later rather than sooner, despite prevailing speculation. I also subscribe to the concept of a fixed date.

To be clear, politics’ ethnic characteristics persist. But try polling the younger cohorts and you will be surprised at the extent to which the Gen Z bunch (about 40 percent of the population), together with the traditionally independent segments, care a rat’s … ears about old narratives of ethnic superiority.

Yet, leading politicians and their closeted strategists, continue to believe that triggering such fading emotions in political messaging can earn their parties heightened favour and fervour.

However, follow the process as closely as you can on social media, and some traditional media and public spaces, and you will recognise the relatively small circle of devotees taking/employing this bait.

Anyway, what are these “features” of the process of electioneering in T&T I am talking about? Bear in mind, today’s offering is not from any “political analyst” whose ad hoc intuitions based on personal preference seem to bear more weight than actual research.

Number one. As I’ve indicated earlier, a fixed date for general elections should be a constitutional requirement. This will cut out an entire tier of harmful political gamesmanship, and level the playing field for all. Incumbency, though heavy on implicit liabilities, could do without the additional asset of foreknowledge.

Number two has to do with the way political parties organise themselves for the selection of candidates and leadership positions. This is an internal process in which individual organisations need to ensure that democracy prevails and is characterised by a heavy measure of due diligence.

Now that we are gradually, but certainly, escaping the clutches of blind tribal loyalty, electorates are less and less likely to opt for odious (crapaud?) selections that result from leadership edicts. Relatedly, games should also not be played when it comes to matters such as party leadership. Ferdie Ferreira makes the crucial point about Dr Rowley’s teasing language regarding his continued leadership of the party.

Back in September 1973, there was an even less ambiguous declaration by late Prime Minister, Dr Eric Williams, which turned out to be an effective hoax that cost the party substantial political capital, the support of key stalwart Karl Hudson-Phillips (who had expressed an interest in the position), and eventually led to the rejuvenated coalescing of disparate forces opposed to PNM rule. Follow the politics between 1976 and 1986 and you will see what I mean.

A not entirely dissimilar fiasco emerged following the succession of Winston Dookeran as leader of the UNC replacing Basdeo Panday in 2005, the ensuing shenanigans of 2007 (an election year which deserves an entire book) and the bewildering (and controversial) events culminating in Panday’s loss to Kamla Persad-Bissessar at internal elections in 2010.

True, within four months the party went on to authoritatively dominate the PP coalition in government between 2010 and 2015, but not without continuing fissures – some of which persist in diverse ways to this day.

So, yes, point number two essentially has to do with internal democratic practices among the respective political organisations. This has little relevance, though, if the organisation in question was born at a press conference, has shady internal elections and processes, and persists almost solely in the form of regular social and mainstream media dispatches.

Then come plans and programmes, the most important, but least considered parts. It does not seem to matter that election manifestoes are among the final campaign products to be delivered. Practising politicians and strategists have said to me it is all cosmetics, though the secret engine rooms often comprise costly imported and indigenous experts and strategists. In the end, they lead to little thought and action by those in charge.

Even when offered, there is little of substance regarding issues of human rights, policy direction on migration, LGBTQI discrimination, the rights of children, wage equality (in a state-dominated economy), the “energy transition” and our oil and gas economy, nutrition security, and management of the climate crisis, to cite a few examples.

The development experts and activists can add a dozen more key features and neglected policy areas. But these are mine, for now. Seek them out in the forthcoming manifestoes and on the hustings. Ask your candidate about them. Five-year election campaigns can deliver much more. They currently do not.

Wages and Reality

Almost as if on remote cue, the recently released International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Global Wage Report 2024-2025 strikes some amazingly familiar chords when cross-referenced against the ongoing Salaries Review Commission (SRC) issue and accompanying discussions surrounding what is essentially a question of wage inequality among T&T workers.

I had originally thought about directly engaging the SRC matter, including the Prime Minister’s astounding manner, but noted the contribution of fellow GML columnist, Helen Drayton on Sunday. In my view, she has inserted the clearest, most principled considerations into the discourse – sullied as the ongoing debate is by political partisanship, outright malice, and gross ignorance.

There is no simple summary of the former Independent Senator’s missive, so if you have a serious interest in the subject, please get your hands/eyes on a copy and read every word.

In (totally inadequate) brief, Ms Drayton gets into the methodology employed by the SRC – the Hay Job Evaluation System - proposes a “judicious” review of its recommendations, urges consideration of specific features of the public service, and suggests a parallel starting point of 4% for everybody (my summary).

She also explores in lesser but important detail, the vexing question of government involvement in wage negotiations in institutions of the state.

In my view the ILO Wage Report addresses such issues from the broader perspective of whether, in any economy, equity prevails as a norm in assessing remuneration within and across sectors. This includes the informal economy which constitutes an important, growing element of our macro-economic landscape.

There is, according to the Report, a decline in global wage inequality – the relationship between low and high wage earners. The statistics provided are not sufficiently disaggregated to represent our own reality, but there is a sense that this might not entirely be the case here. The Ministry of Labour should tell us what is known about T&T trends, as the unions appear hopeless on matters of research.

It is correspondingly insufficient to point to the egalitarian nature of high turnouts at entertainment centres, street food stalls, and “Black Friday” sales to conclude that things aren’t as bad as being portrayed by some.

Protesters occupying public spaces appear well-fed and dressed, and parking spaces at such events are hard to find. So, should we ask where are the “suffering masses?”

One respected senior journalist turned to me at a recent business function and asked: “Does this look like we are in serious financial trouble in this country?”

The quick resort to anecdote over careful perusal of data and research appears to be the preferred option. Yet consumers jumping on each other’s backs at five in the morning at a sale does not signify that all is okay. Neither does an absence of chronic, vociferous public protest nor the long lines at the doubles, gyro, and empanada stalls.

These things do, however, tell us something about the elasticity/inelasticity of public opinion and behaviour.

Both the beleaguered labour unions, which represent an increasingly small minority – less than 25% of the working population - and employers in the formal sector (those in the know can insert their own statistic here) however appear to be missing some important points.

Additionally, wage inequality in the informal sector typically represents a worst-case scenario with women experiencing the messiest end of the stick alongside employees in selected sectors together with migrant and under-age workers.

Under such scenarios, even otherwise indispensable “social dialogue” does not often capture the realities. Neither the labour unions nor employers typically include adequate consideration of these cohorts. It is worse now that tripartism appears to have disappeared as a feature of the labour environment and is being replaced by “gambage” and political extortion.

Dysfunctional collective bargaining arrangements are also degrading the prospects for an organised, rational approach to wage setting and other incentives. Additionally, for too long now, and in important spaces, negotiations lag sluggishly behind work contract timelines.

In the same way there is a justifiable focus on the nature of the evaluation leading to the SRC recommendations (based on the perception that these senior state employees are otherwise well-off) there is an absence of the assessment of needs in the organised labour sector.

What, indeed, is a “starvation wage?” Placards do not have the space to explain, and the main spokespersons appear unwilling or incapable of accepting the brief. Between the ILO Report and Helen Drayton’s submission, there are important clues. The chatter occupying the political and labour spaces is not particularly helpful.

A question of Climate Justice

It was not among the planet’s finest hours, but the outcome of COP29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan last week at minimum confirmed the indispensability of multilateralism as a singularly important mechanism for achievement of collective survival objectives.

It could have all ended in absolute shambles but did not. That will certainly be on offer when the “1.5 to stay alive” slogan born in the Caribbean is conclusively proven unviable through lived experience. Already, extreme weather events in Europe and North America have dispelled prior notions of invulnerability on the part of the big and strong.

In Baku, meanwhile, there were walkouts, vocal dissent and disgruntlement, hypocritical posturing, and continued resistance to the modalities that signal moral and fiscal responsibility for the current state of affairs.

In the same way it should not be taken for granted that there is cognitive uniformity among the ranks of the developed countries (whose undisputed role in getting us to where we are is well established), there can also be the mistake of assuming monolithic conditions among the rest of us small island states.

As developing countries, we are not all starting from the same point when it comes to the “energy transition” – or the gradual movement away from reliance on fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy.

Consequently, there is studied muteness on some features of the decarbonising project by some of us, urgent desperation from most others, and the reticence of geopolitical favour on the part of some … with January 2025 in full view.

Follow closely what is happening right here in the Caribbean in T&T, Guyana, and Suriname. Consider phenomenal GDP growth in Guyana – sufficient to launch an unprecedented developmental leap – and the prospects for Suriname in its state of chronic economic instability.

Then look at the Dragon field’s OFAC compliance. Come, thereby, face to face with a tangled web that combines everything that is difficult about the COP agenda for some.

Note that Guyana’s belated temperance about the next moves belies prior vocal activism, and Suriname’s own quiet contemplation of the development game even in the face of absolutist language that shares its fears as a low-lying coastal territory.  

We have mostly been careful in what we say and nuanced the language of crisis to reflect the imperatives of development in measures of “justice.” What, indeed, can be “just” about a delayed rescue from poverty and deprivation and reluctant largesse derived from the proceeds of what is now being prohibited?

I remember the school bully who passed us in the classroom aisle and delivered heavy blows to the back of our heads. “Whap! Sorry.” “Whap! Sorry.” And then up front with the mocking offer of icepacks for our buzzing heads.

This all makes for a menu of possibilities and impossibilities in pursuit of solutions to the fast-rolling tide of the climate crisis. One point five can and will be surpassed and there is every indication that even as we witness the early signs, death and destruction are foreseeable, extreme scenarios.

Like an icepack to the back of the head, a non-binding commitment of US$300 billion a year, in the face of spurned responsibility, is not entirely inconceivable when power confronts victimhood.

With a US$1.3 trillion tab through to 2035 we stayed in the room as the figures dwindled and the fighting continued. There is every indication we will do this again.

It is just that Belem November 2025 follows January 2025 in Washington DC. And, if COP29 fell short on the dough (remember that US$100 billion by 2020?), COP30 seems destined to shortchange the world in the transition column.

On the margins, once again, will remain unsettled questions surrounding the future conduct of carbon markets, equitable distribution of the pains of transition through countries, communities, and demographics, and the general treatment of loss and damage claims.

Not far behind, and in the background, will remain the spectre of gross injustice for which there can be no standard definitions. So, yes, multilateralism has survived the perilous path so far, but as we see on other fronts it is possible to sit around the table and talk while yielding a whip of outrageous neglect and impunity.

The Value of Pan

Offered the rare (and flattering) pleasure of addressing one session of a cross faculty co-curricular programme hosted by birdsong at UWI last week on what I consider to be “the value of pan”, it challenged me to summarise and sharpen some of my longstanding views on the steelpan phenomenon in T&T.

What inspired the invitation, I was told, was a comment I had made in a recent column that successive national budgets were failing to mention the value of the instrument in all its manifest dimensions, even as its autonomy as a national asset requires greater recognition.

I have contended that pan’s designation as the National Musical Instrument should not serve as a cue for continued or even deeper reliance on state largesse – as is currently being asserted – since its value should never be compromised by official whim.

Though there is sometimes both useful and harshly critical feedback on some of the things I have asserted over the years (as an observer and not an established, regularly cited “expert” on the subject) I have never considered my views representative of anything but the result of an enduring concern about the long-term future of my country and the potential role of the steelpan.

So, it was relatively easy for me last week to discuss “the value of pan” against the backdrop of broader national developmental goals and the “values” required to achieve them.

The presentation provided an opportunity to play with the terms “value” and “value systems” – that interplay between a notion of “wealth” and the corresponding achievement of goals employing such assets, together with a clear pecking order based on what is deemed important and indispensable.

So, I started with “historical value” and the degree to which pan is rooted in the collective defiance of an oppressed group. The way colonial authorities were defied at the very start of this journey when it came to drums. How official disapproval rallied people and stimulated emotions the way only music can achieve.

Faced with a ban in the late 1800s, people appeared to be saying: “Nope. No way.” Then through tamboo-bamboo to the percussive powers of discarded metals to what we have now, there birthed and grew the steelpan. Out of defiant protest.

There are several texts that more competently trace this development, and I consider Kim Johnson’s storytelling on such matters among the best.

Then, last week, I focused on “musical value” (keyword “resilience”) and the ways in which this instrument has been able to deliver on its core indigenous musical assignments, while capturing and embracing a wide variety of genres through innovations and expertise that have expanded the instrument’s (and its players’) musical significance and scope.

There was no way I was going to attempt to get more into that in the presence of musicologist, Derrianne Dyett, beyond citing the observations of other notable experts.

Then comes “socio-cultural” value (key word “unity”) – the degree to which the steelband has been able to grow into a working model for social organisation and development and the collective harnessing of human potential.

There must be academics looking closely at this point, since there are lessons to be learned from the panyard experience that are not readily evident elsewhere – including the traditional school classroom and other centres of learning.

Rigid social hierarchies are also overturned and reassembled at the panyard and, as in the early years, there is defiance of the dictates of social norms. It is thus, arguably, the most revolutionary of public spaces.

Then comes “economic value” – the monetising of pan’s assets. The key term here is “indigenous innovation” with an abundance of untapped intellectual property value, adding to direct earnings through a multiplicity of existing avenues.

Yes, a geographical indication as recently awarded is useful, but barely scratches the surface of immense potential in this area of hugely untapped wealth – innovations that often pass unnoticed.

I then closed the UWI session by noting the overall “developmental value” of the steelpan which spans the full range of steelpan resources – both realised and unrealised. This would be the sum of the constituent parts of historical, musical, socio-cultural, and economic values with the main characteristics being defiance, resilience, unity, and indigenous innovation.

Again, I recall a mid-1980s conversation with the late great Keith Smith when I stopped and turned to him as we walked along Independence Square: “You know that oil and gas will someday be gone. What else but pan would we have left?”

I cannot recall Keith’s response. But you tell me. What else will we have left?