The digital gap

So, here I am yet again - digitalisation and technology and our refusal as a nation to embrace prospective benefits.

If you have been following this constant refrain over the years (no, I was not silent about it “for nine and a half years”) you would know that I have been consistently calling out the gross negligence.

I have not been alone, and I won’t call any other name but that of my media colleague, Mark Lyndersay, who has repeatedly (and in vain) pointed to the shortcomings in our own embattled sector and the penalties we have already begun to pay.

So, this is not about everybody else except us. All ah we falling short. As a sexagenarian journalism educator, I am also acutely mindful of the fact that the current digital generation is eons ahead of the outgoing analogue ruling class but pay a heavy price through derision and scorn for their psycho-social assets.

This is particularly so when those in charge are called upon to grasp the requirements of tools associated with intelligent automation, of which generative AI is but one component.

Routinely and incorrectly described as “AI,” intelligent automation is the banner under which much of current technical innovation resides, including “AI”, machine learning, and data analytics.

I am employing time and space to get to the point, because decision-makers often appear ignorant of the fact that discrete tools of significant value are not standalone features of the process of automation.

Past understanding of this has meant that there are no government ministries of hammers and screwdrivers. We have had, instead, ministries and agencies charged with developing specific infrastructure – houses, roads, and buildings – the end products or aspirations.

In the current context, the world has also gone beyond basic mechanisation, electrification, and early digital automation. Enter 70-year-old “artificial intelligence” as an enhanced tool of automation with generative capacity, but not as an end in itself.

See where I’m going with this technology thing? As a related aside, let me point to one of my several peeves. It’s Wednesday today, and by now I would have completed a silly little form presented to exiting air travellers.

It is a form minus a field I have had to use my pen to complete because somebody in authority, and lacking self-esteem, thought that this piece of paper needs the expiry date on my passport (which is already right there in my airline booking, by the way … and on the passport you just swiped on your machine!!!).

If I had the space here, you have been able to see (on an AI-generated diagram I have created) where that piece of paper resides along the evolutionary chain of automated processes. This is like driving a steam-powered car. Watching TV without a remote. Calculating a bill with an abacus.

If it is of any comfort, we are not the only ones finding comfort lodged in the sewer line of the obsolete. In fact, there are other countries that (legitimately) have the arguments of limited virtual and power infrastructure, prohibitive costs, socio-cultural obstacles, language constraints, and systemic economic circumstances that prohibit progress to new levels.

Then there are those, like us, that trail behind on account of glaring policy and regulatory gaps, trust deficits particularly by those in charge, and resistance to change by key operatives.

I happen to believe the latter condition applies both to the state and private sectors. We should all by now be brutally aware of the attractive digital facades that skilfully mask manual backends … complete with pens, pencils, and paper.

It is thus not encouraging in the context of all of this, to hear of what appear to be belated learnings, leading to official excitement, on the need for “technology” in policing, or that “national identification” is to be deployed in their current static manifestations as an instrument to assist in monitoring citizen activity. 

The thing is, that for official policy to be data-driven and scientific in the modern era, there needs to be a high number of readily available, digitally generated datasets focused on the issue being addressed. Or else all you have is vaps and arbitrariness … or the least reliable quality of all – political intuition compulsively subject to folly and prejudice.

So, yes, there is a connection between our general tardiness when it comes to engaging technological transitions, and decision-making based on reliable, scientific information.

If you are catching my drift, this is all linked to the form they hand you on the plane upon your return. It’s also relevant to the mysterious gap between 21 and 25-year-olds. Think about it. Please!

Rickey, Roy, and Hans

At the time of writing, one prime minister, one president, the Caricom Secretariat, and dozens of journalists, public officials, politicians, and development experts have paid tribute to Caribbean journalist Rickey Singh.

He will be laid to rest in Barbados a week from now, but his 65 years in journalism have cemented his place in the Caribbean public space.

Barbados 2011

His daughter Wendy has led the effort to organise and lodge his extensive archives at UWI Cave Hill - a task that reveals the magnitude of Rickey’s remarkable accomplishments. He was born on Monday February 1, 1937 in rural Canal 2 Polder, to a young couple who bore no surnames.

His father, Pharsadie, died when Rickey was just two months old. His mother, Dudhia (known as Jessie), passed when he was about eight or nine. Rickey’s birth certificate simply listed him as “Ramotar.”

Jessie is remembered as a youthful agitator for fair pay and transport for women farmers, since only men were transported to the fields. She died young but appeared to have left Rickey with the conviction that effective advocacy could bring about meaningful change.

He entered journalism at 17, and his early promise was such that the publishers of the Graphic newspaper, the Thompson Fleet, sent him to the University of Indiana to hone his skills. During political unrest in in Guyana in 1974, they relocated him to England, but he felt strongly that his family could not thrive in a society that viewed them as “less than what they are” and he returned to the Caribbean.

Fast forward to the late 1970s. My grand uncle, Rev. Roy Neehall - my grandmother’s youngest brother - would frequently mention “Rickey” during our talks about a possible writing career. Uncle Roy eventually made the connection, and Caribbean Contact, then edited by Rickey, became one of my first freelance platforms.

Uncle Roy also played a pivotal role in introducing me to the late, great Hans Hanoomansingh, who, like Rickey, passed away last Saturday. Three men - Rickey, Hans, and Roy - different in many ways, but united by an unwavering pursuit of what they believed to be just and right.

Uncle Roy, a so-called “left-wing” Presbyterian Moderator and later General Secretary of the Caribbean Conference of Churches who died suddenly in 1996, was deemed a troublemaker by some.

Hans, who was not a radical by any means but an effective change agent, often spoke of his admiration for Uncle Roy, and some claimed their voices were almost indistinguishable. Our conversations invariably circled back to visits to the Neehall home in Trinidad and Canada.

When we worked together at Radio 610, I asked both Hans and management why his brand of East Indian musical content wasn’t more present in “mainstream” programming. That dream materialised at 103.1 FM, which he helped pioneer with media visionary Dik Henderson years later. It was the country’s first 100% East Indian radio station. Hans later launched Heritage Radio with a broader programming range.

Rickey’s name would come up now and then in our conversations, but my own professional journey eventually brought me closer to the Guyanese journalist. I’ve often described him as a “journalistic father,” shaped by a rugged work ethic and prolific output.

When I was offered the post of PRO at the Caricom Secretariat, I was told that Rickey’s endorsement had helped seal the deal - such was his influence. He had already carved a reputation as leader of a formidable corps of Caricom Summit regulars: Canute James and Hugh Croskill from Jamaica, Peter Richards from Radio Antilles/CANA/CMC, Bert Wilkinson of Guyana, and Andy Johnson, Clevon Raphael, and Sharon Pitt from T&T.

We all marvelled at his command of the issues and the passion with which he engaged contemporary regional issues in every field of endeavour.

One of these days I will recount the heartbreak of 2021-2023, when Rickey, gravely ill, tried to resettle in T&T. I have the receipts. It was a sobering chapter that reinforced my belief that his deep love for the Caribbean was not always reciprocated. Experiences in his homeland, Guyana, together with Barbados, and T&T feature in a complicated tale supportive of this view.

But his voice endures - etched into the region’s memory as a relentless chronicler of Caribbean life and politics, shaped by hardship, and sustained by purpose.

If a common resting place for those who have served well does indeed exist (as all three believed), there is most likely now an interesting confab comprising Roy, Hans, Rickey and others reflecting on how the place we occupy can be made better.

Haiti - the regional limit

Even as it’s true that Caricom has not taken as much public credit for its current efforts for and concern over Haiti, that country’s systemic difficulties have always been beyond the reach of the regional grouping.

Yet, fully expect a painfully sincere declaration and recommitment to assist (even more) when the Caricom Summit closes in Montego Bay next week.

I don’t believe there is anything particularly hypocritical about all this, except that our limitations are not always fully acknowledged and the language of migrant rights in all our states too often closely resembles what is accompanying ethnic purges elsewhere - near and far.

The fact is this goes way beyond the frequent, poetic refrain of “Haiti I’m sorry.” When emotions reach the point of tangible intervention to change objective circumstance reality can sometimes hit you squarely and firmly on the nose, as it has in this case.

Between provisional Caricom membership in 1998 and the full embrace of 2002, I truly believe there was every intention by regional family of making a critical difference in the lives of Haitian people.

Back in the mid-90s then Jamaican prime minister PJ Patterson and others had led eloquent expression of a process to widen the integration movement and this helped open a welcoming institutional door to Haiti.

I happened to be in Port-au-Prince as part of a Caricom mission that followed US-led Operation Uphold Democracy in 1994 and the eventual return of forcibly exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

I recognised then, there was always cause to be “sorry”, but that the depths of multi-layered crisis require the might of guns and troops and global influence but only alongside the kind of rehabilitative effort that emerges from within. Fixed templates of interventionist rescue are woefully inadequate.

Today, there is little to suggest that a turnaround from the deadly momentum set in train with the assassination of Jovenel Moïse in 2021 is anywhere near the horizon. Even diplomatic temperance, evidenced as fraternal wrist-tapping and regret within Caricom, is being withheld by other international groupings including the OAS and the UN.

For example, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk was minded, via UN dispatch less than a week ago, to exclaim that “the human rights crisis in Haiti has plummeted to a new low” – as if it were conceivable that violent mayhem could plumb depths beyond the kind of fatal despair witnessed over decades.

And what is this current reality? This cause for the deepest concern? Since 2021, the reach of militant insurgency (expressed publicly as the work of “gangs”) has expanded beyond Port-au-Prince.

It is estimated that more than 1.3 million people have been internally displaced (not including those externally displaced and ritualistically turned back at sea and by air by neighbours to the north and south).

The UN Human Rights Office estimates that at least 2,680 people were killed between January 1 and May 30, including 54 children. True, this does not match the 17,000 plus babies and children slaughtered in Gaza or the numbers being tallied in the conflict in Sudan. But this is in our neighbourhood and among regional family.

Antigua and Barbuda’s US/OAS diplomatic representative, Ron Sanders (who is not widely known for pulling his punches) has been consistent in addressing the hemispheric imperatives of the Haitian “maelstrom” and recently hinted at geo-politically motivated indifference.

He pointed to the fact that “(t)he United Nations Security Council has repeatedly renewed the mandate of the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission to support Haiti’s stabilisation efforts.”

However, as Sanders argues, “China and Russia - two of the five veto powers in the Security Council - have opposed the idea, arguing that peacekeepers are meant to maintain peace, not combat urban crime or rescue dysfunctional states.”

Sanders’ observation said aloud what the recent meeting of the Caricom Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR) politely refused to publicly address in its May 9 conference communiqué.

Meanwhile, the Caricom-inspired Presidential Transition Council (CPT), even in the words of COFCOR, is now subject to “growing mistrust.” Such a condition is of the deadly variety and, in a sense, indicates an inability to effectively excavate internal political resilience and accompanying mechanisms to activate it.

Caricom’s Eminent Persons Group (EPG) on Haiti comprises seasoned hands and heads and their most recent initiatives require broad support, but optimism is running understandably thin.

Respectfully, though, the region’s support for Haiti does not amount to zero and needs to continue in some fashion, but it has clearly reached its limit.

 

Stubborn integration memories

Former Saint Lucia Prime Minister Allen Chastanet recently floated the idea of the withdrawal of OECS states from some Caricom arrangements in favour of bilateral deals with T&T, Jamaica, and Guyana.

Citing persistent inequities, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr Ralph Gonsalves, has meanwhile suggested that leaving the Caricom Single Market should be "on the table."

While neither leader expressed firm commitments to such views, these positions echo a growing global trend away from multilateralism toward transactional, bilateral relations. It’s a shift that trades shared risk and mutual benefit for supposed national gain, often employing short-term logic.

In the Caribbean, this trend overlaps with rising internal tensions over external pressures. There is no clear consensus on Venezuela. We’re divided in our responses to American global policy. And our positions on Gaza have been painfully uneven.

Still, none of this is especially new. Caribbean integration has always had its challenges. For instance, the years of revolutionary Grenada, 1979 to 1983, were among the toughest tests. Yet ours is not the only integration movement under pressure. Many, if not most, such projects across the world are faltering.

Since hearing these recent suggestions of retreat and surrender, I have been unable to take the 1991 Regional Constituent Assembly (RCA) of the Windward Islands out of my mind. That watershed effort, involving Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and St Vincent and the Grenadines, was an honest, open attempt to deepen sub-regional integration. It brought together government, opposition, and civil society in serious, structured dialogue.

Regrettably, we’ve rarely returned to that moment. The Caricom 2003 Rose Hall Declaration dissected "regional governance," but failed to achieve tangible follow-through over the long term and is ironically being referenced in promotion of next month’s Caricom summit in Jamaica.

The RCA, in some respects, matched the far more structured and celebrated West Indian Commission (WIC) consultations on the future of the integration, which were launched the following year. The spirit of the RCA arguably inspired the now-defunct Assembly of Caribbean Community Parliamentarians (ACCP), promisingly launched in 1994.

What made the RCA unique was its inclusiveness. It brought together ruling and opposition parties, alongside civil society. Even at that time, despite the complicated relationship between the OECS and wider Caricom, progress at the OECS level was often described as being ahead of the larger group.

Today, 34 years later, Dr Gonsalves - who in 1991 was leader of his country’s youngest and smallest party (Movement for National Unity) – has since run St Vincent and the Grenadines under a Unity Labour Party banner for over two decades. Dr Kenny Anthony, who served as an RCA advisor, became Prime Minister of Saint Lucia and remains a sitting MP. Even Dr Vaughan Lewis, then OECS Director-General, briefly became Prime Minister of Saint Lucia.

The RCA considered bold ideas, including a federal executive presidency and deeper institutional integration. Today, one of its authors wants detachment “put on the table.” Perhaps these leaders have privately referenced the RCA’s final report. If so, those reflections have not been shared publicly.

To some, invoking RCA memories may seem remote or irrelevant in light of the recent 77th OECS Authority summit held in St Vincent and persistent comments from elsewhere in the region. But I think it matters.

The current crisis of regional communication only adds to the problem. Caricom’s well-known “communication gap” (my words) has helped fuel public indifference and ignorance. Declining commitment to and from reliable legacy media, combined with amateurish and unidirectional use of social media by regional institutions, has made things worse.

Social media is often cited as the answer, but such communication isn’t just about YouTube videos or static posts and dispatches, it’s about meaningful dialogue, strategy, and expertise. And yes, we do have professionals in the system who know how to do it. They should be leading this work.

The fact is we are not going to social media our way out of this malaise. Reaching people where they are - in their own spaces, on their terms - will take much more than social media content dumps. Perhaps a revived ACCP or a Caribbean constituent assembly could help rekindle the serious, people-centred dialogue we need.

That’s the kind of stubborn memory we need right now. One that pushes us to remember what regionalism can look like – rough around the edges but effective and promising. Caricom leaders should bear this in mind when they meet in Jamaica, July 6 to 8.

Because at the moment, very little is happening to inspire the confidence we urgently need in something indispensable to everything between survival and prosperity.

Election over, back to work

Hopefully, today’s presentation of the Mid-year Budget Review and ensuing debates will take a sharp turn off the path of lingering election bluster and hubris and studiously negotiate the realm of harsh economic reality.

Monday’s Standing Finance Committee offered a preview. And last week’s convening of the House of Representatives conveyed mixed messages regarding this requirement to get down to real business in defiance of the afterglow of the hustings.

For instance, beyond the brittle pillar of a campaign promise there appeared little data-driven logic to support the move to remove the Revenue Authority from a changing institutional landscape designed to secure and enhance the integrity of national revenues.

It’s as if the perils of near fatal decline are somehow being willfully ignored. There are things, as well, that can be said about the treatment of troublesome foreign exchange inflows and outflows, including a committed willingness to disrupt the prevailing regime of access while influencing wider societal behaviours.

In that context, answering the question of who gets and who doesn’t get – mere naming and shaming - does not begin to address the real requirements of wider economic transformation.

Some, not all, of our economists have appropriately broken things down in bits and pieces to indicate that this goes beyond the dogged application of Central Bank disclosure principles. There has, however, been some public timidity in suggesting that the country needs to undertake dramatic behaviour change to stem net outward flows.

It is a discomfiting scenario to suggest that brand preference in motorcars and other imports, offline and online purchases of consumer durables surplus to real need, public entertainment, and overseas travel will have to inconveniently enter the discussion at some point. The old story of taste versus need.

For, what is actually before us? Our economic mainstay, the energy sector is, arguably, in irreversible decline. Our manufacturing sector is promising and has displayed a level of resilience but badly needs to up its game. Tourism is also an effectively stagnant proposition at the moment.

Meanwhile, a World Bank dispatch on Monday advised dimly that “flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) into developing economies - a key propellant of economic growth and higher living standards - have dwindled to the lowest level since 2005.”

Importantly, the WB (about which we shall be hearing more in the coming weeks and months) attributed the decline to rising global trade and investment barriers. The people engaged in serious business here can tell you how significantly changes in the geo-political landscape of the global north have affected prospects for growth and development for us and for the rest of the world.

In 2023 (note the year), the latest year for which data are available, “developing economies received just US$435 billion in FDI - the lowest level since 2005,” the WB report says.

This was two years ago … even before the current steep cuts in multilateral funding by the US and, increasingly, countries such as the UK and those of the EU.

Significantly, FDI flows into advanced economies have also “slowed to a trickle.” Now, consider this alongside the fact that the decline in FDI is meeting exponential growth in public debt.

Accordingly, in the view of Indermit Gill, the World Bank Group’s Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, “private investment will now have to power economic growth, and FDI happens to be one of the most productive forms of private investment. Yet, in recent years governments have been busy erecting barriers to investment and trade when they should be deliberately taking them down.”

Such countries, he said “will have to ditch that bad habit.”

In fact, and in our case, there has been ceaseless lobbying by business groups and some individuals for the policymakers to pay greater attention to the state of our current trade and investment environment and to consider accompanying optimisation of a wider horizon for the generation of wealth.

This space only recently advocated for elevation of the orange economy – the creative sector – as a key component of the required transformation. The mid-year review will be incomplete without mention of alternative areas of potential economic growth.

Additionally, though the rest of the region has been hit hard by the changing global circumstances – Guyana being the one exception because of windfall energy revenues – Caricom markets are insufficiently exploited, despite favourable CSME provisions.

Yes, today’s presentation by the finance minister can be expected to address the routine issue of supplementary appropriations and make observations about overall economic performance. But it’s the new administration’s turn to shine on centre stage. This is more than clever campaign “minifestoes.” This is where the rubber really hits the road.

T&T’s Labour Contractions

Among the numerous important public affairs sidebars accompanying T&T’s current political transition is organised labour’s struggle for continued relevance beyond declining instances in which collective bargaining exists.

For example, much has been said, almost derisively, about involvement of a few leading activists in the election campaign. This came with little acknowledgment of the fact that among the principal features of early political party development were agitations led by organised labour. In a sense, labour birthed our early politics.

The labour struggle has always been “political” in nature and has habitually been expressed in terms of national power dynamics.

The main actors in the early years also played an undeniable agenda-setting role on the key economic sectors of oil and sugar and introduced early notions of social justice.

Over the years, though, the framing of “labour” discussions has changed to represent a general move away from recognition of the sector as focal points of power and influence.

There is now much closer alignment with transformative, ameliorative measures to address a steady decline in trade union representation, institutional weakness, incoherence, and declining visibility and influence in key national areas.

Important discussions on the changing world of work, digitalisation, and the terms of reference for a changed social compact are all absent from their routine discourses, except in fits and starts largely arranged by others.

All this as one optimistic estimate is that no more than 25% of all employed people are members of a trade union in T&T. “Labour” now finds shared, comfortable ministerial space alongside initiatives in “Small and Micro Enterprise Development” as if to signal proximate, available rescue opportunities.

In the process, rigid insistence on a labour environment characterised by the principle of collective bargaining, more assured social protections, and the existence of (or aspirations for) a durable social compact have become disappearing attributes.

Multipartism, as a communion of equals, is also fading from view as a goal embraced by all.

While he was in T&T in April, en route to the 13th ILO Meeting of Caribbean Labour Ministers in Guyana, I attempted to secure an interview with ILO Director-General Gilbert F. Houngbo to get a global fix on the state of trade unionism and the extent to which national and regional realities were a reflection of what is happening elsewhere.

When I was unable to achieve this, the ILO Caribbean Office located in Port of Spain kindly supplied responses to my several concerns.

I had argued, in my line of questioning, that labour unions in the Caribbean are shrinking in size and influence, diminishing the effectiveness of collective bargaining, and pushing labour leaders toward (direct) political activism.

Is this shift, I wondered, a cause for concern given the state’s role as dominant employers in many Caribbean nations?

The ILO response was that the decline in union membership and influence is, in fact, “a valid concern not only in the Caribbean, but globally.”

“While political activism can be a strategic response,” the ILO response went, “it should not replace unions’ core function of representing workers through social dialogue including collective bargaining.”

There is some recent ILO research on the future for trade unions which the institution says points to an inalienable role for such organisations “in strengthening workplace representation.”

“Trade unions must adapt,” the ILO responded. “Political engagement can be part of this renewal, but only if rooted in workers’ real needs and backed by efforts to rebuild union power in the workplace.”

When we look around today in T&T and elsewhere in the Caribbean, there is reasonable cause to be concerned that amid prevailing decline, there is a jettisoning of the means through which the labour sector can recover relevance and influence.

It does not appear that a serious survival project is being engaged. For instance, I have not seen any attempt to resume pursuit of organisational tripartism, in whatever manifestation, including T&T’s long abandoned National Tripartite Advisory Council (NTAC).

Additionally, the continued work of a unique, strong, independent, and indigenous Industrial Court as authoritative mediator of industrial conflict cannot be attended to in a cavalier, reckless manner as is currently the case.

The Employers Consultative Association (ECA) has been largely silent on much of this, and the state, as a single most important employer itself, has perhaps enjoyed some benefits including a meek pledge of political allegiance from workers’ representatives in the state sector.

The overall outlook for organised labour is not at all encouraging. Are its leaders experiencing the pains of contraction? Is the unfolding crisis on the agenda for next week’s Labour Day observances?

Time for the CCJ

Sadly, deadline issues conspired to exclude personal reflections on yesterday’s ceremonial sitting of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) at Queen’s Hall, Trinidad to honour the service of outgoing President of the Court, Justice Adrian Saunders.

Justice Saunders, who demits office on July 3, has been a member of the Court since its very first sitting 20 years ago, and has been at the helm for the past seven years.

He is a native of St Vincent and the Grenadines and is often referred to as a “home-grown” Caribbean jurist, having graduated from The UWI Cave Hill campus in Barbados in 1975 and the Hugh Wooding Law School in T&T in 1977.

Getting to know him at the professional level about 10 years ago brought confirmation to recurring hearsay regarding his determined commitment to Caribbean development and sovereignty, and his vast knowledge on matters of law and justice.

As a mere layman with an interest in such matters, there have been few occasions during which Justice Saunders, even in casual inter-personal “obiter dicta”, has not provided me and others around him with instruction on questions of balance, fairness, and accuracy.

These qualities, of course, were also habits of the predecessors I came to know, including one past President who summoned me to his chamber over what he assessed to be an inaccuracy surrounding the status of the CCJ Trust Fund – a unique financial mechanism designed as insulation against arbitrary behaviour by contributing nations.

Despite this, there are members of the legal profession and politicians here and in our region, who persist with silliness over the perceived vulnerability of the Court to parochial financial whim.

It should also not be that millionaire advocates with big national and regional reputations are correspondingly confused about or ignorant of the work and status of the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission (RJLSC) which presides over the independent appointment of CCJ judges.

Some of these people sometimes scour social media pages and posts and even contribute to relevant online conversations but never attempt to correct repeated public ignorance and folly surrounding the Court.

It is also patently untrue to assert that “Trinidad and Tobago NOT in de CCJ” despite its headquarters being situated in POS. I have heard this too many times. This is a nonsense built into political narratives particularly expressive of a lack of support for the CCJ in its discrete role as a court of final appeal.

For the benefit of proponents of such confusion, the CCJ is actually a hybrid institution serving both as a “municipal court of last resort” – its appellate jurisdiction - and as an “international court vested with original, compulsory and exclusive jurisdiction in respect of the interpretation and application of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.”

In fact, this country has been the subject of the largest share of cases before the CCJ with respect to its “original jurisdiction” role. The last T&T related judgment came on October 22, 2024 (a “CLICO” case), and the first one involved Trinidad Cement Ltd in July 2008.

It is also not widely acknowledged (or perhaps known) that the CCJ is an itinerant court – meaning it can convene hearings in any of the signatory countries.

The question of the appellate jurisdiction of the Court has also been subject to a variety of nonsenses. The funding issue and judge selection have been addressed higher up. Don’t just take it from a journalistic “bush lawyer”, look it up.

But what of the ethnic makeup of the CCJ Bench? This is among the more egregiously insulting observations about the Court made by those who have most likely not conducted a corresponding head count in other apex jurisdictions, including the one of their own lucrative choice.

This year, the Court marks 20 years since its inauguration on April 16, 2005. Justice Saunders is to be succeeded next month by Justice Winston Anderson – another committed regionalist with dual Barbadian/Jamaican nationalities.

He was founding Chairman of the CCJ Academy for Law in 2010 and, through his work as a panellist contributing more than once to the work of the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) in our journalism training, is clearly committed to expanding knowledge not only of how systems of law and justice work, but about the place of the CCJ in Caribbean life.

Even in the absence of the ideology and philosophy often cited in support of an indigenous apex jurisdiction, and most of the countervailing silliness and ignorance, a rational debate can be engaged on the merits and demerits of a CCJ. I am yet to witness one.