Election Manna and Manima

A few years ago, I inspired a shaking head and a muted steups from one of our more experienced regional elections officials when I asked him about action to regulate election campaign and political party financing in the Caribbean.

At the time I did not have access to former PM Dr Keith Rowley’s tutorial on the word “manima” to depict a copious supply of intrigue and bacchanal. While politics as a source of abundant “manna” (financial nutrition) for combatants had already been deployed as a relevant metaphor.

How much more “manima”, therefore, can you get than when politicians accuse each other of being beneficiaries of mysterious, unaccounted “manna”?

Former T&T Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley

The context of my conversation with the official had been the dramatic intervention of British colonial authorities in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) in 2009 in the midst of an economic boom.

The UK re-imposed direct rule, suspended the government, and instituted a new constitution under which elections were held three years later.

Such action was deemed to be necessary when it became clear that corruption had reached intolerable levels and rendered activities such as elections virtually meaningless through the unrestrained purchase of political power and influence.

I was told that this had long become routine within most of our countries. But while there had been a lot of talk, nobody appeared serious about changing things. There is, after all, in the independent states, no omnipotent external entity capable of saying: “Where you feel you going?” as was the case in TCI.

The TCI model was later referenced in T&T in 2014 by then Chairman of the TCI Integrity Commission, Sir David Simmons of Barbados, as a guest of the T&T Transparency Institute (TTTI). He urged more nuanced application of the principles.

Not long after, between 2014 and 2015, a Joint Select Committee (JSC) of the T&T parliament convened to consider “a legislative framework to govern the financing of election campaigns.” Several “overarching considerations to guide the formulation of a legislative framework for Election Campaign Financing in Trinidad and Tobago” were identified.

They included: limits on private contributions, regulation of loans to parties and candidates, public funding of campaigns, and regulations on spending and third-party expenditure. There was also a requirement of disclosure, and provisions for oversight and monitoring, sanctions and appeals.

By 2015, T&T was back at the polls – everyone having apparently forgotten about the work of the JSC, and ignoring longstanding guidance, including Simmons’ appeal for urgency to avoid the trap of opaque financing arrangements, especially but not solely at election time.

For that election, which saw a change in government, the Commonwealth Observer Group (COG) had prominently noted that “the EBC (Elections and Boundaries Commission) is reflecting on proposals to regulate registration and campaign financing of political parties.”

Among the numerous efforts to guide the required change were calls by civil society organisations such as the Debates Commission, established by the T&T Chamber of Industry and Commerce, which lobbied for creation of “a legal framework” to govern campaign financing.

By 2020, also an election year, there emerged two lapsed attempts to pass a Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill. The first effort was launched in May that year and the other in October. Elections in August and ensuing developments, including the COVID-19 pandemic, put an end to all that.

Enter the general election of April 28, 2025, minus the guardrails proposed by international electoral bodies, the JSC of 2014/2015 and, to a significant degree, the Bills of 2020.

The COG of 2025 had to remind everyone that “while the electoral framework largely provides an adequate basis for the conduct of democratic elections, the COG has proposed a number of recommendations for electoral reforms for consideration by various stakeholders. These include a regulatory framework for political party campaign finance.”

The 2025 COG in Trinidad and Tobago

So, where do we find ourselves (again) today? There is manima over purported political manna … on both sides. This time, though, without a general election in sight, there is some breathing space to revisit the subject for which, at least prima facie, there appears to be bipartisan support.

The deliberations of 2014-2015, the Bills of 2020, the observations of neutral parties, and global and regional experience are there to provide sufficient direction for tabling of the details.

The work has been done. The warnings have been issued. The templates already exist. What is missing is not guidance but will.

 

Caricom’s information fortress

One week ago, to the day, there was a vigorous, spontaneous round-robin involving a cadre of Caribbean journalists who monitor the Caricom process as closely as we can.

This followed a social media post and subsequent press release indicating that “the required majority” of leaders had agreed to the re-appointment of Dr Carla Barnett as Secretary-General of Caricom.

Both journalists who covered the February 24-26 Heads of Government inter-Sessional Meeting in St Kitts and Nevis, and those who had followed from some distance away, were somewhere between shocked and surprised that such a development could have occurred under usually efficient noses.

Caricom leaders as they met in St Kitts and Nevis in February

There had been the regular snooping, leaking, press conferencing, and typically sluggish release of the conference communiqué which, this time, was noteworthy for its amazingly platitudinous summary of a dramatically explosive Opening Ceremony.

Yes, there was word making the rounds beforehand that an SG vacancy was approaching. There had been a strong view in some quarters that the region should look elsewhere for leadership out of Turkeyen, Georgetown. But that’s not for this summit, some thought.

The extent to which such information remained surreptitiously (and unbelievably) guarded - purportedly against even official delegations - has been explored by others. The press corps was clueless. There have since been some bold assertions, especially from T&T.

I had meanwhile been advising colleagues beforehand that the Marco Rubio visit was important, but there were numerous other things that demanded equally prominent interrogation. “Please don’t make this all about Rubio,” was my admonition on repeat.

But nooo. Behind the bureaucratic fortifications of the process, while everyone was looking the other way, has now emerged at least one supposedly unlisted agenda item. And it has provided, in the dismal imagination of at least one politician, a basis for hyperbolically concluding that “irreparable damage” has been sustained by the regional movement because of the development.

As an aside, prior to such a declaration of terminal injury, it would have been worthwhile to have scanned the global landscape and paid attention to other integration efforts to witness growing cognitive dissonance regarding issues of institutional sustainability.

Within the EU individually nuanced postures related to migration, fiscal policy, Ukraine, Gaza, Trump and other issues have generated disquiet and signaled harmful possibilities. Ten years ago came Brexit.

The African Union and ECOWAS have had to confront violent conflicts - often across mutual borders - stern economic challenges, hunger, drought, and contestations over natural resources including water.

The Asian nations, via ASEAN, have cohered amid deadly instability in countries such as Myanmar, South China Sea disputes, and new and longstanding conflicts within and across national frontiers.

Then, everywhere, we have the groping hands of geo-political alignments and re-alignments in the face of imperialistic overreach. Yet, integrated thought and action generally persist as decided points of first territorial contact. None of these integration movements has disappeared.

So now, what about the contested re-appointment of the Caricom Secretary-General bears the flavour of irreversibility/terminality?

Get over that and we can focus on the underlying conditions that have led to the current imbroglio/s. For, they have brought abrupt attention to simmering issues that have for too long remained the exclusive preserve of a bureaucratic fortress surrounded by political moats.

Such matters include, but are not restricted to, financing arrangements to facilitate the work of the Caricom Secretariat and related institutions. T&T’s agitated, nit-picking alarm on the matter suggests something remains amiss. And it is.

But these things are only available for propagandistic exploitation and intemperate outbursts because they reside in the realm of official secrecy - in the “classified” binders of officials and countries.

So, what had remained “behind the scenes” is now emerging in bits and manipulated pieces. The fact is, the cost of integration has increased, and the share of the bill, given changing economic circumstances in Member States, needs to be reformulated. T&T, as a major contributor, is understandably peeved – whatever its net financial gains.

Of course, we may wish to investigate the details of the rising costs. The Caricom Secretariat bill, I am told, has grown by close to 25% over recent years. Why? How? What? Who???

No doubt, everywhere, factors such as domestic and external conflict, declines in global development financing, and structural limitations – especially among small, vulnerable economies - have all contributed to difficulties in containing existing budgets.

But we deserve the details. We are the ones paying financially … and emotionally, each time we hear “the end is nigh!” or whenever the information fortress is somehow breached.

 

 

Playing with fire

Listen to it here: 

Today, there are sufficient experiential rebuttals of the longstanding Latin maxim “si vis pacem, para bellum” – “if you want peace, prepare for war” – to conclude that the net impact of a combative predisposition, particularly if you are weak and small, can be as inimical as the very violence being avoided.

This would probably not have been vociferously explored when the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) assembled in Havana, Cuba in January 2014 and issued the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.

Maybe when the grouping met in Bogotá on Saturday, the war-for-peace dictum might have featured. I am not sure what official guidance, if any, was provided to our low-level representatives there.

But such a thought – war’s complementary relationship with peace - would have certainly been in the background as this grouping of 33 sovereign states reiterated support for a Latin American/Caribbean Zone of Peace.

Indeed, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar was proud signatory to the initial declaration 12 years ago, which the CELAC summit asserted had been in harmony with the UN Charter - Articles 1, 2(4), and 2(7) pointing to peaceful relations; prohibition on force; and non-intervention.

T&T PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar signing the 2014
Zone of Peace Proclamation in Havana, Cuba

Maybe experts would also wish to cite the Treaty of Tlatelolco of 1967 to which Caribbean countries are party and which focuses on the movement and use of nuclear weapons in our waters. The same principles apply. But let’s focus for now on the post-Havana period.

Since then (perhaps even before), both the precise expression – “zone of peace” and words to that effect - have been adopted as standard language in declarations confirming the commitment of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) to orderly, typically consensus-based foreign policy.

This is alongside its firm and longstanding posture regarding border conflicts involving Guatemala and Belize, and Venezuela and Guyana toward which diplomacy has been the preferred approach.

By the way, over the years, these subjects of current international juridical consideration have never been neglected or forgotten. They have, in fact, been fixed into the templates for reporting on meetings of Caricom leaders.

There has been an assumption of collective ignorance in recent assertions that the region has been guilty of neglect and/or abandonment when it comes to such matters – Guyana/Venezuela in particular.

But back to the Zone of Peace – itself subject to bold misinterpretation and deliberate rhetorical manipulation.

Such an aspiration was never meant to be applied as a blanket metaphor applicable to domestic criminality and disquiet. International relations expert, Dr Nand Bardouille’s Handbook on Caribbean Community Foreign Relations and Statecraft is worthy of attention in this context.

“Fundamentally,” he says, “the (Caricom) bloc has a considerable stake in the region as a ‘Zone of Peace’. This is a long-standing refrain of the region’s leadership, who look to the past, citing the useful lessons it holds regarding hegemons who set in motion events with lasting ramifications for the region and its people.”

In the current season of insanity, we have nevertheless been treated to repudiation of a sound geo-political posture.

Now, witness what happens with the dictum of war to achieve peace when applied in the real world – and who becomes passive collateral damage. We recall the Cold War and, today, hostilities involving Iran, Israel, and the US are not as far away as we appear to believe.

There are grim signs on the wall – notwithstanding the promise of short-term financial gains owing to increases in energy prices.

Last weekend, on these pages, former Finance Minister Mariano Browne however argued that the prospects for a momentary boost have to be tempered against huge increases in tanker and insurance rates. This, he said, has the potential to “offset price increases for cargo leaving T&T.”

Former Caricom Asst. Secretary-General for Economic Integration, Innovation and Development, economist Joseph Cox, in the latest instalment of his Caribbean Business Review also notes: “The issue is no longer the price of oil. It's the price of moving the world.”

Economist Joseph Cox

His treatise on this is worthy of close attention. “The Caribbean,” he argues, “faces a double constraint. First, higher global prices. Second, reduced priority in the allocation of both cargo and shipping capacity.

“The COVID-19 pandemic made this clear. In a tight global market, the Caribbean is not a priority destination. It is the residual destination.”

There is nothing to suggest, either now or in the past, that geo-political sycophancy is capable of delivering needed insulation.

This country’s support for “si vis pacem, para bellum” is fast teaching us: “qui igne ludit, comburetur” - play with fire and you will be burned.

 

 

Climate mischief and our media

It is alarming that in 2026, questions are still being raised in the Caribbean about whether we need to pay critical attention to the scientifically confirmed climate crisis.

There is an important requirement not to lose sight of the urgency with which the matter is to be addressed, especially since some narratives are being skewed by compliant political agendas, brittle science, and the conscientious work of propagandists.

The role of disinformation is a central theme of today’s dispatch because the climate crisis remains among the more significant challenges of our time, especially when it comes to the framing of informed public policy responses.

The glee with which some observers highlight recent failures in regional media is telling. It reveals awareness of an opportunistic vacuum - a space where professional journalism, which offers the sternest challenge to mis and disinformation, is being undermined.

What ought to be reasoned analysis of a serious, already-evident challenge to countries such as ours, now resides alongside an easily identifiable buffet of anti-science and disinformation coincidental with belief systems of malignant convenience.

If we needed to, we could perfectly describe the menu. Name the issue, and you will find the same concoction of common ingredients, a recipe slavishly mimicked by our local sous chefs of disinformation

There is unfortunate evidence, though, that such a cocktail has found accommodating official palates. Since when have national commitments to a “just transition” toward a low-carbon environment been of needlessly onerous, questionable value? Yet, we have been detecting both passive and active political resistance in our region.

Countries like ours have, for years, found common cause in pressing for greater recognition of our unique circumstances. Right here, in the Caribbean in 1994 the epochal Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in Barbados determined a framework for advancing our peculiar requirements.

And, yes, the process has not always benefited from a perfect ride. We have been jostled and bullied and fallen prey to empty promises and commitments. But this does not prescribe abstinence or absence.

Back to media. There have been quite independent efforts over the years to ensure the news agenda finds space for changing climate conditions – whether or not people believe in its anthropogenic triggers on which the vast majority of real scientists agree.

For, beyond increasingly marginal contentions, changed objective circumstances require informed journalistic attention when it comes to associated economic, socio-cultural, and political impacts.

Count on the fisherfolk to tell you of changing ocean trends, the farmers reliant on irrigation, the young people short on economic opportunity as they move from one population centre to the next.

This is not about panicking and shouting “Climate change!” at every unusual shower or futile fishing trip. Such hysteria is as unhelpful as shouting “We go dead!” over the microphone in a crowded Carnival fete.

This is a matter for rational observation and better capturing of and reporting on credible science and accompanying policy responses, some of which we are entitled to critically interrogate.

For instance, I perfectly understand the energy producers, such as Guyana and soon Suriname, with newfound abundant wealth being interested in advancing prior sluggish development through fortuitously abundant financial resources and saying: “Let’s slow down. Wait a moment here.”

The imperative of a “just transition” is certainly not only a matter for people, communities, and sectors, but is also a concern inherent in relations between states – small and large, weak and powerful.

We may also say that our Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) in all this – once they are known and understood by all -  should not overly overwhelm the socio-economic demands of new national circumstances and an increasingly more challenging global interface.

Today, Wednesday, Caribbean journalists assemble in a hybrid setting through Climate Analytics and the Media Institute of the Caribbean to explore some of these issues.

Addressing ignorance, disinformation, and mischief will hopefully form part of the discussions.

The challenge goes beyond disappearing scientific doubt and dissent and has a direct bearing on broader agendas related to power, control, and toxic recipes. Enlightened self-interest by media also constitutes part of the simmering brew.

 

 

Unclaimed creative wealth

Every year, since I can recall, there have been these Carnival post-mortems designed to consider, among other things, the socio-economic value of this annual event. Some of it has been well-informed examinations guided by measurable outcomes, others simply to exhibit limitless capacity to engage in self-serving chatter and fantasy.

By the time you read this – amid all the dangerous political folly everywhere including here – and as one example of the former, and hopefully not the latter, the Caribbean InTransit Consortium would have reached day-three of its fifth edition of an international collaboration to explore the vast possibilities of our festivals emergent from our historical antecedents.

The organisers – and there are some serious, informed participants - are of the firm view that, through its “Festival Dashboard,” there is scope for lucrative, structured collaboration involving “the Caribbean and its diaspora, Africa, and beyond.”

Then, tomorrow, the “Orange Committee” of the T&T Chamber of Industry and Commerce will attempt to venture beyond the “cultural significance” of our annual festival and focus more on the generation and capture of direct and indirect economic activity, especially in the small business sector.

This is part of its “Catalyst SME Conference” which opened today and is an effort by the Chamber to promote the possibilities inherent in this country’s vast creative potential in evidence both outside and inside the Carnival production mill.

It is interesting to note that the term “orange economy” (aka the “creative economy”) was the brainchild of two former politicians from our wider region in a 2013 publication of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The Orange Economy: An Infinite Opportunity by Iván Duque Márquez (former President of Colombia) and Felipe Buitrago Restrepo (former Colombian Culture Minister) is actually quite an easy read and is downloadable online.

In it - and as is suggested by the T&T Chamber and implicit in the messaging of the InTransit Consortium - creative trade is proposed as being, provably, far less volatile than other sectors (energy is specifically cited) at times of crisis.

A Chamber paper on the sector indicates that while global creative and cultural industries “generate approximately US$2.3 trillion annually and account for about 3.1% of global GDP”, T&T’s creative industries “currently contribute less than 0.1% to national GDP.”

The Consortium mandate meanwhile proposes a collective harvesting of such potential through alliances based on common cultural experiences – notably the nature and character of festivals such as our Carnival.

Yes, some of language used by advocates does not at all impress me. Márquez and Restrepo have also not aged well – given the ongoing hemispheric and international fragmentation wrought by fast unfolding geo-politics and neo-colonialism. “Inter-connectedness,” as envisaged by the inaugural text, is now in some important quarters, deemed to be an obstacle and challenge to new alignments.

But all things being equal, this is not particularly fanciful and esoteric as it may appear … or sometimes sound. Even in small spaces such as ours, there is growing (though marginal) attention being paid to unrealised wealth and value in an industry not otherwise recognised for its vast potential outside of episodic, seasonal spurts.

Tomorrow’s Chamber panel will examine “Carnival 365 - Making It a Reality.” One can only hope that, even as Carnival serves as the principal springboard because of its many distinct elements, attention will also be given to the ways we create things and produce other activities that do not always find an easy place within the festival.

Desperadoes Steel Orchestra of Trinidad and Tobago

There is also the interface between all of this and unfolding digital realities which impose new dimensions to questions of ownership and control over creative outputs and their resultant financial and other gains.

I have also noticed the interest of the Ministry of Culture in entertaining the views of a wider span of Carnival stakeholders through its current Business of Carnival survey. Hopefully, this is with a view to determining clear metrics for success and direction on further monetising the creative industry and move away from the guesstimates.

These are some interventions – and I am aware of efforts in the steelpan sector – that are not entirely new. But we are in different, far more difficult times with little space for dilly-dallying around the possibilities offered by people and spaces otherwise dismissed as not possessing the assets for required rescue.

Caricom’s elusive bipartisan dialogue

Last week, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar chose a rather curious way to raise the issue of broader stakeholder participation in Caricom processes. Since the St Kitts Inter-Sessional, the focus has consequently remained on what she considered to be an example of regional, political marginalisation – the Brent Thomas affair.

However, judicial proceedings involving individuals and agencies of two member states cannot routinely be considered to be the active concern of the Caricom Secretariat beyond keeping tabs from an institutionally detached distance.

This could probably have been among the templates for a Secretariat response. Unresponsiveness should not have been considered an option.

Perhaps the leaders’ retreat in Nevis addressed this matter. I do not know. Closed doors are the preferred path. But this apparently purposeful slur on the institution and its professionals should have been addressed.

I had hoped that this awkward opportunity would have also been used to segue into the critical question of bipartisan and multi-stakeholder involvement in the work of the regional movement.

This would have been one way of stimulating action on something that had actually been addressed years ago.

Perhaps people forgot that despite the collapse of the federation experiment in 1962 and the disappearance of a federal parliament, there continued to be concern about the “democratic legitimacy” of regional decisions.

As a journalist covering such matters since the 1980s and being a part of the Caricom Secretariat team in the mid-90s, I became aware of efforts by the late Barbados Prime Minister Erskine Sandiford and others to promote wider political engagement in regional decision-making.

It might be that people have forgotten that an Assembly of Caribbean Community Parliamentarians (ACCP) emerged in 1996 from such efforts, as a way of ensuring bipartisan/multistakeholder engagement.

The ACCP was developed as a “consultative and deliberative body” and sat in 1996 (Barbados), 1999 (Grenada), and in 2000 (Belize). In fact, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) proposal was debated at the ACCP in Grenada as were unfolding issues associated with the Caricom Single Market.

I have contended in the past that such a mechanism could have benefited much from the deliberations of the Regional Constituent Assembly (RCA) of the Windward Islands in 1991/92.

But politicians and other decision-makers in T&T at that time had their minds on numerous other things judging from the muted responses to my reportage from Saint Lucia. The wounds of July 27, 1990 remained fresh.

The work of the RCA was instructive since it predated the entry into government of several opposition and other participants such as Dr Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Edison James of Dominica, and Dr Vaughan Lewis - who was not a political delegate but went on to serve as Prime Minister of Saint Lucia.

The ACCP records are also instructive as the sittings spanned the period during which the UNC was in power in T&T. Back then, Caricom blessings were mellifluously extended by late Prime Minister Basdeo Panday.

I know for certain our Caricom ambassador Ralph Maraj, who was in St Kitts with the PM, is intimately aware of the role and functions of the ACCP. But his knowledge of this was clearly not tapped for last week’s remarkable admonition.

It is however true that the ACCP project was left to languish in the absence of political enthusiasm, an eagerness to expand its authority, and the funds to ensure its survival. Suffice it to say enthusiasm for the broadening of the discourse also dissipated when political statuses transitioned from opposition to government.

There has also not been any pronounced effort to encourage expanded discussion and debate on some of the issues that currently persist as contentious.

Many civil society organisations – and I can speak with authority about the Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM) – have been largely marginalised. And even the participation of parliamentary opposition members at summits has not been symbolically contrived.

In the February 12, 2005 report of a special committee on the ACCP and other issues, chairman Dr Gonsalves, then prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, argued that “proposed changes in the functioning of the Assembly will ensure greater popular participation in its deliberations and thus further strengthen the democratic process at the regional level.”

Sounds like an initiative in which his own interest should be renewed in his current role as Opposition Leader. Our own prime minister now claims to share such a view – having crossed the aisle more than once.

The opportunity for broader, bipartisan engagement is not hypothetical. It is historical, documented, and waiting for renewed political commitment.

 

That fete vs work slogan

Almost to the day, 44 years ago, late prime minister George Chambers proclaimed as a post-Carnival instruction to the nation: “Fete over, back to work!”

Since captured as recurring slogan, we have heard it from public officials numerous times over the years - the latest occasion being Ash Wednesday from minister of public utilities, Barry Padarath.

We would recall that back in 1982 dramatically changing economic fortunes at the eclipsing of oil windfalls helped produce biting calypso commentaries from people such as Sugar Aloes, Chalkdust, and others.

It may well have been that, smitten by this, the prime minister was insistent on establishing a clearer dichotomy – fete vs work.

As it is in 2026, public policy in 1982 had been heavily focused on the theme of economic sustainability. So, Chambers was in fact urging a retreat from the revelry (and biting picong) of Carnival that year and a prompt focus on steadying a faltering economic vessel.

Suffice it to say, this op-ed space pounced on the same Ash Wednesday opportunity 10 years ago when I surmised that the idiom ought never to be ignored - especially since it was “sadly destined for assured relapse at the onset of Easter.”

It is, I now confess, an all too easy temptation to which one may fall unwitting prey - that the “fete” being summarily convicted has, as a counter-active feature, a return to “work” and the creation of worth.

We have witnessed attempts over the years by people such as Alfred Aguiton, Keith Nurse, and more recently Gregory McGuire (and numerous others) to quantify net economic gains from the Carnival season in an effort to signal value in excess of annual catharsis, predictable bacchanal, and plain, old-fashioned fun.

In effect, what some have been arguing is that to negatively juxtapose “fete” and “work” is to ignore substantial socio-economic “value.”

I now believe there is a significant basis for clinically revisiting the dynamic. I pay closer attention to Panorama than to any other feature of the Carnival season. (Not that pan is only about Panorama).

I have seen nothing to convince me that there is anything we do better than pan. Any close observer would recognise substantial socio-economic value - not the least being untapped intellectual property returns.

We will tend not to dismiss much of this if we find the time to understand what scholars such as Savitri Rampersad and Justin Koo are proposing as unrecognised economic potential associated with the instrument itself and the music played on it. Look out for more on this.

In effect, there is no “getting back to work” when it comes to pan. It never really stops and starts that way.

We may also, as with the other associated disciplines, disaggregate the main features of Carnival by taking a closer look at the singular component of “labour” and our changing world of work.

This is not as esoteric an association as it may appear. Yes, there is net economic value in Carnival, but there are also implications for productive activity and, consequently, how we evaluate its contribution to work and employment.

It should be that our labour unions and academics pay more detailed attention to this. But is does not appear they are doing so.

For example, Carnival as an exhibition of the contribution of a recognisably growing informal work sector has serious implications for organised labour. It also needs to more consistently be recorded as a major factor when considering national, economic well-being.

Our Central Statistical Office should be more adequately resourced to capture and interpret the hard seasonal micro-statistics. For example, our labour participation rate for the third quarter of 2025 came in at 54.6% (the ILO predicts the global statistic will “decline” to 60.5% in 2027). More needs to be done to give these estimates greater meaning. What is everybody else (45.4%) doing in the meantime?

I know there is much, much more to this. Don’t pounce on me with more informed advice. Just get to work on helping us understand what really happens at this time of year.

Though I fell for the trap of the slogan in 2016, I also did observe then that “in countries such as ours that rely heavily on intuition, guesswork, and tribal favouritism in the framing of public policy and action there is always the tendency to eschew science in favour of popular wisdom.”

Looked at more closely, the fete could actually be providing more work and “value” than we think.