Ratchifee and unfinished business

You ever looked at a freshly sculptured WASA pothole or mud-mound and wondered what in the inner workings of the human mind/soul/psyche/consciousness could ever conceive of such an act as being even remotely acceptable?

Now, I am not only speaking about the workers and supervisors at the site immediately responsible for the artwork, or the bosses back at headquarters who think it’s all okay, for a week or month or year. But there is a case to be made about our national penchant for vi-ki-vy (let the linguists settle this one … it’s from the French “vaille que vaille”) and ratchifee (the etymology of which appears to be undetermined).

Likewise, what can possibly lead anyone to believe that the ad hoc, vy-ki-vy arrangements for “regularising” the stay of Venezuela immigrants (though they are not the only victims of immigration policy at variance with international law and convention) are justifiable as a way of assuring their integration into T&T society or prospective safe return?

How does anyone - including the “close de borders” crowd of 2019 (who should never be allowed to fade comfortably into the background, however much their messaging changes) – argue in favour of denying the children of immigrants the right (and it is a right under at least one Convention to which we are boastful signatories) to an education?

There is also my continued amazement at the open rejection of digital solutions by politicians, senior public servants and many business leaders to some of the issues that render us prone to inefficiencies, lethargy, and chronically unfinished business.

Make no mistake about it, there is no real commitment to promoting remote work … wherever possible. Not every time and everywhere. Nobody, for instance, advocates work-from-home modus for WASA pipeline replacement. As far as I know, there has been no audit of the possibilities in either the public service or private sector. So, what accounts for the quick resort to “no”?

The prime minister does not believe this can work, and there is nothing sensible on this subject that has been uttered by any of the other political contestants or their numerous surrogates in the public space.

Listen. It was believed by somebody in a position of influence that the online appointment system at the Licensing Offices for drivers’ licence transactions should have reverted to the customary hours-long torture of the pre-pandemic era.

True, this return to arduous “normalcy” did not last long but note that it entered someone’s thoughts (without apparent opposition from Cabinet come down) that an online appointment system that worked should have been eliminated.

It is quite a charge to accuse an entire nation of not only governance by vaps (as a function of the collective body politic) but of considering vi-ki-vy and ratchifee as acceptable in the face of ‘too much to do with too little’, ‘incompetent leadership’, ‘small size’ or a ‘complacent clientele’ (citizens) who won’t fuss too much after initial emotions are fully vented – typically after 10 days of griping.

There are too many other examples for limited op-ed space. But one of the more crippling characteristics of countries in transition from one stage of development to another, is the degree to which citizens are accepting of unfinished, shoddy public business – even as “leave dat jess so” is accepted creed in personal spaces awaiting divine intervention.

This phenomenon spans a causal spectrum including sloppy lawmaking and enforcement, anachronistic public and private leadership, obsessively pragmatic political principles, sleazy partisan favouritism, and a general view that everything will be okay … eventually. So, “leave it so nah.”

“There might be a mound of mud or a big hole, but at least we fixed the leak”; “they t’ief but they performed”, “we give the immigrants time to stay and work, we never talk about children”; “we agreed to the CCJ but not THIS CCJ.” Unfinished business aplenty. Ratchifee. Improvised value systems. Spinning top in mud.

This might all sound funny, and it would probably have been, If not for numerous potentially injurious impacts. Official sloth and procrastination have cost us much in the public health system, policing, public policy, and numerous other areas of national and community life.

There is something that happens to the souls and minds of people who believe that vy-ki-vy, ad hoc decision-making that moves quickly from one bit of unfinished business to the next is somehow acceptable as a way of advancing the development game.

That suspension-bending pothole or mound of mud is barely the tip of a psychic trash pile of unfinished business. It is among the products of ratchifee, vy-ki-vy, and postponement of opportunity.

 

World Cup Identities

Remember two weeks ago I reminded folks that there are at least three main dynamics behind the enthusiasm of Caribbean people for selected World Cup teams? In short - football and self-identity – or a combination of the two.

There is another reason why we may extend support to a team. But at the current rate, T&T and Jamaica have too much work to do to get anywhere close to World Cup qualification in the near future and the others have even more remote ambitions/capabilities.

But, back to reality. The more knowledgeable would have as their first choice the teams that display the greatest skills on the pitch. They know the players. They can name more than three of them on their team of choice, complete with personal and team stats.

These people can also further validate such support through intimate knowledge of the major leagues in Europe and faint but sometimes reasonable acquaintance with what happens in Asia, Latin America, Oceania, and Africa.

But most of the rest of us also have other, non-footballing, reasons to assign support - or a combination of fair knowledge of the sport and a sense that the tournament is much more than a game.

One criterion does not automatically preclude the next. I have a close friend, let’s just call him PR, who backs teams “with more people who look like us” while knowing full well that footballing skills are often lodged in far more monochromatic teams of another hue.

That is where the other question of domestic and international politics enters the field of play. For instance, had Russia been involved in the current tournament, there would have been chaotic scenes at our bars. NATO, US and EU geo-politics, (non-playing) left- and right-wing posturing would have been on open display.

(By the way, did anyone of you note nominally socialist Russia’s defiant defence of free market conditions regarding the price of oil recently?)

This is not to say that legit connoisseurs of the game would also not have sentimental attachments to one team or the other. Those who lived and worked and were schooled in the UK were there, openly or quietly, backing England in front of their Windrush branded screens.

The English commentators who could not contain their enthusiasm, my Trini/UK friend in Colorado, Sycophantic Manu Bro (PR), Shifty OG, and the guys assembled at a Kingston hotel last Saturday still drying tears.

There are also those who fancy a North American destiny and mourned the early departure of the US team … and to a lesser extent, Canada’s.

I also know others who hold to the myth of German “efficiency” and the dated reputation of their impregnable (footballing) defence.

In short, emotions are difficult to attend to at the height of football passion; especially since there is also the question of self-identity. Take today’s match, for instance.

How more conflicted can anyone, from among us be when France (with so many players who look like us and names we know, and the magical Mbappé) comes up against the identity-conflicted Morocco in a World Cup semi-final?

Yes, two weeks ago I called the names Mbappé, Tchouaméni, Dembélé, Koundé and Konaté when declaring second-choice preference for France to win the tournament.

But, like so many others, completely missed the metaphorical opportunities made available by a determined Morocco team that keeps Palestinian flags in its kits and whose Sofiane Boufal described its win over Spain as a win “for the Arab world.” Contrarily, his coach promptly retorted that his team flies the flag of African football high.

It’s a country as much captured by global institutional arrangements – part of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) grouping to capture its duality - African/Islamic – as we are as an incidental attachment to “Latin American and Caribbean” groupings within the UN and other systems.

Yet, in the African/Islamic sense, Morocco is not Senegal or Cameroon - who beat Brazil 1-0 on December 2 - without the current passions now associated with Morocco in T&T.

Interesting, isn’t it? Today’s World Cup semi-final between France and Morocco brings together two teams that tell the story of international affairs in ways we in the Caribbean understand very well.

Yes, it’s football. Yes, there are issues associated with how global administration of the sport is conducted. But football and identity have merged in a hitherto unlikely place. We’re used to that here.

The Tempest and our times

Hopefully, people are noting that amid pervasive sadness and endemic turbulence, our writers, filmmakers, visual and performing artists are producing at a dizzying rate and, in the process, offering sharper awareness of possibilities and glimmers of hope.

The much-maligned young are leading the way in alleviating the multi-dimensional impacts of a failed generation. People still intent on promoting a notion of the same “good old days” that installed the brittle social, economic, and political infrastructure for all we now endure.

None of this is an attempt to diminish the magnitude of the challenges we face, or to suggest an easy solution. Or even to entirely dismiss past gains. But there are real questions related to viability and sustainability whose answers, if there are any, we cannot escape or resist.

There are civilisations far greater than ours over time that have declined, decayed, and eventually disappeared.

One of these days, I propose to put to anyone who pays attention, the suggestion that the required recalibration in how we think, and act threatens convulsions with tsunamic implications for the way politics, religion, law, medicine, engineering, journalism, and public thought and action are currently conducted.

Responses to the incidence of flooding tell us all we need to know about how societies are sometimes prone to self-delusion and myth.

Earnest, truthful interventions will find little space for any of these institutions and vocations in their current conditions. A complete rethink of our engagement of development will become necessary to assure that something resembling a future as a sovereign state remains on the horizon.

For sure, we are not alone in this. Our neighbours are similarly challenged, and we would do well to note the dramatic decline of highly touted exemplars further away. In the end, we may all have to encounter these challenges together, as is the case with resolving the climate crisis. To a great degree, we are not.

But, back to this glimmer of hope thing. I cannot recall a time when creative powers of this magnitude have emerged to counter false assertions of hopelessness. Follow Franka and Soyini and Barbara-Anne and Laura around and you will not survive half their itineraries – and they cover limited ground.

Music, books, art, drama, and dance are everywhere you turn. For some of us, emerging from the Covid cocoon has been slow and deliberate.

For me, there have just been Ramleela, the Independence and other art exhibitions, pan has resumed (and I have followed from some distance … but not for long), and the stages are coming alive with the sounds of music, poetry, and drama. Last Saturday there was UWI DCFA Jazz.

There are at least half a dozen new Caribbean books to acquire and read. And that is only by the folks I know and follow closely as friends and colleagues.

I had in fact initially thought about focusing today exclusively on the National Theatre Arts Company’s production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, under the expert direction of Belinda Barnes. Because both the substance of the play and the space it provides for contemporary interpretation offered an opportunity to help us understand where we stand in 2022 T&T.

In the end, I suspect Belinda chose a less potentially contentious path. The plot, of course, (don’t feel bad, I could not remember much of it either) is so riddled with twists and turns there would have been multiple opportunities to exploit the numerous metaphors that awaited.

The task fell to the “narrative links” represented by two re-purposed Roman deities and one Greek goddess who become storytelling washer, obeah, and market women.

Island spirit, Ariel, was magnificently played by Syncytia Bishop and lead character, Prospero, by veteran Nickolai Salcedo on the evening I attended.

This is so much of our current crises and trials in The Tempest. There was a young talented cast to interpret this on stage, and to provide the links. This provided an irresistible opportunity that was not fully exploited, in my view, though the main principles were touched.

An overthrow and subsequent island exile. Insecure leadership. Magic (or the need for it). Vengeance. Rage. Love. And an eventual resolution.

All of this as our days of floods, continued violence, political intrigue, and cynical exploitation of grief and suffering continue.

There is something in the way the play’s surprising, non sequiturial conclusion (as presented on stage) raised questions of the kind we currently confront that are not easily dismissed.

NTACTT’s rendition, complete with original music by Nickolai Salcedo and others, supported by the National Steel Symphony Orchestra, helped take us on a journey we dare not fail to navigate.

 

 

Non-football World Cup choices

Listen to it here:

Okay, here’s an easy one. What’s the name of the team you’re backing at the FIFA World Cup? Then, try this one: Why are you backing that particular team?

The only folks who are not required to answer these questions are bandwagonists such as … let’s just call him PR. But, even in his case, I must confess he has stuck to a particular (losing) EPL team for much of the past few years, despite a lack of loyalty to individual players such as … CR (no relation).

So, PR is a bandwagonist when it comes to players, but not necessarily with his team, no matter the magnitude of licks being sustained. So, we know he isn’t going to back Portugal under any circumstances.

I am calling no names, because passions run high among Caribbean football supporters such as … let’s call her FM … and you can incur wrath even in relatively minor cases of mispronunciation. Repeat after me: It’s not “Kwatar.”

But, back to serious business. Name your team. Then carefully and concisely explain why you like that team.

Question A is pretty simple. The vast majority of Caribbean people I know – even if they can’t call the names of three players on the team at any point in time – place their confidence in Brazil. Okay, okay, the know-it-alls can explain why they prefer Argentina or France entirely on footballing grounds.

In some instances - largely for non-footballing reasons too embarrassing to raise here - some would cheer for Germany or even England. There are even the types who are mourning the absence of Italy.

To be fair, some people know their football and can rattle off the names of 5 and 6 and 7 top players from these teams. Ditto those whose second choice is either Senegal or Ghana.

So, we like Brazil. The Jamaicans think their national team plays the same style of football. LOL. Take a minute to catch your breath, then try to remember when T&T supporters made a similar claim.

And many of us would have loved to have seen Senegal or Ghana in the final showdown. There are also people like SM who take things one game at a time. The other day he messaged me to ask if I was impressed with Croatia! By this time today, he might have already called with expressions of solidarity for the players of Australia.

I have also come across some football stragglers who are amazed at the fact that the faces of the players representing a growing number of teams look nothing like the portraits of the people we see on the news who run those countries.

In fact, PR has been keeping track of the number of seemingly misplaced players who are scoring goals! Look! Look! EVEN this team and that team! Noticed something?

So, in answering the “why” question, we really aren’t talking too much football are we? I cannot lie. I back Brazil (even as Neymar has dedicated his first goal, in advance, to that thug Bolsonaro), but have a keen eye on France (because of football, I assure you … though there’s also Tchouaméni, Dembélé, Koundé and Konaté) and I have crossed my fingers on behalf of Senegal and Ghana (for reasons of the heart).

I am rather unapologetic about such fickleness, particularly with those who contend that politics – both of the capital “P’ and in lowercase – should not invade the field of sport. LOL!

If there is one country on the planet that should not be confused about this is T&T. Here, sport is capable of generating political cleavages in ways nothing else can.

Erroneously seen as exclusively and inelastically linked to behaviour and social performance, there has been more political investment in sport than virtually any other ameliorative intervention to address youth dysfunctionality – all falling way short of addressing the systemic inequities that have brought us here.

Consequently, malpractice, incompetence and conmanship are often overlooked as mere, even admirable, incidentals in pursuit of a greater good. Understand this dynamic and you can come to terms with the queasiness of those who love football but have serious problems with FIFA and the actions that have now taken us to Qatar.

So, today’s line-up of games offers a few favourites and dilemmas. Who’s backing Mexico against Saudi Arabia? France vs Tunisia? Poland against Argentina? Australia vs Denmark?

Every last one of us will be taking our pick. Not our first or second or third choices. But we will be there, cheering someone on. Take two minutes to ask yourself why.

 

From COP27 to Cup22

 It has not taken too long for global news agendas to start moving away from the critical outcomes of COP 27. Here, at home, FIFA World Cup 22 has taken over, and online news algorithms are already redirecting traffic back to Ukraine, China, Turkey and elsewhere.

The case had long been made for small island states of the Global South to be more acutely mindful of our own business. The agony of our small scientific and negotiating teams must be more fully appreciated as their return journeys leave the fastest of fading memories behind.

Kishan Kumarsingh and his ministry of planning team remained our top T&T COP performers. No grandstanding polemic. No flashy turns of phrases. But weary shoulders to the wheel.

Ditto the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) technocrats that span the oceans and have at different times found impressive Caribbean leadership.

To them, the so-called (and so-far amorphous) “Climate Justice” Fund or “loss and damage” provision to offset climate damage to developing states, would hardly be the revolutionary intervention it has been made out to be.

There were key details of such a measure left hanging in the haze of early-morning deliberations in Egypt and there is this sinking feeling that yet-to-be-elaborated specifics may prove as elusive as application of longstanding, unmet financial commitments to assure effective adaptation in countries such as ours.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has, as is his wont, chimed in optimistically: “Clearly this will not be enough, but it is a much-needed political signal to rebuild broken trust.” There will however be a view that “trust” has not readily been in abundant supply.

The noteworthy omission, through all this, to emphasise the value of global decarbonisation and to actively re-visit the 1.5-degree commitment of Paris and, later, Glasgow, is among the more important points of collective under-achievement, and broken trust.

True, there were some of us who wished to remain passively disengaged from this in the face of new and emerging financial fortunes. Guyana and Suriname have put their cards on the table, and T&T has already described a pathway to progress without immediately discarding the key assets of oil and gas.

Several African states also went to the table with the precise challenge to defer development in favour of an arrangement for which the big guns have habitually displayed a lack of trustworthiness, while a global financial environment exhibits chronic neglect.

This strikes at the heart of what is now known as the “just energy transitions” to ensure that a notion of socio-economic justice remains in the mix. In the Caribbean we are already witnessing the challenges both in the geo-political dynamics and internally – between communities, sectors, and peoples.

And who is to blame us for not trusting what is before us on the world stage? COP 27 essentially declared that fossil fuels will remain a feature of global economic growth – with natural gas now moving off-centre as a focal point in the emissions game and coal bearing the growing brunt of attention.

The combined impacts of supply chain disruptions, Russia’s assault on Ukraine, and numerous pandemic hangovers were all there to provide justification by the big and wealthy for slower going when it came to emissions targets. So, who are we?

The UAE, which hosts COP28 next year, has already declared its commitment to the oil and gas economy in indefinite terms.

At the current rate, there is little hope that either the 1.5 target would hold or that the means to adjust quickly and effectively to accelerated changes in natural conditions will become available.

Instead, there appears to be a signal that “patch and repair” of “loss and damage” will be the preferred option, and that financing for adaptation and, to some small degree, mitigation will have to await better global economic conditions.

All of this assumes there is time to spare. Some have declared “hyperbole” to claims of a crisis or an emergency. There are other compelling narratives to occupy our time and resources – violent crime, political dysfunction, faltering economies.

World CUP 22 offers fleeting comfort COP 27 could not have possibly presented. It’s not going to be enough.

All of society, all of the world

I used this space last week to explore some of the key issues for the Caribbean at COP27 which closes in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt on Saturday, describing some of them as required “reality checks.”

One is the unreliability of financial flows to support adaptation measures in the developing world, and the other critical one is the fact that the 1.5-degree threshold for global warming appears increasingly difficult to achieve.

The truth is, what we are attending to is a global phenomenon that requires multiple hands at work simultaneously and with an eye on the same objectives.

The implications for some key features of the planet are serious and far-reaching. Our natural environment, including plant and animal life, is already undergoing change through diminished biological diversity and the incursions of invasive species, among other impacts.

This, in turn, will have effects on already acknowledged food insecurity and the long list of dependent economic activities such as tourism, upon which most of our countries rely.

Extreme weather events also do not only mean heavier than average spells of rainfall, but a rising incidence of dry spells. In our region, there are already acknowledged water-scarce and challenged states.

We already know that even with heavy rainfall, water quality issues and their attendant costs pose serious issues for the availability of potable water.

Our very model of infrastructure-led development may also find itself confronting strong hurdles as the decarbonisation process worldwide slows some areas of productive endeavour.

It has also long been recognised that the small island and low-lying coastal developing states of the world require far more urgent decision-making and change on this matter.

I argued here last week that the real engine room at COPs comprises politicians, official negotiators, and a cadre of eminent scientists, both from our regions and of the Global North.

It is good that the civil society space is typically occupied and active at these events, but there is not much evidence that such activism has been effective in influencing the desired change, nor has it grown sufficiently to harness much broader, enlightened public opinion.

Had that been the case, our political parties in the Caribbean would have made the climate crisis (and it is a “crisis”) focal points of their recent election campaigns, and the issue would have framed a considerable cross-section of the parliamentary discourse.

Arguments and cross-talk about the incidence of extreme weather events would have included even passing mention of the phenomenon, and when it did, explanations of the distinction between climate and weather proffered.

We have already experienced 1.3 degree growth in global temperature – most of it at the hands of human activity. Even the most ardent flat-earther devotees have backed away from their earlier opposition to a notion of an anthropogenic connection.

It would be equally sensible though to heed the warnings that the 1.5-degree threshold seems set to be breached. Projected impacts on human populations, even at 1.5, appear dim.

This has real implications for how we undertake the develop assignment. This includes greater reliance on science, data-driven decision making, and broader alliances of civic elements.

Apart from the usual NGO suspects, who expected anything to emerge from sectors including construction, local government, law, energy, tourism, food production ahead of COP27?

Hopefully, someone will remind me of a spectacular submission from any of them.

Contrastingly, some of us in the reviled media have worked over many years to ensure that our coverage of the climate change challenge is founded on the available science and best practice policy responses.

In 2005, the Association of Caribbean Media Workers, together with Caricom’s Mainstreaming Adaptation to Climate Change (MACC) Project launched a handbook for journalists on the subject.

Then, in 2021, we introduced “Reporting the Climate Crisis - A Handbook for Caribbean Journalists” which I co-authored together with scientists Steve Maximay and Dr Dale Rankine.

Some of our better environmental reporters have been at Sharm El-Sheikh. I look forward to their comprehensive evaluations of the proceedings.

They would hopefully include the prospects for an all of society, all of world approach. Some of us need the reassurance that opportunities exist to achieve this.

 

 

The COP 27 reality checks

It’s trite but true that every single meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is “the most urgent and important of them all.”

We have long gone past the debate over the human contribution to the challenge, and we are not talking about a situation that’s improving. The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, for example, has described the latest State of the Global Climate report as “a chronicle of climate chaos.”

Urgency and high priority are particularly the case in Sharm El-Sheikh at COP 27, because this is a time of reckoning when it comes to a number of key pillars of an unfolding global crisis.

The costs, of all types, of a joint response are however not being equitably distributed and the climate crisis is now characterised by a mix of exogenous and domestically fuelled political, economic and socio-cultural injustices.

Even so, the conclusions of a UNFCCC Standing Committee on Finance (SCF) report tabled at COP 27 find that “a sole focus on positive climate finance flows” in itself is “insufficient to meet the overarching purpose and goals of the Paris Agreement.”

“Finance flows,” the report says, “must integrate climate risks into decision-making and avoid increasing the likelihood of negative climate outcomes.”

Yes, there have been increases in financial flows but even the SCF is proposing that mere financial bean-counting, as instructive as it is, is inadequate to assess the real risks being engaged by developing countries.

There is also the fact we need to face when it comes to our “1.5 to Stay Alive” slogan – a Caribbean war cry integrated as a main target of the Paris Agreement as a cap on post-industrial global emissions.

The current COP will most likely signal the failure of the campaign. Sadly, it is the scientists, not the politicians or activists, who are most likely to lay the sombre news on the table.

Last week, The Economist boldly declared it was “time for some realism” regarding the 1.5 degree threshold for disaster.

The magazine urged activists and countries to pronounce honestly on the matter so that delegates in the halls of decision-making can be “chastened by failure (and) not lulled by false hope.” As highly vulnerable states, we too need to transition to the next level of advocacy and negotiation.

For, even as the developed world experiences the occurrence of extreme weather events, there is no guarantee it will suddenly dawn on them that, even in their respective backyards, the matter requires the interventions of all.

It is well known that the entire process has been characterised by the broken promises of wealthy countries, and major emitters, on the financing of survival measures for the most vulnerable nations.

Another reality check is that our Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), as important as they are (and as locked into our own commitments and entitlements as they have been) are turning out to be of marginal value in the general scheme of things.

For one, and no matter what some activists and politicians claim, they were never expected to more than microscopically affect gross global emissions. Their real value resides in the promotion of more enlightened environmental management practices which should be par for the course in any event.

A rallying call, in these matters, to “save the planet” sells the t-shirts and dramatises the banner campaigns, but such activities are of more value in the process of saving ourselves from collective suicide. The climate crisis envisages murder.

Don’t get me wrong, the beach clean-ups and tree replanting activities are very important to the survival game, but they have little bearing in the context of difficult political negotiations that tap into wider global assets and address geo-political posturing.

This is the value of COP 27 which is first and foremost a political event, meant to be guided by science. When I attended COP 17 in Durban 11 years ago, one show-boating international NGO had an activist rappel down a multi-storey hotel to unveil a banner. Some of our own folks looked on jealously.

It may have helped earn media attention, fresh funding, and applause. But that was it, even as the true warriors infinitely more boldly engaged overwhelming odds around the conference table.

This time around, as T&T turns up alongside energy sector new-comers Guyana and Suriname, there can be expected to be far more intense reality-checking and nuancing of the slogans and catch-phrases. No single t-shirt or banner can capture the meaning.

Our pyramids of needs and assets must however now more fully occupy centre stage in Egypt. Important truths need to be told; reality checks explored.

Caricom’s Haiti question

A few weeks ago, a seasoned career diplomat asked me the shocking question: “What can Caricom do about Haiti?”

I replied tersely: “An honest response to your question will make me hate myself.”

After all, who am I? Haiti’s continued disintegration has been the subject of numerous academic studies and diplomatic actions and is the focus of constant attention by multilateral financial institutions, global NGOs, parachute journalists, and by no means least, the gaze of rich and powerful nations.

I made my first visit to the country in 1994 not long after the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide following his expulsion in the coup d'état of September 1991. A Caricom staffer at the time I was the least of the apostles, with a camera and notepad. I subsequently visited twice, on other assignments.

More than a year after the 2010 earthquake that claimed at least 200,000 lives, while on the way to the south, I noted that the streets of Port-au-Prince remained littered with rubble. I thought then that the government should have insisted that self-serving NGOs and missionaries flooding the country should have had to clear at least some portion of the mess before getting down to whatever they were there to do.

I also knew that remote, single-cause and over-simplified resort by ideologues to the tale of colonial depravities had been insufficient to grasp contemporary disorders.

Inspired in part by CLR James’s 1958 “natural unity” case for the Commonwealth Caribbean and Haiti, some regional politicians and officials had aggressively advanced the case for Haitian accession to the Caricom grouping.

For contrast, by 1994, full membership by Suriname – another non-English speaking nation with a different history, constitution, and systems of law and politics – was short months away.

Suriname’s integration into the community experienced bumps and diversions in the early years, but grew into a meaningful, mutually beneficial relationship.

Haiti however presented a qualitatively different challenge. It remained a target for opportunistic foreign interference, possessed of chronic socio-political dysfunctionality including systemic inequality, plagued by abysmally low economic performance, and lacked basic resilience in the face of high vulnerability to natural disasters.

In 1994, with the supposed return to democratic functionality, Caricom had offered support in strengthening the public service - as if the remnants of our own embrace of British colonial civil service culture had not included serial challenges of their own.

I remember the long table at Hôtel Montana and the smug offer of orderliness in government business in the midst of an environment in which the notion of a cohesive state was virtually non-existent beyond the walls of the National Palace.

Those talks went nowhere. In fact, the main feature of the ongoing relationship has been in the area of diplomatic support. It is not that Haiti has been the movement’s most reliable ally either. Reciprocation has been uneven, and the flare-ups have been sharply instructive. Loyalty is clearly among the main casualties of survival mode.

Regionally inspired development support has also been problematic at best, and satisfaction of needs left largely to arrangements resulting from geo-political shenanigans.

PetroCaribe funding, for example, led to what has been described as “an orgy of corruption”, and the presence of other global powers has been financially bountiful but minus durable, long-term results.

Numerous international NGOs, faith-based organisations, and other philanthropic agencies of all varieties have been engaged.

Yet, the country’s pandemic response has been among the most appallingly deficient. The health sector is in shambles. Current vaccine uptake is around 2%.

The much-adored Barbados lifted, then reimposed, visa requirements for Haitian visitors while most of the rest of us never budged. Visa-free Guyana became a transit point for Haitian economic migrants.

Back in 2001, the very first act of the Association of Caribbean Media Workers was a call for justice in the murder of renowned journalist/broadcaster Jean Dominique.

Last Sunday, Haitian freelance journalist, Romelo Vilsaint, was killed by the police in Port-au-Prince while protesting the detention of a colleague. This followed the murder of radio journalist, Garry Tess, and just over a week ago, the shooting of Le Nouvelliste reporter, Roberson Alphonse.

Last week, Alphonse’s newspaper – the country’s most reputable news publication, founded in 1898 – painfully suspended its print edition over security fears.

I have spoken with journalists there who now venture out only after elaborate planning. Gangs rule and what calls itself a government has summoned external intervention (again). There is thus an open invitation to invasion.

Land today, at Toussaint Louverture, and tell me what you see, feel, hear.

What can Caricom do about Haiti? Can we honestly, without guilt and self-loathing, answer the question?

 

Addressing disruption and upheaval

Something you learn early when you’re in the press freedom/free expression business is that explaining what you spend more than half your professional life doing is almost as difficult as managing the main tasks at hand.

As a branch of the wider pursuit of human rights, there tends to be some confusion over specific features of the assignment, even by others engaged in related vocations.

There is also a mistaken belief that because much of the redress relies upon enlightened legislation, activism should remain the exclusive preserve of lawyers and jurists.

The fact, though, is that too many of these professionals often display an acute unfamiliarity with human rights in the real world or recognise a role for themselves in ensuring their preservation.

This is not a backhand slap in the context of a legal fraternity here that bears the burden, imposed by a few, of a reputation based on habitual angling for lucrative state briefs and/or cannibalistic fees.

It is to suggest that despite an apparent glut in supply, there are precious few attorneys consistently occupied with the pursuit of human rights as a moral and professional obligation, and who favour the potentially lucrative status quo over costly disruption.

It has thus been left to practitioners of other crafts and directly affected communities to lead the charge. Yet, even so, there are numerous points of contention among us. Over the years, activists in other fields and I have often debated the cross-cutting nature of relations between wider social justice advocacy and freedom of expression/press freedom.

It is inconceivable that, despite some media malpractice and ill-informed commentary in the public space, a commitment to freedom of expression can ever be at variance with the universality and indivisibility of the rights of all human beings.

Yet, “freedom of expression” is mockingly parenthesised by those who find it hard to believe that in today’s world, it provides a context to almost every major social concern. Also, because it is routinely ill-defined, a loose conglomeration of all expression, including those designed to cause harm is often included.

It’s good to note the foundational Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the nature of social transactions involving those who seek, receive and impart expression. Put that way, accompanying press freedom includes not only the media, but the ability to seek out their content and to acquire it.

So, last week, I was in Costa Rica at an event entitled: “Information Literacy in the Age of Disruption” and I was there as an advocate for press freedom and free expression. Someone wondered aloud: What the hell is going on???!!!

As with today’s preamble, there is no easy way to explain this, unless you have been following what has been happening … to you … in today’s world. We are currently negotiating a process of upheaval and disruption in all facets of public life.

To focus on just one point, it is a requirement of our society’s battles with misinformation and disinformation (the former largely unwitting, the latter deliberately harmful) that we tailor our responses in a manner that is compliant with the promotion of more, not less, free expression.

Media and information literacy, or the implanting of critical thinking norms in interpreting media and other content, provides a free speech compliant approach.

Even so, Article 19 provides for exceptions. These include lawful derogations (and here is where many battles are fought) to secure the rights or reputations of others, and for the protection of national security, public order, or public health or morals.

The “public health” exception is particularly noteworthy in today’s pandemic world. Yet even this is insufficient justification to stifle scepticism – however deceptive or ill-informed. Big Tech platforms apply their own standards. We need to set our own.

Sadly, activists of the Americas assembled in San Jose last week somehow skipped the “disruption” part because there was just so much else to talk about. But I had contended that it was the most important sub-theme item of all.

The pandemic, political and economic chaos, and the end-stage dynamics of our planet have combined to disrupt everything. Here is where the rights of average everyday humans enter the picture in ways never before imagined.

If we were to err, though, it would have to be on the side of freedom and not prohibition. Media and information literacy provides a long-term avenue to achieve this. By itself, it can be as disruptive, albeit in a positive manner, as the phenomena it is meant to address.

 

The open governance challenge

(First published in the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian - October 19, 2022)

There has not been a time when I have not been sceptical about purported official commitments to open governance in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean.

Such cynicism has spanned decades and straddled political administrations of all flavours and in different Caricom territories.

The long haul, for instance, has proven me correct on almost all early points of contention regarding our Freedom of Information Act. I never thought it would go far enough.

I had once been cautioned against being overly militant on the subject because introduction of the law had presumably been guided by “good intentions.” Something was better than nothing, after all.

Today, a majority of Caricom countries either have weak or ineffective access to information laws, and almost half have none at all. The T&T Act is among the better versions, as supported by successive court judgments, but lacks what I consider to be wider social and institutional traction.

Most Caribbean laws of the kind are typified by long lists of exemptions that cover areas such as national security, foreign affairs, and “government’s deliberative processes relating to commercial business affairs,” if you know what I mean.

Accordingly, I presume, non-disclosure agreements like those attached to the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines are probably not unconnected to this latter principle. (And, by the way, T&T was not the only country in the world, as argued by some politicos, to be subjected to such a requirement.)

But should this not have been challenged as a violation of the spirit of “good intentions?” I really don’t know. But I think that situation ought to have generated far more pervasive queasiness - not rooted in disapproval of everything being proposed to manage pandemic measures as was the discredited case in some quarters here.

While public information laws are being gradually introduced in our region, inadequate as they are, the real foundational challenge is to transform the socio-cultural norms and power dynamics to conditions under which our official default becomes openness and not secrecy.

Academics who write about these matters reference an inevitable “cultural transition” in the face of a “post-bureaucratic” era, characterised by the impact of technological change on organisational structures and administration. But it’s even more than that because of the pervasive, inherent nature of the malaise.

It’s everywhere, from the smallest community organisations to big NGOs, quasi-governmental organisations, and the entire institutional organism that makes our societies move from one point to another. My shorthand for this is “our culture of secrecy.”

I belong to two Caribbean media development organisations that have campaigned for the adoption of meaningful access to information laws in all Caricom countries – the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) and the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM).

There has been very little resonance among other regional civil society organisations, some of which have assumed that such efforts are the exclusive preserve of a self-centred mass media.

This has been one of the issue’s most tragic characteristics: a belief that mainstream media are, by design, a special beneficiary of publicly held data and information which politicians and public servants believe are their exclusive property.

Contrarily, there is sufficient evidence to suggest now that concerned citizens, activists and other sectors have been among the more prolific users of the law to get to the bottom of official secrecy.

There are now expert users of such law who have yielded often spectacular results, supported by judicial systems that have generally displayed an admirable appreciation for its value.

However, both proposed cybercrime and data-protection legislation have recently been found to conspire to roll back some of the benefits. There has been a general sense that politicians and senior public servants are overly keen on ensuring this remains the case.

Very recent developments in T&T, and I am deliberately not wading extensively through those murky waters here, have also stressed the importance of disclosure in a much wider span of public affairs.

In this respect, the free press has an important but not singular role to play in unearthing the concealed and providing both a conduit and public platform for information unearthed.

Achieving more however requires deeper and expanded legislated access to official information, the protection of whistle-blowers, and systems of governance appreciative of the fact that the more people know about the things that affect them, the more inclined they are to make informed decisions and take required, appropriate action.

Such are the challenges and benefits of open governance. We’re clearly not there yet.

 

A Ramleela act of faith

Listen here:

The tenth and final act of Ramleela on a clear and cool evening at Cedar Hill, Princes Town found me scanning the magnificent amphitheatre for evident contemporary meaning beyond the epic play’s known vast and universal themes.

Thirty years ago, Derek Walcott had delivered the summation of an experience more expressive of faith than of theatre.

Yet, last Sunday, there was occasion to assess the difference, if any, between this act of grand street theatre and an unfolding reality recording alternating wins between circumstances determined to be “good” and those recorded as being “evil.”

All around the venue stood people as veritable props willingly summoned to animated attention. Seated was an expanded cast of men, women and children - applauding, cheering, gasping as barely choreographed battles and dances filled the space.

I kept my eyes on the little boys “sword fighting” in preparation for their roles as fierce warriors. Those who forgot their spears or bows raced anxiously back to parents in the stands and sped back, weapons in hand.

For Ramleela, we are all found to be witnesses to our own roles as amateur players moved by emotions theatre typically has the power to evoke largely as exogenous stimuli, and not as acts of self-belief.

Across the street from the delightful venue managed by the Cedar Hill Youth, Social and Cultural Organisation, the MP’s premises remained shuttered and unavailable for public parking while the MC delivered a hopeful welcome that remained unanswered at the end. 

In the audience of hundreds, a small contingent of guests transported by the National Trust whose support was recorded more than once by narrator/host/leader/mentor, Alvin Saltan. Graeme Suite was there to respond. Corinth/Cedar Hill Councillor Shawn Premchand announced continued solidarity.

How many, however unmoved by theologies of any kind, are swept through this - as with the rainy days before - to an understanding of dharmic conviction embracing civic duty?

Cedar Hill has played this role for over 140 years – a record that is soon to be archived at a purpose-built facility that already stands as an incrementally developing structure.

This, I thought, was community building of the kind that has as a philosophical base, what Walcott determined in his Nobel acceptance speech to be a script not fit for a cast of dramatic amateurs, but for an assemblage of believers.

This is not unlike Peter Minshall’s “Mas”, in which the purposes of belief, faith and conviction are captured through street theatre, music, motion, and defiance … if required.

Of Ramleela’s Felicity cast, Walcott concluded that “they were not actors. They had been chosen; or they themselves had chosen their roles in this sacred story … They were not amateurs but believers.”

It was at one such event at the Aranguez Savannah in the early 1930s my grandfather, who had not long sailed from China and was now witness to such a spectacle, had initiated a courtship that never died with my grandmother who was of African heritage.

Decades later, my Uncle Greg would display Grandma’s photo at the family village in Guangzhou most likely minus the Ramleela background which has roots in another continent and another time, but whose branches, leaves and fruits now straddle the globe.

Almost one hour into last Sunday’s performance, a man out of costume but not quickly determined to be out of place, stepped forward with what looked like the broken handle of a spade or fork, and struck one of the lead players in the head.

As the player fell, the cast froze as if on cue and the attacker threw the weapon on the ground, turned and walked quietly away.

There was no scuffle. No fight. No wrestling to the ground. First a sense of scripted violence. Then doubt. Then the sickening feeling that somehow things had gone dreadfully wrong, as the cast gathered around an injured man.

Saltan interjected from time to time with words of encouragement and the assurance that “this has never happened here before.”

“Evident contemporary meaning” had found space within the storyline. The action resumed after about 30 minutes as the attacker was handcuffed and led away and the ambulance left. The victim’s role now played by his son. We were later assured that the victim was “doing okay.”

As the Ravan effigy burned brightly at the very end, the crowd exited calmly to the bigger stage outside.

Commentary concerto in chapters

Chapter One – Allegro

There is so much to talk about this week, that I decided to present a few issues as separate micro “chapters.” It’s a liberty I claimed some years ago by describing the process as a series of “movements” (à la classical symphonic arrangements which typically require four discrete renditions).

But I have chosen to abandon such a rigid formulation and go for the flexibility of literature while retaining the relative orderliness classical music brings. So, this was my quick opening “allegro.”

Chapter Two - Budget Andante

This slower, slumber-inducing movement focuses on the annual budget presentation, side-talk, and “debate” which I followed from a safe distance this year. Full of hubris, privilege, and affected rage, it was difficult to extract from most of it any semblance of a distinction between separate nonsenses.

So, the prime minister - hopefully against the advice of the designated ministers purporting to embrace the marvels of an already ageing “digital revolution” – believes that “infrastructure” and “indiscipline” provide major barriers to the digitalising/virtualising of processes and public conduct, including the world of work.

For sure, he is not alone. Some captains of business and industry still apparently contemplate an elusive Millennium Bug and clearly embrace a notion of “the good old days” of office sweat shops with hapless minions at the other end of officious whips.

The storyteller would bring this chapter to a screeching stop with the summary statement: They spent a considerable amount of time saying absolutely nothing. At least not anything that will be remembered as compellingly as how hot the pepper was in the last doubles.

I would add: Read Terrence Farrell’s recent newspaper thesis on the perils of “gradualism” for one of the few sensible responses to this year’s slothful budget andante.

Chapter Three – CPL Minuet

This dance-inducing movement emerges with fluttering flags and jingoistic delight. No T&T Amazon Warriors but a promising T&T Patriots and, of course a TKR.

So, we went to the Oval in neutral colours to avoid the taunts and the absurdities. A South African bowled to a Pakistani and the catch was taken by a New Zealander and the crowd erupted with patriotic zeal!

Franchise banners and national flags wild in the wind, the way once displayed side by side in Europe, but this time minus the murderous results. Slaughter left to the field of play.

Put on repeat my 2018 melody: “If you use a national flag in the branding of any product, you can convert support into passion, affection into love, and a simple contest into a war.”

In Guyana, where one flag lay trampled some years ago, there flew in the Final the black, yellow, and green - more as political statement than cricketing wisdom. “Local content” now as forgotten as the Bangladeshi’s heroics mere days before.

How, I had asked, does Shakib prefer his pepperpot? Has Shai caught the minibus at Stabroek Market? And maybe Tahir prefers life in the marvelous Essequibo?

Enough, no more. ‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before!

Chapter Four – Genealogical Allegro

Long curious about numerous aspects of my mixed heritage, I have been engaging the activities of the T&T Genealogy Facebook Group in order to excavate specific clues about the story of my enslaved ancestors. Even in casual online exchanges, the richness of the discourse is abundant.

Being the product of Africa, India, China and Europe means there are numerous - most times previously unexplored - adventures to experience.

Last Sunday, group curator Ann Dardaine took more than one hundred of us through an audit of available resources to aid in researching our past. Excerpts are to be posted on the Group soon. Let me tell you, Dardaine’s presentation, as a researcher, provided valuable, authoritative guidance on adjoining the myriad chapters of our stories.

The Group is paired with like-minded amateur and professional practitioners in St Vincent and the Grenadines – where resides one arm of the expansive reach of the Neehall clan that first touched Caribbean soil in St Kitts in 1863 and emerged latterly as family matriarch in Curepe.

How does all this come in the final orchestral flourish? Nothing to quicken the heart more than the micro bits and pieces of our own stories. Some day I will tell you more about my Uncle Greg who journeyed to China to live and work in the very village my late grandfather left behind for his brave sea journey to our shores.

*Energetic cadenza and taper off as at the final flow at the end of a Port of Spain traffic jam or Caroni flood.

 

 

Cricket and the 12 and Under flag

Last Sunday - somewhere between the flying of the T&T flag to celebrate the wicket of Namibian cricketer, David Wiese, caught by Tim Seifert of New Zealand off the bowling of Jamaican Andre Russell and, later on, the vigorous waving of the Guyanese flag as South Africa’s Imran Tahir took the wicket of fellow countryman David Miller - came the first new edition of 12 and Under on TTT.

A juxtaposing of conjured illusion and the real. Fun in close communion with joy. It's the kind of life people of the Caribbean Sea live – child carriers of hope, and franchise cricket with nominal hosts that are entire countries.

The marketing so enthusiastically embraced that a flag was once disrespectfully trampled in disgust when it was thought that a non-national player, with ostensibly conflicted loyalties, had been less than enthusiastic during a game.

No need to recap too much about the techniques employed to stimulate interest. Fly a flag anywhere and you are certain to find interest and passion. Sympathies to entrepreneurs lacking similar opportunities at the IPL, BBL, BPL, and the PSL.

My good pal, Peter, is stumped way out of his crease each time I mention the lone national on the Saint Lucia Kings team and when he cries “big island” bias and outright t’iefin. It’s all part of the fun, though. Fly a flag, I wrote four years ago, and you change meaning. Expressed that way, a simple contest can become the bombing of Kyiv.

By 2018 when I was hauled over the coals for my observations, I had already commenced support for the “T&T Amazon Warriors”, now minus the “T&T” and habitually beaten by a team hosted in a place called “Trinbago.” At the start of the current season, I was backing the “T&T Patriots” and was targeted by fascist nationalists (lol).

So, on Sunday, having been to the QPO twice last week in “neutral colours” (I love cricket and the CPL is great fun), the flag that flew for me emerged from atop the TTT compound when 12 and Under was screened for the first time in decades.

Halfway in, I wondered whether it was intended to have members of the 12 and Under audience smile till tears came. I thought it was me alone. Then I saw that entertainment journalist, Laura, and others had been experiencing the same thing.

A little barefoot boy in his living room in front of a shaky phone sang and turned a big man’s legs into jelly (borrowing from David Rudder and twisting a bit). Another 10-year-old spoke eloquently about his introduction to the guitar and went on to perform like a seasoned pro’. Franka is sure he will beat them all.

Eighty video submissions, yes 80, had to be reviewed by a panel comprising young, accomplished performers in their own right. Nothing against the old fogeys, but it was refreshing to see that a new generation of talent has been elevated to adjudicate on our future.

Now, true, I also saw the children of the Samuel Badree and Daren Ganga academies at the stadium. They too, brought strong emotions. The commentator had been struck by the articulate responses to babyish questions. The look of hope in young eyes. In some ways, the interviews matched the finest strokes over the boundary that day.

So, here we go again, against the rub of the “lost generation” narrative. Here we go again, the explosion of creative power. In one month alone, a cascading of creative expression – pan, drama, dance, music, books, film, and the hope the young bring.

Yes, cricket too. It’s just the national flag silliness and faux “nationalism” I have a problem with.

On Sunday, we added to this the babies among us. However short on videographic production values, garish, oversized tags/badges and all, 12 and Under flew a flag on behalf of all of us. The children flew it high. I thank them. We all should.