Addressing social media and disinformation

 

View my take on the subject here

Confronting plural crises

The theme assigned the upcoming regional meeting of regional labour ministers in Guyana ambitiously focuses on “social justice” during what the International Labour Organization (ILO) proposes to be a discussion on “the foundation for a sustainable Caribbean transformation.”

I am not sure how such fanciful themes are brainstormed and finalised, but it must have been that somebody or bodies spent time on a host of stuffy texts which explore current thinking on notions of equity and justice as fundamental components of the solution to what the framers of the May 23-25 conversation describe as “plural crises” in the Caribbean.

They must have been reading every newspaper there is to read, and followed all the newscasts, social media posts, and the lamentations of writers, musicians, and artists. It would have also been necessary to sift hollow political polemic and sloganeering from lived experience and trauma.

There had to have been a battle against political incumbents who claim, “all is well” (“excellent”) and those who narrate tales of terminal decline - until their turn arrives and all is suddenly well and “excellent”.

There had to have been the backdrop of April’s crime and violence talks and the largely infertile menu of under-developed, whimsical prescriptions depictive of cluelessness of high order … in high places.

Few from among us would contend that “plural crises” is the stuff of hyperbole. That we indeed face a multiplicity of multi-faceted and rapid downhill journeys on carriages fixed to wobbly, decaying, disintegrating wheels.

Those of us who have decided to stay, physically and emotionally, are left with a task way beyond the limits of partisan desire - the alternatives being exile of different degrees and expression.

You can sense an absence of commitment from a distance. There is a willingness to initiate destruction at the onset of defeat. Chronic claims of victimhood as a salve for complicity. Sectional triumphalism and factional defeat when victory becomes elusive. A quick resort to active and passive exile – darts thrown from both safely afar and within the neighbourhood.

Plural crises indeed. Little time to find how we came to this. To trace a lineage of descent. To contemplate the joint enterprise of loss. Instead, a simple resort to blame and hopelessness.

In that light, does the ILO (and, by extension, its Caribbean partners) understand what they are really getting themselves into when they meet in Guyana next week? Perhaps. I have seen that in the concept note for the meeting that last year’s communique from the Caricom Summit is cited with reference to a “whole of government and society approach to recovery and resilience.”

This is a tall order in any context. Of the host country Guyana, for example, Caribbean economist, Marla Dukharan, reported recently: “Guyana is still the world's fastest growing economy, but has the lowest import cover and they are withdrawing as fast as they deposit into their Sovereign Wealth Fund.”

How will this be addressed within the context of a meeting of labour ministers all ostensibly committed to “priority attention to and investment in integrated policies and strategies to create decent jobs, extend social protection and facilitate just transitions”?

Where will T&T’s growing socio-economic divide feature in the discussion on “human-centric” economic recovery and the challenge of labour migration in key sectors? Add to that the role of inward migration in expanding opportunities in our labour market.

Importantly, as well, is the requirement of “just transitions” within the context of inevitable global economic change, and an unfolding climate crisis against which all discussions on Caribbean climate must be nuanced.

It is time national dialogues in our region move more firmly in the direction of these subjects that have a bearing on our future viability. I looked and looked again at what the ILO has in store for Caribbean governments next week and hope we take an appropriate cue with eyes set on issues that reach farther and wider than unstable, chaotic labour markets and interventions to stabilise them.

Our labour ministers in this region are routinely clustered among the least influential of Cabinet members. Quick, name three of them from any three Caricom countries including your own.

True, such meetings are not meant to resolve all the problems of the world. But they play a role in defining the nature and pace of change. Come away with a reinforced status quo, and you have reached nowhere, achieved nothing – whatever the fancy language.

The pandemic bottom line

Now that COVID-19 has begun to fade into the background – though it has not completely disappeared - we should not let too much time pass before convening an honest retrospective on the country’s pandemic response.

This should be designed to capture everything from the quality of official interventions to civil, political, scientific, communication, and other areas of national performance.

Of course, there will always be difficulties associated with the mediation of such a discourse, particularly since virtually all quarters of recognised authority are known to have fallen short – however hard we all tried. The judiciary, I believe, remained intact and independent.

The fact is nobody really saw this coming in the way it eventually did. And, in the process, every strength and every weakness of a country still in the transition to full maturity lay exposed for all to see.

That said, show me a country, small or large, that matched the challenge through public policy and private action to the extent that the pandemic turned out to be, as some impostors here continue to suggest - much ado about a relatively minor matter.

The purpose of a full review in T&T would be to examine both the brittle and the strong points of the institutions - formal and informal – that acted on our behalf, however marginal or integral their actual roles.

In the process, we are likely to discover as much beauty as the utterly repulsive. Some of the latter has been chronicled right here on this page and expressed as privilege, political opportunism, charlatanism, and a most cynical cleavage to myth and untruth.

Such public observations therefore disqualify me from a mediating role since there is no possibility of a “middle ground” when close to 4,400 have died.

From the very beginning when COVID-denial (“it’s just a bad flu”) barged onto the public stage, to claims that pandemic measures here comprised a uniquely disproportionate reaction (“the rest of the Americas remains open for business”), to an assertion of ethnic favouritism, open promotion of vaccine-hesitancy, to the suggestion that many who died would have died anyway. There is much to consider along the way.

These are not pleasant memories. They all pointed to a willingness by some, led by opinion-leaders acting from the standpoint of personal privilege, to have the country sacrifice what they considered to be lesser lives and livelihoods.

Today, even as the significant dent sustained on the economy is being addressed (as is the case almost everywhere), there is a narrative which purports failure while hopefully envisaging consequential partisan fortune. This is matched and outdone only by the parading of statistics on violent crime as a function of political boastfulness.

It has to be that we are afflicted with some kind of illness deeply embedded in our collective psyche that’s destined to be far more fatal than the virus which overran the globe.

Last week, a few of us were remembering covert food-sharing escapades, mask-wearing habits, “essential” workers and the media, vaccination certificates, pandemic elections (there were several throughout the Caribbean), quarantine detentions, border closures, the press conferences, wild parties ignored by the police, “private” beaches, painful nasal swabs, who visited previously unexplored territory for the vaccine, COVID-deniers who fell ill, and most sadly we remembered those who died.

At least informally, we have been conducting our own individual and communal reviews. But it would be worthwhile for us as a country to conduct a clinical examination of all that went right and the several areas in which we fell down on the job.

It could be that the university folks are already having a rigorous look – as is their duty. Some of their professionals played particularly important roles in drawing attention to mental health perils and the science behind the vaccines. Others, not that much.

The Media Institute of the Caribbean, with which I am aligned, initiated several introspective journalistic reviews of what was happening on the public communication front regionally. The Association of Caribbean Media Workers frequently brought regional journalists together to catch up on the challenges and published ‘Through the Pandemic – State of the Caribbean Media Report 2022.’

Seems as if the sector in which I work (reviled and mocked as it is) admirably saw a role for itself in leading an open and honest discussion on what went wrong, and what went right.

In the process, we unearthed numerous areas of fault and fragility, and points of real strength and resilience. The rest of society needs to know how we really made it to this point.