Elections and the media connection

Though the political anniversaries that signal the onset of more intense electoral activity in the Caribbean aren’t fully due until next year, the hustings appear never to have faded into the background providing gratuitous leeway for developmental agendas.

In most instances, such as ours, the campaigning never ended; together with all associated instincts for division, conflict, and a lack of cohesion.

Note, that in 2025 there can be as many as nine elections in our region, including sharp contests right here in T&T, Jamaica, Suriname, and Guyana.

There are also expected to be contests in St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Kitts and Nevis, Belize, and Anguilla. Haiti was always a doubtful starter, even when now exiled prime minister Ariel Henry promised polls next year.

We shall see how that unfolds now that a Transitional Presidential Council is in place (following some remarkable work by Caricom) and the domestic and external games to undermine the Council’s influence and relevance have already been launched.

It has been clear that the relationship between media performance and the credibility of electoral outcomes can always be assumed.

This applies everywhere else. In Sierra Leone as a Commonwealth observer last year, for instance, I was assigned specific responsibility for examining media coverage of the electoral process there, and while there are significant differences in institutional landscapes, the role of journalists remained key to how the process unfolded.

It can be said that ensuing events in that country have hinged heavily on the quality of coverage of prevailing, lingering conflict by domestic, regional, and international media.

In Haiti, at this moment, there is the real threat that the collapse of credible, independent media will serve to reinforce the already powerful influence of a hugely compromised public communication landscape.

In the process, critical concerns related to health, food security, the provision of social services, the promotion of peace, and the brittle status of marginalised groups persist outside the frame of consistent, professional media coverage. In this context, media performance can become a matter of life and death.

Last week, at a meeting of global press freedom and free expression groups in Berlin, I joined with ACM President, Harvey Panka, in asserting, among other things, the urgency of ensuring the viability of existing independent media outlets in Haiti. This is proving to be a rather tall order, as worst-case scenarios are not always easily defined.

It is not always understood that the silencing of journalists is achievable by means other than violent, deadly attack … as we all know in other necks of the Caribbean woods.

Violations of independent reporting occur both through rewards and penalties. There is a concern, for example, that state advertising can be, and has been, used in the Caribbean as a tool to achieve the objective of bringing media enterprises in line with compliant narratives. Corporate entities also employ such methods.

In the context of elections, I have been an advocate for media enterprises to agree to transparent accounting requirements when it comes to political campaign spend by political parties – much of which is absorbed by media companies.

This is not universally supported within the industry, but I believe it can form part of a best-practice model when it comes to media practice at times of elections. There is also need for a wholesome, enlightened discussion around social media.

The feelings of many practitioners and advocates on such matters form the basis for a number of interventions with which I have been associated over the years.

For example, through the Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers’ (ACM) Election Handbook for Caribbean Journalists, published in 2009 and edited by Lennox Grant and myself, there is guidance on the professional and ethical conduct of media enterprises and their journalists to assure devoted vigilance and to insulate themselves from claims of bias.

Nobody believes such an injunction meets a perfect state of affairs. Media audiences are, especially through their engagement of social media, becoming far more capable of detecting deception in the form of mis and disinformation. But not always.

There is still a lot more work to be done to meet the deliverables of media and information literacy.

Social media engine rooms run by political party operatives in T&T are already up and running and, in many cases, are easily recognisable. Their role in either ensuring or undermining the benefits of democratic practice is open for debate and discussion.

Professional journalism confronts a stern test as elections approach. Our democracy relies on its successful navigation of the challenges.

 

Getting away with murder

April 17, 2024 - Even as we collectively lament a news agenda over-laden with accounts of indescribably horrific acts of murderous violence has come information that glimmers of comforting hope at times such as these remain stubbornly absent.

Whatever the official promises and declarations, there has clearly been no progress in reversing this country’s deplorable detection rate when it comes to murder.

Shane Superville’s GML story on Sunday noted a halving of the detection rate for homicides from an already modest 16% over the first three months of 2023, to 8% between January 1 and April 1 this year.

Put another way; this year so far, there were arrests in only 11 of the 142 reported murders during the period. Now, to be fair, this does not mean to say that is the end of that, since police investigations could well have since yielded positive results with these specific cases. So maybe, in the end, the statistic will be 10% or 12%. I don't know.

The sociologists and people whose work involves looking closely at these things, both globally and parochially, must certainly, at this stage, be developing conclusions on the impact of high, chronic impunity on societies such as ours, widespread fear being among the first and most intense impacts.

Some have also pointed to the changing nature of homicides in T&T, now dominated by organised activity and what some describe as “psychotic” events. Knowing more about these things can change the manner in which modus operandi are addressed.

For instance, the incidence of organised crime is in part being addressed through anti-gang legislation with more focused and increased penalties, and changes on the question of bail.

Even so, the fact that a murderer is much more likely than not to get away with such a grievous act, has had a far more influential impact on the current situation than the fear of punishment and the judicial interpretation of harsh laws.

In my view, the knowledge that you are highly likely to be caught and promptly punished provides conditions for a far higher level of deterrence. The deterrent effect of punishments, capital punishment for murder for example, has time and again been questioned by people who know much about these things.

What is needed is for murderers to be captured, brought to trial, and punished as promptly as possible. So, this is a matter first and foremost of enlightened, highly motivated, and well-resourced policing, followed by the efficient delivery of justice, and the ameliorative effects of punishment.

Preventative interventions are a key and necessary part of the required dynamic, but there is now an immediate need to bring violators to justice. How and why things reached this stage flow as parallel, not overlapping concerns.

The role of legislators, across the political aisle, also has to be founded on greater coherence – all sides listening closely to the other. What currently obtains in T&T is far from this ideal. It has not helped that political leadership on the subject has been grossly deficient when it comes to collective deliberation and intervention.

Crime detection rates are not the stuff of political one-upmanship, especially when loss of life is involved - however critical the quality of legislative and executive leadership. The experiences of others also signal the questionable impact of vigilantism and the serious danger of extra-judicial murder – both implicit in the lobby for more guns and the return to the “good old days” when the police are said to have been prepared to skip trials and go straight for fatal punishment.

There is a role for academia here in providing clearer direction on such matters to avoid unthinking revenge becoming a dangerous substitute for justice. This is particularly important at this dark time.

But there remains no “spin” to untangle the emotions that flow from feelings of hopelessness. No political grandiloquence capable of explaining away open evidence of incapacity. No resort to magical intervention as anodyne for the failings of human effort sufficient to bring assurance and confidence.

It is also significant that nothing about this is brand new or estimated in measures of electoral terms. My personal journalistic archives in recent decades do not record a time when, as a noted trend spanning any significant period, investigative outcomes yielded anything to suggest that a durable trend of effective policing was at hand.

The current situation in fact does not signify a relapse of any kind, but the escalation of persistent decline. Getting away with murder has long been a disturbing norm.

 

Children Beyond the Legal Boundaries

There is more than one reason to feel uncomfortable and emotionally queasy about some matters discussed at last Friday’s hearing of the Joint Select Committee on Human Rights, Equality and Diversity with special focus on the question of child labour.

Numerous unpleasant memories, old and new, returned to heighten my discomfort over the framing of official positions expressed, albeit out of undeniable concern by state functionaries. Don’t get me wrong, there was nothing but good intentions on show at the hearing.

Our own front-page headline on Saturday however flagged the possibility of a ‘Crackdown on Child Beggars’ while the substantive story was titled ‘TTPS Going After Child Beggars.’

Eight years ago, a collaboration involving several institutions including the Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM), UNICEF, and the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) produced Our Children, Our Media: A Guide for Caribbean Media Practitioners.

I was part of the team, supervised by Steve Maximay, that worked on the publication whose main contributor was Barbadian journalist, Julius Gittens. It was the product of a series of regional journalism workshops and extensive research. The major thrust of the “guide” was to bring journalistic meaning and expression to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

I had by then long been influenced, as a parent and journalist, by such a mandate. In 2007, for example, in an effort led by then UNIC National Information Officer in T&T, Elizabeth Solomon (now Caricom Assistant Secretary General, Foreign and Community Relations) we looked at media coverage guided by such rights.

Literature from that event left lying around at my home one day led to an accusation by my son Mikhail (then a minor) that his parents were depriving him of the right to hold opinions of his own! Almost every single friend and associate of mine has heard that story.

Later, in 2014, I covered the ILO’s Regional Initiative: Latin America and the Caribbean Free of Child Labour which produced a ‘Brasilia Declaration’ aimed at eliminating “the worst forms of child labour” by 2016 and all forms by the year 2020.

Our then Labour Minister, Errol McLeod, described child labour as “a sin” after affixing his signature to the Declaration in the Brazilian capital.

That proceedings from that very event helped nuance the discussion when President Lula da Silva (now back in the saddle) described his early life as a child vendor and, in the process, inserted the dilemma of economic necessity versus the strict application of law.

Last Friday, Opposition Senator Jearlean John, relayed a similar message when she spoke of her childhood days in Charlotteville selling fish and vegetables and the existence of what she described as a “cultural shift.” It was a singularly important intervention.

One of the key lessons I have learned along the way (two of my close childhood friends were grossly underpaid “apprentice” mechanics at 15 and 16 earning $2.50 - $5.00 a week), was that this issue of child labour requires broad social dialogue based on an understanding of much more than what the law permits or prohibits.

Supt Claire Guy-Alleyne’s professional brief and her quoted remarks last Friday touched on this, but insufficiently to exhibit what I consider to be her sensitivity to the numerous complexities.

As a well-informed presenter at more than one regional media training exercise, it was clear that the TTPS, through Guy-Alleyne and her team, has within its community a valuable resource to add the humanitarian dynamic to application of law.

But such is the nature of policing here, it was well beyond her brief to remind the JSC and this country that observance of the rights of the child constitutes a vital element of social, cultural, and economic rights.

Under such conditions of denial, our bungling of migrant rights has imposed an additional dimension we need to negotiate with greater care.

Denial of the right of migrant children to an education over a protracted period, followed by forceful application of criminal law to address its outcome, constitutes a brutal knee to the neck.

It is also similarly injurious that after almost one decade of the Brasilia photo-op, five years after the establishment of a National Steering Committee for the Prevention and Elimination of Child Labour, and the existence of “multiple programmes”, almost nothing has happened and the absence of data is being cited in defence of gross official negligence on this matter.

People, we are not getting our priorities right!

Unfinished CCJ business

The month of April has arrived and met us all the poorer in the absence of several key people who had helped prescribe an alternative developmental pathway for us in T&T and the Caribbean Community.

For certain, moving the region from one phase to the next in pursuit of the kind of independence that breeds self-confidence and pride - based on real achievement - has proven as painful as it has been beneficial in small but meaningful steps.

Overcoming diffidence and self-loathing is a well-known challenge of the post-colonial experience – all sixty-one and a half years of it in our case. Those who dare engage the dynamics of change have, sadly, not appeared in significant numbers.

So, when last Saturday the news broke that Michael de la Bastide had died there was a futile scramble to put my hands on my copy of Within the Law, Memoirs of A Caribbean Jurist.

In it, I had borne witness not to superhuman powers and resolve, but to very human attributes upon encountering new and difficult terrain. Had I found the book, I could have filled this space with quips and anecdotes to support this contention of essential humanity.

Only three days before this had come word that Désirée Bernard of Guyana – another member of the inaugural Bench of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) had passed. This came almost three months after the death of Dutch jurist Jacob Wit who, in 2005, had sat alongside de la Bastide and Bernard and two others in the brave, new world of the CCJ.

Also among them 19 years ago this month, was late Guyana-born Caribbean jurist/legal luminary, Duke Pollard, who left us in 2022.

The important nature of the task embraced by these Caribbean icons has been captured in the numerous, fitting accolades that have reached the public space throughout the region.

It must have grieved them heavily though that the commitments of the 2001 undertaking and 2005 inauguration had dwindled to timid apprehension and cruel active and passive ambivalence. For instance, late prime minister Basdeo Panday had once lobbied forcefully to host the headquarters of the CCJ and spoke eloquently in support of its establishment.

His subsequent campaign for urgent reform of the national constitution (which is currently being considered since his passing in January) significantly omitted mention of final appellate status for the CCJ.

This is despite, even during his rigid about turn on the matter, conceding that the fear of political interference and the potential for disproportionate financial obligations, were completely unfounded given the process for the appointment of judges and the Court’s innovative funding mechanism.

Today, in 2024, some of these baseless concerns have returned to haunt us. The Caribbean legal fraternity is yet to fully ventilate these subjects in the public space – the practice of law seemingly being the stuff of cloistered virtue.

In fact, we keep hearing nonsense, even from professional advocates, about “we not in the CCJ” despite existing, mandatory compliance as a court of original jurisdiction on questions of the revised Treaty of Chaguaramas and T&T having been the subject of judgments both in favour and against single market practices by this country.

To his credit, attorney general Reginald Armour has repeatedly flagged the issue. On Saturday, on hearing of the passing of the former Chief Justice, he said: “In acknowledging his indelible contribution to the quality of this Republic’s proud development since its independence, the people of Trinidad and Tobago can now contribute to completing his dream of replacing the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice.”

Armour should now get all his colleagues to more aggressively pursue full adoption of all functions of the CCJ, especially as part of the process of reforming our constitution.

This, more than any statue or street name or fancy statement, is the least to be expected as a fitting tribute to Michael de la Bastide and the team of pioneers who helped us inch forward to complete the act of our independence. Sad that he and some of the other leading pioneers have not lived to see us get there.

I-Spy and Espionage

Just when you thought your cover was intact and nobody would recognise you as secret agent WG1007, up comes your so-called bredrin, RS07, out in the open! This had to have been a public confession inspired by a long and hard look in the mirror and chronic over-consumption of sugar.

Who would have thought former media colleague, Raffique Shah, would have at this stage in life blown his cover, and in the process, the rest of ours? My jaw still hangs low after reading the newspaper column last Sunday in which he blows an otherwise sturdy lid off a virtual latrine of intrigue and mystery.

Formerly known as MarathonMan001, he must surely be going off his rockers. He must have been demoted to ShortSprint000 before being assigned RS07 – “R” for “retired” and that last “0” (down from 007) lingering like ganja smoke in a 1970s blocko. Who would have thought there were once two “0”s and a guy with dark hair who could shoot straight-straight and talk smooth?

But there I was thinking I had got away with being “a CIA” and “bringing in the Yankee dollars” – despite being exposed by whispering gossipmongers the other day. Even a threat of freshly pressed court clothes did not hush idle mouths.

If I had to be in the Wikileaks cables, it would have had to do with oyster cocktails and lambi souse - not intelligence, even though I does read plenty books.

I mean, I won’t have made the grade. I probably don’t pray too good, and I had to borrow money for my own house and not jumped any HDC queue. So fat chance I would have ever been promoted to triple “0” status.

I have been on my own. No Iluminati or Lodge, or Big Pharma or 5G. Not even a spiritual advisor … or two. And to be clear, I have been to Guanapo … on hikes only … and without candles and live chickens and/or goats and long sharp knives.

Plenty church thing in this season of palm leaves and abeer and iftar though. Plenty “advising” and praying. Agents busy, busy. Crimes to be investigated. Phones to be tapped. Lovers to be stalked.

Reminds me of the time we staked out this horning couple. They liked paddle boat rides down in south. The guy was a writer and the other man’s wife was a spoilt brat rich girl whose conniving husband stole a love letter from her purse and tried extorting money from the loving couple.

Then he tried to have his wife killed, and we broke the case because of a key. A simple key! That was spy work of the highest order. Oh, wait! Sorry. That was Hansley Ajodha’s latest film, Infidelity. I get mixed up between fact and fiction sometimes.

It’s like that time I could have sworn state resources were being used to build a church in the bush. Real prayers were said. ProjectManager000001 was skillfully at work. Or was this, too, the stuff of twisted imagination, someone having had too much mauby before sleep?

Before that, the bush church in the late 1970s had a big barrel for Kool-Aid … on Guyanese government property. I hear they want that one back too, only this time with COVID vaccines for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, to keep Big Pharma happy and to drive masked black and brown populations down to manageable levels.

All of this, of course, to deny evidence that the earth is in fact flat, and that the southern coast of Trinidad reaches the very edge. Yeah right, they “landed on the moon”, and everybody knows 9-11 was an inside job with the eventual aim of controlling the world.

When I was a child, I always wanted to be a spy, to investigate and to expose these kinds of lies. I kinda ended up in journalism because of that. But what is it with these people? Don’t they want to know the truth? Raf has blown our cover! Is there some kind of secret sign to indicate that somebody else needs to drop out of the mission too? I can hold my ring finger down with my thumb while twitching the other three.

Art's higher purpose - our several conversations

A glaucoma-themed art exhibition last week could have found few better locations than an eye clinic for a launch. Though distracted and distressed by that fact that we were just one block away from discovery of an outrageous, murderous crime in south Valsayn, there appeared, to me, to be an ironic spark of artistic light.

In any event, there was no way I would have dared miss Patrick Roberts’ The Windows – A Conversation with Glaucoma – a collection of mainly acrylic and pastel works depicting several East Port of Spain/Laventille physical structures whose artistic meaning, for Patrick, extended beyond the impact of mere architecture.

True, the artist was a QRC schoolmate, did the cover for my first collection of poems in 1977, and we knew each other well from art class and my brief (and highly unsuccessful) affair with rugby decades ago.

But it interested me most that the experience was to occur amid ophthalmic paraphernalia and involve a group of people with an interest in one or both issues of physical sight and artistic vision.

I am not a strong advocate of art as an explicit platform for the promotion of causes; since I believe that good art already has the forceful, implicit impact of influencing personal and public opinion. It need not amount to sloganeering or being paraded as placards. Though, I suppose, if we wished it can be employed that way.

But here, in Valsayn, was an example of visual art relating a story of growing sightlessness and which, in the process, urges greater attention to this country’s leading cause of preventable blindness. Such, at least, was its impact on me.

This is what some describe as art’s “higher purpose.” Not any kind of esoteric, spiritual mumbo-jumbo, but an actual connecting of the creative imagination with actions to be taken and issues requiring attention.

In some countries, there has been recognition of the value of public art displays to promote notions of cohesion and to encourage support for actions to mitigate social ills. Only last week I was lamenting the removal of the student art we all admired on the wall bordering the now-demolished Powergen generating facility along Wrightson Road.

The wall remains standing, for now, and so too should the art have remained in place. This, I thought, was myopia both as metaphor and as underlying social condition. Maybe there are other plans about which I have not heard. I extend apologies in advance if there is indeed a Plan B.

As for Patrick, with vision now restricted – or let us say, influenced by - the use of just one eye, his work displays a remarkable degree of depth perception, which is a function not generally observed among people affected by glaucoma.

It was ophthalmologist, Dr Debra Bartholomew, who explained this to the few in the room who had not before understood such a limitation. Here was an artist, with impaired vision, displaying multi-dimensional features of the subjects of his work.

Now, if that does not sound a note of hope little else can. The occasion also provided both Dr Bartholomew and Dr Rishi Sharma of the Caribbean Eye Institute (where the exhibition was staged) with the opportunity to paint pictures of an increasingly urgent situation.

Dr Bartholomew, for example, described Tobago as a virtual glaucoma hotspot (my words) and encouraged testing as a crucial step that needs to be taken as soon as possible. Dr Sharma established the important connection between a rising tide of Non-Communicables such as diabetes and hypertension and growth in the number of glaucoma cases nationally.

On that note, one member of the audience urged similar action, through art, to highlight the scourge of NCDs, and its connections with glaucoma and other health challenges. If Patrick had envisaged a “conversation”, this was it!

“The Silent Thief”, as glaucoma has come to be known, and as Patrick related, does not immediately exhibit major symptoms, but when detected requires immediate action since vision loss through this condition is irreversible.

The treatments include eye drops, laser treatment, and surgery which may later become necessary.

Now, usually, you would find this kind of material in this space earlier in the week, and I claim no specific expertise. But I can tell you that the Glaucoma Conversation which continues until Saturday contains instruction in art, medicine, and addressing much wider social disabilities.

 

Caricom’s Haiti Moment

Despite Ariel Henry’s resignation offer - and it is provisional upon several important pre-requisites - Caricom deliberations and action on Haiti have still fallen short of an ultimate solution, but so has every other prescription from everyone else.

The main difference, though, is that the regional grouping is engaging the deadly situation fully mindful of the contagion of chaos, the requirements of enlightened self-interest, and a sense of fraternal responsibility.

The latter, of course, prevails even though Haiti membership had defied even CLR James’s notion of “natural (West Indian) unity.” But the regional movement has long crossed that important and seriously difficult Rubicon.

It is important that Caricom has also, at least now, recognised the slow, incremental nature of any lasting resolution of longstanding anomalies and dysfunctionalities in that country.

Invasions, even by invitation (whose?), do not have the best record of success, unless there are Plans A, B, and C that take street-level realities into account. The question of what happens next is thus of supreme importance.

The absence of Ariel Henry from the country provided both opportunities and challenges. It was felt by some that his questionable occupation of office since the murder of Jovenel Moise, including Henry’s dubious support base, helped suspend rather than encourage enthusiastic global support in the current crisis.

For example, growth in financial support for a Kenya-led UN Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti, up to Monday when Caricom met, appeared to have stalled.

With gangs, and their barely closeted political allies firmly in charge of major sections of Port-au-Prince, and open aspirations being expressed by known miscreants, there still appear to be few durable options available even in a post-Henry era.

This may come in the form of an internationally supervised, circumscribed or “defensive” democracy - meaning that the main tenets of liberal democracy would be made to adjust and match the limited ability of the country to function in accordance with such values.

This is, in fact, not an unknown Haitian reality, including the role of thugs and other criminals.

Easy for the rest of us to say, I suppose. But there are reality checks concerned onlookers to developments there need to undertake. Well-meaning naivete rooted in romantic notions of a first black republic have for the moment to be put aside.

Ditto the tendency to over-simplify the deeply intractable difficulties of Haiti. This goes beyond merely saying “I’m sorry” or calling on Caricom to fix things quickly.

For Jamaica and The Bahamas – both represented on the Caricom Eminent Persons Group (EPG) on Haiti – ongoing strife in Haiti is a lived reality in their respective countries given geographical proximity and relatively easy access by sea.

It has not helped that these two neighbours have not always managed the process of integrating fleeing Haitians, and some hard questions remain regarding the forcible expulsion (refoulement) of asylum-seekers (as has been the case of T&T and the Venezuelans, by the way).

Some may contend such responses are justifiable, given the fact of limited absorptive capacity – geographical, economic, social, and cultural in nature. Yet, they do nothing to alleviate underlying causative factors.

Among the “things to be done”, therefore, is for our countries to get such international commitments right. This extends beyond the crisis in Haiti.

We have been through some of this before. The advocacy of a few influential leaders back in 1995-98 to promote Haitian membership of the Caricom fold had offered implicit assurances of an ability to mitigate the possibilities for collateral regional injury. It simply has not turned out that way.

Regional diplomatic folk speak quietly of the numerous challenges, including uneven reciprocal support when required on hemispheric and international stages. This is that troublesome sibling at the dinner table.

Yet, there is cause to consider a meaningful role in ensuring that such a regional democratic hot spot is urgently attended to. Monday’s meeting in Jamaica may have led to a variety of conclusions in the public sphere, but it certainly signalled engagement of the quality some considered to have been beyond our capabilities.

There is a lot more to be done, both by us and others. The UN Humanitarian Needs Response Plan for Haiti, with a budget of US$674 million, now stands at a fraction of what is needed.

The Caricom meeting attracted attention and active participation from a wide cross-section of the international community. I have seen where it has been described as a mere “talk shop.” There are people who have clearly not been following what has been happening. This is a significant Haiti moment for Caricom. But it's not yet over.

Art’s revolutionary ways

Emotional haze of Saharan proportions typically hovers over and permeates the season just ended - conditions under which it is best to be patient about many things. For example, few there may have been to have been discomfited by the Cro Cro judgment and now, regional political rulings on some musical content. But there should there be many more to consider measured caution on such matters.

For certain, crass, artless content is far less likely to engender open empathy once assaulted, than craft bearing subtle, instantly undetectable daggers aimed at the heart. Yet, even so, the application of justice and politics is capable of both rendering and rending fine coats of insulation over otherwise protected products of creative imagination.

The fine points of justice – an uncloistered virtue open to the outspoken comments of ordinary folk such as I – often crave fineries not easily found in the crudities of daily life. “People,” James Baldwin once famously said, “evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate.”

This is rather difficult, clumsy stuff that marks all areas of art. And we may note that literature and art have at times connoted aggressive subversion and revolutionary intent. Guyana’s President Ali, for instance, invokes Marley’s ostensibly benign messaging - even in the face of Marcus Garvey’s subversive anti-colonial inspiration woven into most of what the Jamaican artist had to offer.

Within “Trinibad” there are traces of Baldwin’s formulation of an alternative language to both understand and to describe current realities in what is being offered by these performers. It has been the same in other jurisdictions represented by different musical and artistic genres.

This is not to deny law its proper place. Incitement to acts of criminal violence is unacceptable under any circumstance. So, too, the willful defaming of people, or breaching of their (relative) right to privacy.

Most of us in the movement to promote freedom of expression globally agree this right is subject to permissible limitations – hate speech and defamation among them. But the boundaries to be drawn between such a right and acceptable exceptions invoke a variety of difficult considerations left in the hands of wise legislators and judges.

Surely, the Law Association is currently hard at work deliberating on such matters in the public interest and must be considering accompanying public debate and discussion. However, those of us who have been active on the question of removing all traces of criminal defamation from the statutes understand general ambivalence.

When the subject was debated in our parliament ten years ago, there was rare bipartisan agreement on the applicability of jail when sentencing for acts of criminal defamation. What followed was a half measure referencing “malicious defamatory libel known to be false.”

This is important to remember amid recent developments that have cast the subject of freedom of expression, through creative content, under the spotlight. There is not likely to be strong opposition to the imposition of criminal penalties for specified creative and other expression.

We are already used to “banning” as a coping mechanism. But this has become somewhat anachronistic as an option, since the arms of official prohibition are difficult to extend beyond the sitting ducks of traditional, domestic media.

There is also a certain nonsense associated with repeated references to “airplay”, and its bearing on the popularity of contemporary music, that belies the fact that young people are more abundantly keyed into online platforms than any other medium.

References to “airplay” also invoke notions of official control through outright banning, ill-advised content quota restrictions, and what I have long considered to be our ready resort to prohibition. In some countries we know well, such an instinct extends to other institutions such as libraries, schools, and art galleries.

There is also an opportunity for science to determine psychological triggers and impacts and the factors that predispose people differently across socio-cultural divides. This goes beyond amateur intuition.

Don’t get me wrong, though. Nonsense is nonsense. I however reserve the right to listen to, read, or view the nonsense of my choice. Additionally, people in government always want “positive” messaging to counteract the “negatives” they paraded while being out of office. In some instances, the “negatives” are the outcomes of their own inaction or incompetence.

Meanwhile, look around you and note instances in which books and art and music are giving the middle finger to the status quo. I say keep them coming!

 

Disastrous Communication Gaps

Just back from a few days in Jamaica with Caribbean media colleagues, disaster response agencies, and associated institutions discussing relationships to be forged and/or strengthened as our region addresses a multiplicity of hazards and threats of both human and natural origins.

This was particularly significant in the face of the “Tobago oil spill” story and the extent to which the flow of information on the subject has been open to speculation, conspiracy theories, and mischief of various, cynical varieties.

The ease with which elaborate, obviously malicious narratives based on the slenderest threads of proof dominated the public space is instructive. Among other things, though, it points to signal failures along the information spectrum – both official and informal. In such an environment, innocent misinformation transitions easily to serious disinformation.

It is not advisable to regurgitate unverifiable or maliciously seeded speculation, and I won’t do so here, but people have appeared overly willing to assume the very worst even in the absence of basic truths.

So, back to the hybrid event in Jamaica, which followed a similar programme two weeks before, also coordinated by the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC).

There have been efforts by the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) – a partner in the Jamaican workshop – and the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM) on this matter over the years.

In fact, in 2018 when the ACM convened its Biennial Congress in Barbados, it was tied to the hosting of an intense examination of ways media professionals and communicators could have improved their coverage of a variety of crises, emergencies, and threats – not the least being hazards associated with extreme weather events, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

But what was different about the Jamaica workshop was its deeper elaboration of the multi-faceted nature of these challenges when placed alongside numerous chronic socio-cultural-political phenomena.

I paid particularly close attention to the illustrious Haitian/Canadian journalist, Nancy Roc, who spent considerable time identifying some key issues that affected proactive measures and responses to Haiti’s tragic earthquake of 2010 which claimed over 200,000 lives.

There are key social, political, and historical antecedents that are not common to our experience in the English-speaking Caribbean, but our more durable systems of governance and the survivability of our countries are not entirely immunised by such key differences. There are basic principles of disaster response and recovery to which the Haitian experience should have alerted us in 2010 and following.

For one, stakeholder recognition needs to be more deeply entrenched. This is expressed, in some instances, in the degree to which local authorities, communities, and civil society organisations, including media, have roles in response and recovery processes.

This does not require the elimination of creative tensions between the state and institutions such as the media and should not signal the end of journalistic scepticism and rigorous reporting.

Both journalists and emergency response agencies at the MIC event were however clear on stronger lines of communication based on trust, and on the basis of a clearer understanding of our respective mandates and roles.

This is too often not the case. In 2018, for instance, the ACM had proposed the elevation of journalists somewhere near the status of “first responders” - assisted at times of crisis by official agencies with reach and access to the epicenter of emergency events. This was with specific reference to regional journalists assigned to cover Caribbean crises. Sadly, nothing happened.

At that time, we had only recently been through Category 5 hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 which caused death and major destruction in several Caribbean countries under the watch of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA).

The point in all this is that in every instance – whether we speak about successive hurricane seasons, volcanic eruptions (as with St Vincent in 2021), earthquakes, and other hazards (such as the Tobago episode) there is a need for more intense, honest, and timely information sharing.

In countries such as ours that place so little emphasis on the discipline of crisis communication, we have witnessed how things go terribly wrong within a short space of time.

Journalists are a major, but not exclusive, group of stakeholders to address such a shortcoming. Sadly, too few expert analyses of what happened in our territorial waters three weeks ago have addressed this deficiency. But it remains an important and urgent issue, the relevance of which is surely to unfold as the seasons change over the coming months.

 

Art and Our Packed Agenda

There are so many things on the current agenda, both pleasant and deeply tragic, that a public affairs newspaper column provided limited space will always fall far short of comprehensive or adequate coverage.

There is the fact of personal perspective and values with these media things as you know. Yet, I always navigate quickly to the op-eds to witness vast tapestries, the undersides of which almost always appear untidily stitched and patched, but where routinely resides actual meaning.

Today, I could have addressed the fact of our unitary state and positioned it alongside other regional archipelagos within our archipelago – St Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, St Vincent and the Grenadines, all of The Bahamas, and the several others - all different but representing similar social and political conundra.

We would have called that one ‘The Spill that Binds’ and helped define the “self” in “self-determination” and explored questions of unitary statehood.

Then there are the measured tiptoes around the perimeter of horror and pain that have defied legal technicality in the way a headless corpse requires a final declaration of death by a lingering DMO.

“Genocide” by other names. “Ethnic cleansing” as euphemistic “migration”. “Hamas” for the men, women, and children of Palestine.

Much like “Laventille” and “Caroni” as ethnic code and trigger for action, or no action. “Carnival culture” the same. “Beat pan, but don’t beat books.” A reduction of festival to “song and dance” and its practices as emblematic of terminal ethnic failure.

I am no real fan of the concept of Carnival’s ostensible cathartic or “safety valve” effect. To agree with this would be to concede to multiple civilisational failures.

Creative expression is also not the stuff of rotating seasons. I have explored pan and its value to our country numerous times and need not retrace those steps now.

There will always be those who do not understand what we mean, solely on the basis of either personal aesthetic appreciation or ready resort to a notion of tribal exclusivity.

So, let’s get that one out of the way. Ditto music. This year, the performers sought to address the prejudice of people like me who have gradually stepped away from the scene of what we considered to be serial creative crime. I made it through an entire Calypso Monarch competition after many years, including some of the supposed “good old days.”

I always thought more than 90 percent of it was disposable and have witnessed seemingly endless recycling, even back then. It’s probably around the same ratio now and talk of more frequent “sampling” is easily dismissed.

So, let’s also race past the mas’ – the less said the better, except that emotions surrounding the “playing” of mas’ are entirely valid as a form of self-expression, love, and pride. For example, we in T&T understood “body positive” in all its manifestations long before it became the stuff of an identifiable social cause or movement.

Okay, last but not least. At one time, long ago, I experienced Carnival art in the mas’ camp. I remember well, as a young boy, seeing the Eustace family of St Augustine at work. Follette did Art at school. I followed suit.

The mas’ camps continue to perform the same function – as outlets for the production of superb art and creative mentoring.

Celebrated artist, Jackie Hinkson, has in recent years added yet another perspective on the art of Carnival. Art as both a focal point and backdrop for street theatre and the employment of art as journalistic first and second drafts of history.

In a sense, Hinkson’s ‘Ah Sailing with the Ship’ murals at Fisher Avenue in St Ann’s, which closed on Monday, represented a credible artistic archive of life in T&T spanning decades. When he explains its role, outside of the need to display artistic excellence, any journalist or social scientist would immediately recognise common cause.

This, I thought, was as Carnival an experience as you can get – picong and commentary, pretty and ugly mas,’ pan and more pan, history, and recency, bacchanal and argument, politics and politricks, and love after love.

When we get serious, we will find permanent accommodation for ‘Ah Sailing’ and all other quality visual art the season produces. This calls for about as much space as we devote to naked walls, underutilised community centres, and an extensive list of prestige infrastructure projects.

This is much more than a centrally located Carnival Museum. It is a claiming of public territory by art in the way some major cities yield space to what helps define their past and their present.

See what I mean? Plenty things to talk about.

De Carnival is Over

Listen to this here:

Eeef you know how allyou does get me vex this time of the year. Results does come een and like it had mad pills in your beer. The people and dem practise hard, hard for months, but quarrel is all you have in your response. The judges and dem try hard to be fair, yet when results reach is like louse run in your hair.

It must have a formula to get rid of this, something that work fast like Phensic or Vicks. Instead you keep kwart and head out Buccoo Reef, you bawling and screaming how the judge and dem t’ief.

Remember the time Machel win the Road March, and was like somebody iron your drawers with cornstarch. Everywhere you did turn was somebody grumbling, or behaving in ways that was extremely disturbing. A man pull a gun for a girl in a bar, a next one kneel down and pray to a star.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know how it can turn, you don’t need a rule book to express your concern. But it would help if you take a lil time, to acquaint yourself with how the rules line by line. The judges come from here and most try to be fair, yet you cussing and vexing like if they don’t care.

A time a man from Grande lose a bet on the pan, he had to run naked all the way Tableland. A next one he say Gypsy go beat them in song, lose all he money and selling chilli bibi in town.

Massy Trinidad All Stars en route to another win

Now some of you must be wondering and saying, that Wes take a drink or still jumping and playing, but oh lord I have now to declare, I can’t take the grumbling about how all things unfair.

Pan remains the greatest thing we does do, better than everything else we pursue. Whether is oil or gas or financial affairs, everything else does leave we in arrears. Congrats Renegades and All Stars you won our hearts, with excellence in the practice of musical arts.

XO we love you and for you it was hard, but coming third didn’t mean you were bad. BJ, Khan and Ainsworth you worked like a team, and this year’s arrangement soared high like a dream.

Not taking anything from Duvone or Smooth, to do that would be mindless and rude. These two genius have no limits on talent and skill, obligations to their great bands they always fulfil. I followed their arrangements from the prelims, the songs grew new torsos, organs and limbs, crescendos and flourishes melodious rifts, such wonders contained in your musical gifts.

Bp Renegades reaches 13 wins with this tie

Now that the storm has ended and calmed, and soon everybody will be waving a palm. Doh quarrel and fight about who win or lorse, collective creativity will always be boss.

On this quiet Ash Wednesday we know, we have a whole nation to nurture and grow. Pan, kaiso, street theatre and mas, a whole nation does be audience and cast. I was never a fan of much of this, outside of pan which brings so much bliss. But we can do all without being drunken or high, or believing in miracles that come from the sky.

We live in a place where love and imagination, is more than the passing tide of an undeclared vacation. For the rest of the year, the pans won’t go quiet, for music is something with a limitless diet. The kaiso need work and the mas’ could be better, a new Minshall can come and be the trendsetter.

Republic Bank Exodus - third

Ditto the kaiso that has started to move, in a direction to show that it can improve. New Machel, Karene, Chucky, Mical and Helon, lyrics and music sweet like a ripe melon. Actually, I prefer MM this style, so I haven’t paid attention in quite a while. How much jump and wave and wine you could make, when there are forms that nice like a hot shark and bake?

All ah this make me resort to couplet and metre, de Carnival fare was so much better and sweeter. I wasn’t there with scant clothes in the street, yet this was more than who did or did not compete. Now on this Ash Wednesday there is much work to be done, the real answers to which was a part of the fun.

Let’s do this!

Carnival defiance

Last weekend provided a good opportunity to sample, in small and large bits, the contradictions of a country said to be under siege from violent crime and social conflict, and the offerings of people bent on defiant creative expression through it all.

The one thing you realise when doing so in T&T is that those intent on challenging the odds do not comprise a marginal, monolithic minority. It seems that for as many who have yielded to fear, there are numerous others interested in claiming earned doses of freedom.

This is, perhaps, the spirit of “Kambule” as expressed by poet Pearl Eintou Springer – a veritable battle of wills between the mighty and the small that has found common metaphorical cause among all of us.

We should know that two Carnival days do not by themselves constitute the most important features of the season. No, “everybody” does not play mas’.  “Everybody” does not like soca and fete. And, though I cannot understand why, “everybody” is not into pan.

Maybe it is that the whole of these divided loyalties surpasses the sum of the variety of discrete, not always harmonious parts. Bits and pieces that somehow coexistent as in an expanding fragmented yet cohesive universe – as my astrophysicist niece Zahra would probably put it.

So, my friends and colleagues all know I do not like Carnival fetes. The music is too loud, and all the soca songs sound the same to me. Yet, there are sensible people who partake.

I also happen to believe that the share of nonsense lyrics and unoriginal music at calypso competitions has always vastly outstripped anything of value – so when they were on competitor number 150, or whatever, at Skinner Park last Saturday, I was on a folding chair in a panyard in the open air not listening, though I tried earlier.

Sure, there has been creative genius along the way, but I am also not keen on most of mas’ and never aspired to be a part of it – save for teenage Jab Jab in Curepe.

I am aware of existential value, though, and would never attempt to diminish the importance of such things. As a fledgling watercolourist I recognise colour and light and movement. The best costume designers can employ all these conditions to tell valid stories.

These are some personal contradictions of mine. You probably have yours too. You may, for instance, do not believe that pan is the greatest thing we do in T&T. That its role in musical expression, social organisation, and economic potential is the stuff of fanciful myth.

So, on Sunday, for me, it was the Medium Band final in Tobago, on television.

Some of you probably missed the fact that pan arrangements have crossed epochal points of excellence at the hands of a new generation of musicians. That for young Kersh Ramsey from Black Rock, Tobago, who arranged for repeat winners Katzenjammers, there is no turning back.

That, at one time one of his mentors, Duvone Stewart, was that “brilliant young man” who was bound for greatness. Preach nonsense about youth disinterest in pan!

So, that was it for me on Sunday. But, on Saturday, I did have the chance to do three Carnival things. First stop was to check in on artist Jackie Hinkson’s Carnival murals in St Ann’s, which was still under construction.

I recalled at the height of the COVID19 lockdown (I think it was 2021) a young lady I know parked her car, put on a costume, and chipped, chipped by herself along Fisher Avenue alongside masqueraders and various Carnival characters frozen in place by Hinkson. She was not to be chained!

Then, when I left Fisher Avenue, I heard music at the Savannah where the Red Cross Kiddies Carnival was wrapping up. No fan of mas’ per se, but a huge supporter of anything positive to do with children, I raced over to the Savannah with camera in hand.

There is an element of child sufferation at such events that turns me off, but there was also a sense of pride and joy on the faces of the children whose parents and guardians had not already whisked back home.

The only thing left to do when I left there was to find myself in the idyllic Supernovas panyard in Lopinot. I had by then noted that everywhere people were not yielding. The defiance of Carnival’s early, indigenous origins was clearly in evidence. There was a liberation being pursued. Defiance, and the hope that drives it. Let’s see what the rest of this brings.

 

A Developmental Bottleneck

For me, what is remarkable about UNECLAC’s study on the impact of chronic road traffic congestion in T&T has been the virtual absence of sustained public outrage at the economic loss and psycho-social injury.

Instead, we have had the typical rote responses of public officials, business organisations, and politicians that have all sounded as patchy as the roadworks regularly on display. Then Carnival competitions began in earnest, and the rest of us forgot all about it.

An assessment of TT$2.26 billion in economic loss – 1.37 percent of GDP – and the evaporation of over one month of productive time is significant enough to merit more than passing attention. Just a reminder, and for contrast, even with new thrusts in food production agricultural output remains at just about 1.5 percent of annual GDP.

ECLAC also notes that its online survey of “social impressions” was conducted over the period June 20 – September 26, 2023. This means that school holidays, which usually provide an ease in traffic, and which in 2023 spanned July 7 to September 4, had to have been captured as a positive measure.

Could be all of this was considered. But I have the feeling that the traffic problem is actually worse than is reflected in the study. There is also an impact on our dignity that easily escapes the grasp of social research, even when assessing anger, frustration, and feelings of hopelessness.

For example, there is a small depression, let’s call it a small “hole” along the northbound section of the Southern Main Road in Curepe, near the OTB establishment. Once you’re free from the traffic lower down, at the fancy intersection with the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway, you can drop your guard and unwittingly take aim at the hole near the shoulder. It has been this way for years.

My son and I once witnessed a near violent crime when two hole-dodging drivers came out of their cars with murder on their minds over a tiny scratch on one of the vehicles.

It’s not irrelevant to the ECLAC study. There is considerable attention to the public policy implications of its findings. Fair enough. The buck probably stops at several points and public policy is one.

Widening and re-routing provide only temporary relief. People with fancy vehicles are also wont to declare the presence of “too many cars on the road” without offering a solution that includes a formula for determining who gets to keep their cars and who should be required to dispense with or suspend use of theirs.

Policy implications and conclusions recorded by the study focus heavily on public transportation services “including strategies to make public transportation services more accessible and attractive to commuters.”

Impressively, this suggestion is tempered by concerns regarding public safety, and the need to provide complementary “paratransit” services, ostensibly for people with disabilities and those who require off-route transits.

There is mention, as well, of the obvious, workable option of “telecommuting … to reduce the need for physical commuting especially among the professional categories of workers for whom this may be feasible.”

Now we’re talking. But this runs so afoul of current official and public culture that we may have to leave this for the next generation of public service and business leaders – lessons of the pandemic notwithstanding.

In any event, remedial measures are in most cases long-term. The ECLAC researchers remained conservative on the question of “better spatial planning” by restricting their concerns to annual and/or seasonal events.

There is clearly a need for a far more revolutionary approach. I remember discussions about this decades ago under the banner of “decentralisation.” Should local government reform in its truest sense occur, it would be natural to envisage the main cities, boroughs, and towns being disburdened from hosting central government offices and operations.

Admittedly, some of it has been happening over the years. The Ministry of Agriculture is now in Chaguanas. Passport offices now span more locations. But what are the ministries of Labour, Sport, Tourism, Rural Development, and Community Development doing in Port of Spain?

This is how governments can lead the way. But how can the private sector and other employers contribute? Telecommuting is on the menu, but so too other measures that can help transform the world of work.

All the while, and not that this should be of any comfort, but we aren’t the only ones confronting this massive monster of traffic congestion in the region.

Jamaica and Barbados are right alongside us, and in some ways even worse. They too can benefit from an ELAC reality check, even if life continues as usual beyond the initial headlines and soundbites, and this developmental bottleneck persists.

 

Reform Infatuations

Like so many other laymen with an interest in this sort of thing (and some experience with navigating it in associated fields), I have been paying close attention to recent, revived interest in the need to reform elements of our national constitution, ostensibly to bring the document in closer alignment with contemporary needs.

There have been peaks and troughs in wider interest over the years, and this phase too shall pass. So, let’s at least try to leave a better imprint this time around.

Public interest is sporadic even as those with vested interests, through advocacy of one kind or the other, persist in advancing both specific and general manifestations of national values.

The experts acknowledge that constitutions have as much to do with national aspirations and values as they have with application of law.

So, it’s fine for regular folks to provide broad expressions of concern and to propose changes more in keeping with what they see as necessary to move from one developmental point to the next. There won't be instant unanimity.

So, prompted by yet another wave of public interest, the Prime Minister has gone so far as to appoint an “advisory committee” headed by former House Speaker, Barendra Sinanan, and including an impressive mix of public figures, to formulate terms of reference for another national consultation on reforming the constitution.

Nothing wrong with that, though some are already declaring the effort’s redundancy in the face of a variety of starkly under-developed ideas on how the country can function better on the basis of constitutional principles.

The late Basdeo Panday, for example, can be credited posthumously with the current project because “constitutional reform” was a refrain that frequently bore his trademark eloquence.

Yet, I have never encountered, in his case, the kind of rigour required to convert generalised, fanciful intention into tangible language to inform serious review.

What, specifically, would be needed in the language of our collective statement of values to correct democratic deficiencies, address systemic faults in the hierarchy of governance, and generally render the preamble, rooted in human rights, an essential constitutional pillar?

Identifying technical prescriptions would have been useful. For example, drafters would have had great difficulty identifying the specific features of a system of proportional representation to address this notion of all-inclusive governance.

There are several models. Right here, within Caricom, there are examples to be found in Guyana and in Suriname. They operate systems of PR and have unicameral legislatures. Yet, even so, there are recurrent arguments, in these countries, focused on the entrenchment of privilege regarding different groups.

In neither case, has there been a minimisation of political conflict and alienation. Nor has there been the kind of consensus-based decision-making to distinguish these two neighbours from the rest of us where “winner-takes-all” is the order of the day.

Notions of “power-sharing” are also quite elusive by way of actual models.

Indeed, the option to explore unique pathways to such an arrangement in our case was rejected a least three times, (albeit bearing different features) – in 1986 with a 33-3 electoral outcome, in 1995 when the DAC held the balance of power following a 17-17 split, and in 2001 with an 18-18 outcome.

In the latter case, “power-sharing” options emerged in different forms but were rejected outright by all the key players, including advocates of such a condition.

It was then proven that it is the practice and habits of politics and not constitutional dictat that are the most influential factors in moving away from the current malaise.

Helen Drayton’s important column last Sunday also questions the effectiveness of reform under a variety of circumstances through which official, societal, and political behaviour are more likely to engender changes in circumstances. Go back and have a close read. Constitution reform is no miracle cure.

On a not unrelated note, what of the Caribbean Court of Justice? Mr Panday went on record to describe it as a vital building block toward the achievement of true independence as Caribbean states. It is one by-product of a revised Treaty of Chaguaramas frequently paraded before us as an international pact to which we voluntarily and boastfully subscribed.

How come the required changes to implant the CCJ as our final court of appeal, are not a part of our constitutional setup? We now have an attorney general who once expressed strong support for this, and a revered leader on the other side who gave it high ratings in its developmental stages.

The fact is, we may well find that those most heavily engaged in calling for reform of the constitution are among the least predisposed to any change. But let’s see how this latest infatuation goes.

 

 

OMG Pan!

Everyone who understands the value of pan to T&T would know how much of a hard sell can be the idea of its unmatched role as a musical instrument, as a model for social organisation, and as a platform for realisation of latent economic value.

On point number one, though, people are fully entitled not to like pan and the music played on it. I get “oh geed” in the eyes of some people I know whenever I talk about a “sweet” arrangement or how pore-raising has been one performance or the other.

Last Saturday, for example, I confessed to having held back tears during the Small Bands Semi-Finals when one particular band played an old Sparrow. I saw similar sentiments on the WACK feed and recalled one COVID lockdown evening of 2021, when a solitary online performance inspired the question from one virtual onlooker: “Am I supposed to be crying?”

Music appreciation is very heavily a matter of personal preference – instruments, treatment, and genres. For example, I have seen bagpipes perform as accompaniment for rap, but must say while I listen to such music, bagpipes do nothing for me.

Last Friday, I wowed over the abilities of a random assemblage of musicians at a jam at the Ethnic Jazz Club. Jazz does it for me.

I also frequently argue with my musician son about the vast superiority of Tupac over anything produced by any modern exponent of rap. He was brought up on Rachmaninov, Curtis Mayfield, Fela, Kitch, Tupac, and Barry White.

So, yes, pan’s value as a musical instrument playing a vast variety of genres can be the subject of emotional interpretation; though we also need to consider matters related to its unique origins and its suitability in conveying indigenous aesthetics.

Even so, I am completely against legislated taste and do not agree with some of the mandatory requirements of music airplay and education being proposed – “national instrument” or not. This amounts to a measure of jingoistic coercion that is never helpful.

As a counterpoint to such a situation, there have been other nonsenses, including reference to at least one other instrument. But not today. Not I.

On point two, it is much more difficult to dispute steelband organisation – the role of the panyard in particular - as being among the more important instruments to address much needed social transformation.

The “oh geed” types who will not be found semi-conscious around a panyard won’t know what I am talking about, neither would those who link pan and panyards with a notion of collective ethnic failure.

The panyard is a unique and special place. Real steelbands employ such spaces for the inculcation of values associated with discipline, production, and tolerance.

Then comes the part I have written about repeatedly – the significantly untapped economic value of pan and all its various elements. The list of opportunities is long – from steelpan manufacturing, to tuning, to arranging, to audio engineering, to design, to playing. There is a growing number of people, groups, and bands who have recognised this and now play active, income-generating roles in other countries.

We have long passed the stage where we focused on ill-advised protectionism even as we allowed intellectual property value, in earlier manifestations, to elude us. The world already knows the correct size of the rubber! They also know that, in T&T, we have the best players on the best pans, playing the best music (of both the past and present) by the best arrangers in the world.

On some such matters, I am not overly troubled. Young people are indeed “into” pan and can carry the torch. Perhaps not at ticket counters or jersey sales, because there is more to “participation” than that. There isn’t a single musical instrument competently played and appreciated (beyond classroom requirements) more than the pan. The impact of this exceeds the esoteric value of music.

It has been this way for a very long time. Young people do not routinely transfer to seats in the stands after they have learned to perform, but many do. This was already the case 40 years ago. Some also move to different instruments and other genres – the marvels of music already infused through pan.

The so-called seasonal nature of pan has also long been addressed. Pan people know the bands that play meaningful socio-cultural roles outside of Panorama competitions.

Sceptical? Check out ongoing Junior Panorama preliminaries, Small, Medium and bands. Visit a panyard. Tune into the online platforms. “Oh geed” can become a precious OMG moment. I dare you.

I see things

So, most of us have made it to 2024. Happy New Year! Last week I threatened to convert the Caribbean public affairs focus of this column into a space to which you turned for advice on love, jobs, the weather, pet care, the best curry mango, and fireworks.

We had had thick Sahara Dust last week, you see, and the neighbourhood animals were psyching themselves up for the usual assault from humans who consider loud noises capable of delivering some form of sadistic/masochistic happiness.

I spoke then of this ghostly, floating, human form I took for a late friend and colleague and literary gem who did not make the crossing beyond 311223. BC routinely imitated former Miami Herald columnist Robert Steinbeck’s annual predictions column.

The great bald one had even included some amazingly accurate predictions of his own (with some moderate adjustments including the names of people, places, and times for greater accuracy). For example, he would predict things like: Today, a man in north Trinidad will enter a pharmacy before noon with a prescription to address a lingering hangover from Sunday night’s revelry.

Then, when recording such a remarkably accurate prediction, he would insert the name of a friend he had taken to the pharmacy. Sometimes, he would also count on people forgetting what he had predicted and post-facto report on the success of what he recalled was a wild guess.

All fun and games until you notice that the last Play Whe mark of 2023 was “spider” (33). I would have lost at least $5 on that draw, since I only play “12” whenever I remember that I can get rich off these games of chance.

By the way, my number did not play on Boxing Day (even though it signifies “king” and there is no Play Whe on a Sunday or “holy” day because gambling is a sin unless the government says otherwise). Late prime minister Patrick Manning once announced to collective horror that he planned on outlawing all forms of gambling. Three years later, his party spectacularly lost a prematurely declared election. Just saying …

But, back to “spider.”

If you did physics at school you must know that either real or imagined spiders (including those that find your sleeping face in the night) can mean both good and bad things. Trinis typically believe that if you see a spider in your house (a brown one … not a pink or blue one) it means that you will win the Lotto and have enough money to light up the entire country in fireworks next festive event.

In some cultures, though, spiders bring only poor luck, especially if they rest on your face at night. This basically ensures that you’re not going to make it to the Lotto ticket booth. The South-East Asians, and others, minimise such a risk by roasting and serving them lightly salted and peppery at street markets. Tip: Avoid roasted tarantula butt at all costs.

So, “spider” played on 301223, and this means that we can expect a mix of good and bad. I hope you took pictures of the fruit punch bowl, because all of it would have been right there before your very eyes. As a longstanding teetotaller (nope not even rummy black cake), I keep my eyes wide open when confronted with a fruit punch bowl. I am aware that genuine psychics also use cards left hanging around after games of All Fours – by looking at the Jack cross-eyed and for long enough. Everything appears magically.

Last year, for instance, I predicted that a stubborn pothole along Abercromby Street in St Joseph some of us had given a name because of our intimate familiarity with it (I called it “Rohan”) would have been patched with a loose amalgam of oil sand and pitch and fought back with all its might to return within weeks to claim more rims and front ends.

For 2024 – because I looked cross-eyed into a rain puddle that had accumulated in a pothole along Gordon Street in St Augustine – I saw water leaks undermining roadways and WASA-like interventions that temporarily stem the waterflows but leave undercarriage crushing humps and sharp tyre-busting gravel.

I also saw traffic jams and confusion on main roads and highways. A puddle in Arima told me this. Then, elections. I saw elections coming in 2024 when the sun reflected off a poster on a San Fernando rumshop wall at an angle that made me squint and see shadowy things.

In fact, Bunglee Bungler comes up against Thomas Crook for the presidency of the Hapless Suckers Sports and Cultural Club. On 311224, I will tell you who I saw as the winner. I promise.