Urgent business

Take it from me. Post-election shenanigans, tribal conflict, internecine warfare, boastfulness, regret, grossly dishonest promises, jockeying for position and favour, and acts of shamelessly unveiled partisanship by clever pretenders will all eventually end or subside considerably.

Getting down to business, as we have learned over the years, is best realised sooner rather than later and such awareness has grown, albeit slowly, to become a part of our evolving political culture.

You see, there have been times when extreme urgency, following encroaching complacency, abruptly entered the picture to dampen overflowing, but fleeting exuberance.

In 1981, George Chambers declared the fete over and it was time to get back to work. Five years later, financial stringency entered the routine lexicon of governance forever. Through the years, declarations on the state of treasury holdings have accordingly become a mandatory feature of newness.

Today, urgency associated with national well-being has offered up fiscal menus associated with overdrafts, borrowings, raids on rainy-day savings, dampers on state and private spending, and the dreadful thought that there might be assets suitable for disposal.

“Fixing” denotes a now familiar refrain of disrepair – in our case chronic and systemic – and the stuff of joint enterprise. Yep, “all ah we”, suggesting serious challenges against hope. Because I pay close attention to our youth, I can tell you that hope is a quality in short, as opposed to abundant, supply.

It also provides little comfort that the embrace of new solutions to address a deficit in confidence has not been meaningfully prescribed. This space has harped on just one area of forsaken opportunity (and there are many) – the digital reality.

Our young people, as digital natives, have recognised the negligence. And this is not only about generative AI which is essentially a tool made available by the timeless, spaceless character of digital spaces, no more than the way hammers and screwdrivers are critical to activities at a construction site.

What is even more important is the proposed architecture and its relationship with lived and natural environments. There are real experts in this sort of thing who can extend the metaphor.

That T&T lags behind so many, of like developmental status, on this question suggests that the same urgency attached to diagnoses of poor economic conditions is not being assigned to key components of serious solutions.

We shall see, in due course, whether this point is being understood. For instance, it is built into the question of remote work (currently lost in puerile public discourse), together with concerns about things like the “ease of doing business” and the conduct of routine citizen transactions.

Mind you, there is messaging in this not only for state systems but in the way the private sector also does its business. True, personal experience does not the entire story tell, but poll friends and family and colleagues and listen for yourself.

We have simply not been getting this right. And I am concerned that there is a level of demotivation that’s happening among our young people born into the digital age. And they are protesting through withdrawal as they, and the tools they use, are presented as problems and not as solutions.

“How does it feel to be a problem” W.E.B. Du Bois once memorably asked.

I have contended here before that while the more seasoned folk ought to be there to provide context and memory, the drive to achieve “digital transformation” should be in the hands of the under-40s.

There are numerous indicators of success or failure in our five-year tranches, but I propose to maintain vigilance over this one. Yes, there are urgent, immediate needs that require rather rare, enlightened engagement, but I know that I am not alone in keeping an eye on this.

The last time I left this country, I was asked to complete a silly little form with an additional, forgotten field I wrote by hand, in crapaud foot, at the back. When I returned, there was no room on the other form for the full name of my country. I lost yet another pen to a fellow traveler, and half the flight forgot to sign the back of the same form for customs.

I once asked an officer what eventually happens to these forms. Yes, I’m done here. I gone oui.