Blades of Grass

Several years ago, a respected Caribbean international relations expert told me in private conversation that the notion of “national sovereignty” was becoming an outdated concept.

Yet, few issues generate greater unreserved bipartisan political and wider social support than real and perceived threats to a country’s territorial integrity or a claim that its sovereignty has been violated.

Both Guyana’s and Venezuela’s fierce internecine political environments, for example, de-escalate and cohere around the question of the Essequibo region. It has not mattered the political administration in power in either Guyana or Venezuela.

For example, Guyana’s agent to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carl Greenidge, who is not associated with the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and is among the more eloquent advocates on his country’s behalf on this subject. Correspondingly, neither Chavismo nor anti-Chavismo is a factor in Venezuela when it comes to this.

I have interacted with independent human rights defenders in Venezuela who casually contend that “Guayana Esequiba” belongs to their country.

As interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodrigues has said, this is taught at school alongside negative views on the process that led to the current situation, and she is not about to “change history” … as she understands it.

Mention to young and old Venezuelans the 1899 Arbitral Award which essentially granted most of the Essequibo region to what was then “British Guiana” and they would have at least heard about it as something of a longstanding travesty - though the result remained uncontested, and even applauded, for over 60 years

Most Guyanese can tell you about the tens of thousands of fellow citizens who live in the region. They will also be able to recite at least one line from the Tradewinds’s 1980 hit “Not A Blade of Grass” – repurposed now as Essequibo slogan.

When Juan Guaidó was unilaterally declared by some big and powerful countries as the “legitimate” President of Venezuela in 2019 I followed accompanying social media narratives by his supporters for mention of “Guayana Esequiba.”

I found mainly derogatory mention of Guyana and its Caricom partners in their support of Guyana’s position on Essequibo. This was hardly Bolivarian imperialism as enunciated by their sworn enemies, the Chavistas. Witness as well the general position of María Corina Machado.

The fact is, whatever the nonsensical claims to the contrary, Caricom member states have long, actively, and repeatedly rallied in support of Guyana on this question. Check Caricom Summit discussions and communiques going back to its formative years in the 1970s.

I have however noted that in commentaries regarding Delcy Rodrigues’ provocative brooch - depicting her rendition of a map of Venezuela – people have been speaking about the seemingly passive treatment of the matter by Grenada and Barbados as indicative of a lack of support for Guyana.

The divisiveness generated could well have been intentional.  I am nevertheless unaware of anything by either Caribbean leader suggesting action on the deliberate insult, though there should hopefully have been discreet communication.

I think both Mia Mottley and Dickon Mitchell should explain to us how this sentiment has been conveyed to the Venezuelans, if at all. But failure to do so cannot and should not be considered to be lukewarm postures on the substantive Essequibo issue.

With the Venezuelans due to present their version of history at the ICJ today, we are likely to witness insertion of similar provocations.

Monday’s oral submissions on behalf of Guyana appeared to establish a clear progression from relative passivity on the part of Venezuela to belated opposition to the arbitral award. There have been minor border skirmishes, but through the years there has been unimpeded, peaceful occupation via longstanding agreement, productive activity, and functional governance by one of the two parties - Guyana.

Some recent work by CIJN Guyanese journalist, Nazima Raghubir also reports, at least anecdotally, that the people who live and work in the region are crystal clear about which country they occupy.

Guyana - Land of Many Waters

Guyana also argued on Monday that neither Spain, as coloniser, nor Venezuela ever actually administered Essequibo in the first place.

I am not going to play “bush lawyer” and speculate on the ICJ’s evaluation of that point and others as being seminal to final determination of the case. There is certainly much more to consider.

Venezuela meanwhile holds that its participation in the proceedings is “without consent” and meant purely to demonstrate the "truth” about its rights to “the territory of Guayana Esequiba."

Guyana, along with Caricom, insists that not one blade of Essequibo grass belongs to anyone else. It’s our collective position that this carries the weight of international law.

 

Fear, power, and an exposed press

Last Saturday’s dramatic turn of events at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, DC, generated enough emotion to dominate my thoughts ever since - other massively significant issues notwithstanding.

Yes, I had considered elaborating on last week’s missive regarding deep, pervasive national fear and a patent inability to address its causes and effects: the disconnect between political messaging and reality, and the largely silent rejection - even among the faithful - of empty reassurance.

There has also been accumulating evidence to challenge the deterrent effects of more punitive fines and expanded traffic laws in the absence of meaningful enforcement. And, even so, to redirect behaviours to minimise risk. I promise to return to these sometime in the future.

But today, what is presumed to have been an attempted violent attack on the President of the USA, Donald Trump, has been dissected in numerous ways, the very least being its impact on and meaning for the numerous journalists in and out of that dinner hall.

In videos of the incident (few re-broadcast the opening moments), I kept my eyes on the woman in white who had been seated at the head table and was later seen crawling on her hands and knees as the President was hustled off by what seemed to be a dozen security personnel.

She turned out to be Weijia Jiang, CBS News correspondent and president of the White House Correspondents' Association. Crawling alone and seemingly not a concern of anyone else.

This episode forced me to recall that following the violence of July 27, 1990 in T&T, among the numerous emergent issues associated with the attempted coup d’etat, was the manner in which the role and interests of journalists and media were diminished or largely ignored.

Port of Spain, Trinidad under siege July,1990

For what it’s worth, I remember my own scramble to safety – on hands and knees like the lady in white – across the parliament floor as the shooting and shouting and screaming continued. I tell you, at that point, your instincts as a journalist play second fiddle to a will to survive.

Late journalist and former TTT hostage, Raoul Pantin, went to his grave a perpetual advocate for some form of redress not only for himself but for all journalists who were caught up in the deadly attacks almost 36 years ago. During the ensuing Commission of Enquiry between 2011 and 2013 there had been largely ignored mention.

Then came Saturday and attacker Cole Tomas Allen’s insanity. News reached us in Marseille, France where the Council of IFEX – the global network of free expression organisations – was meeting in the absence of Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Jodie Ginsberg.

Where, then, was Jodie? The following morning, she explained there had been “the disorientation of being pulled to the ground by a man sitting next to me and told to get under the table as Secret Service flooded into the room …”

She told of being hustled out of the building and into a side street “with no instructions of where to go or how to get back into the Hilton (where I was staying).”

“The part of my brain that deals daily with attacks on journalists can’t help but wonder … what if they (Trump and his senior colleagues) weren’t the target? What if journalists were the target?”

Then she reminded us that in that room there had been journalists “who have been kidnapped, wrongfully detained, and shot at. Journalists who have been violently arrested. Journalists who cover politics here in the United States who - along with their families - are subjected to daily death threats. Journalists who have been assaulted at protests and political rallies.”

This not only made me think about the journalists in other parts of the world where they are frequently targeted, killed, and maimed, but also of our own media professionals who confront different kinds of serious assaults and remain unacknowledged and generally defenceless. Cannon fodder at the mercy of propagandists, sycophants, and hostile politicians.

It is true that few things attract such a scenario more than poor quality reporting, but it is also a fact that the importance of favourable political imaging tends to outweigh the value of professional journalism.

And when this happens - like Jiang and her colleagues, like Raoul Pantin, Dominic Kalipersad, and others - journalists often find themselves exposed and alone. On hands and knees. At precisely the moments when their role matters most, there is too often no protection, no support, and no one truly there.

The fear factor

There is a constant call - amid the outrageous and macabre developments of recent days, month, and years - to avoid an irresistible urge to yield to fear and a sense of diminished hope on questions of social peace, cohesion, and calm.

For certain, the impact of fear can contribute to the undermining of the confidence and resilience required to advance any country’s development agenda.

But it is clearly inadvisable to suggest that fear can be seamlessly and elastically enjoined to statistical performance or gratuitous expressions of political assurance. Things just do not work that way.

You see, the minute fear is casually dismissed as baseless irrationality or described as being cynically contrived there are always realities guaranteed to smack you in the gut and stomp on your steel-tipped toes. Witness the last few days.

Last week in this space, in citing several instances that conspired to establish such a point, I concluded that pervasive recklessness – to put it mildly - had conspired to transform daily life here into a precarious, often deadly gamble.

Between then and now have come more killing; claiming in the process the lives of children, discovery of mass, apparently unlawful human burials, and the brutally audacious “security breach” (speak of euphemism) at the San Fernando Municipal Police Station. Among other things.

A subsequent newspaper photo-op featuring two government ministers, the commissioner of police, a coast guard officer, and other security personnel marching resolute and shoulder to shoulder must have tempted the caption: “Never fear. We are here.”

But I am yet to witness unreserved purchase of the goods on display.

Fear and panic, the commissioner had proposed just one week prior, are just as bad as crime itself. “Why aren’t people feeling that (the statistics)? Why isn’t anyone talking about that? Because fear has gripped this country for so long that we can’t even see when change is coming,” the commissioner said.

Guilty, as charged! We all seemed to respond. For credibility is earned not through selective application of favourable data – and one may wish to cite unreferenced, appallingly low criminal detection rates and bland efforts to determine and influence causative factors – but through the comfort of believing that somebody is in charge and people are taking joint responsibility through knowledge, resources, and individual capacity.

Such assets include truth-telling of the highest calibre. Who, for instance, really believes that the current, extended state of public emergency was constitutionally justifiable as a way to address grand, specific existential threats? Where is the progress report on this?

Even so, we are instead being told that all of this can be expected to generate concurrent (not just core) benefits. This has been an argument that has spanned at least 15 years, across the political divide.

Yet, the “updates” have grown to focus exclusively on statistical gains related to matters outside the purported threats for which there was extreme recourse. Instead, what was meant to be a very last resort on specific constitutional grounds has now become a readily available default for everything else. As asked right here last week: In the face of growing fear and a sense of futility, what do you do for an encore?

Additionally, I recall in the years following the murderous assault of July 1990 numerous admonitions, including from this writer, to resist the temptation to reduce all of this to the status of political row and advantage.

Blood, we are constantly being told, remains a stain on the hands of politicians and not necessarily smeared on the walls of civic institutions from school to community centre to places of worship.

“Solving crime” has since become more firmly entrenched as manifesto bullet points, verses, and chapters. Political opportunity has been grasped with both hands.

People have clamoured for “the good old days” of the heavy hand (or ropes) around our necks, and election campaigns with five-year cycles have responded accordingly.

Meanwhile, those under whose portfolios reside obligations to address such challenges would do well to spurn the temptation to announce victory on the battlefront even as the war continues.

Care’s Tragic Void

The news agenda has unfolded in such a way as to suggest levels of private and public recklessness sufficient to transform daily life here into a precarious, often deadly gamble.

It has long been suggested in this space that the absence of a duty of care is capable of undermining things such as heavy laws, harsh penalties, more policing, and other measures presumed to produce deterrent effects.

There is also no shortage of religion or divine magic to exert external influence. But I have long not upheld their potential usefulness beyond private comfort or delusion. And their organised manifestations are all demonstrably hopeless at deliverance.

Back on earth, the scope of traffic offences has by edict been widened and become more heavily punishable, even as deadly accidents and irresponsible behaviour on our roads occur in increments not any different to how things were before.

Road chaos, Trinidad 

After all, it’s the fault of mobile traffic lights, the cable barriers along the highway, the faded traffic lines, that pothole. It’s not the speed, the texting, the heavy tint, the sense of entitlement that size, a brand, and a model deliver.

The roadside fires burn and destroy. Wilfully and deliberately. The smoke gets in our nostrils and our lungs. The traffic stops. Pyromania justified by a senseless assertion of necessity. Spontaneous combustion, I once had to explain to one apologist, is not a thing on our terrain. And, for sure, there are the laws and regulations. Ask the sweaty, exhausted firemen.

Extraordinary measures to address violent crime have become normalised so that declared states of public emergency as a very last resort are now the stuff of routine, official default. Public bloodlust and a thirst for revenge are meanwhile deemed satisfiable extra-judicially and a right to kill as a protected first response. Yet, the violence and injury and death persist.

So, what are we to do? What do you do for an encore or as a further step when last resorts eventually run their course? Is there an option of despair? An absence of hope?

Citing contrasting instances in Singapore, El Salvador, and the Philippines tends to omit numerous socio-cultural antecedents and ignore pitfalls such as creative sterility, the absence of community solidarity, and the prevalence of bureaucratic rigidity.

It might be that the latter conditions, in the minds of some, represent the outcomes of sacrifices necessary to achieve social peace, safety, and stability. But I really do not know. Quite frankly, I do not think so.

There are meanwhile things regarded as indispensable by some that are not honoured as untouchable by others. The so-called “Carnival mentality”, an appreciation for and accommodation of “noise”, the spontaneity of the “lime”, sans humanité, the casual integration of difference.

Order is commanded to come into being rather than nurtured through the roots of standards, ethical conduct, and values. Scampish propaganda substitutes for truth and a façade of morality for proper conduct.

Today, through all this, little Angelica is dead. Who from among us has not been brought to the point of near inconsolable grief? The apparent absence of a duty of care tragically exemplified.

More laws? Change the rules … again? Jail somebody? I thought we answered those questions the last time something like this happened? When was it? Ten years ago? Last month as people floated on the ocean and stared quietly at a blue sky?

Ditto Skylar. Turn your head for 30 seconds and they are in the water! That’s why paid staff and other regular folk are keeping an eye out for one other. Three years ago, it was Damari. And the newspaper editorials and op-eds and letters and the phone calls to radio stations flowed.

So how can we help but conclude that this is not only about the rules, verdicts, and more brutal punishment? Where, in this, is a sense of responsibility to ourselves and to one another? The pandemic period ought to have painted a full enough picture – self-responsibility dismissed as vaccine/antidote alongside care for others.

Had there not been the music, and dance, and poetry, and art of our time, we could have all by now simply downed tools and helplessly faced the oncoming tides. Relented without reservation against the uncaring and the reckless.

That said, tearing the bandage off and revealing a raw, painful wound remains insufficient. There is an opportunity to explore the possibilities. Let’s talk about it.

Election Manna and Manima

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

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

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

Former T&T Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 2025 COG in Trinidad and Tobago

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

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

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

 

Caricom’s information fortress

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Playing with fire

Listen to it here: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Economist Joseph Cox

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

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

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

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

 

 

Climate mischief and our media

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Unclaimed creative wealth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Desperadoes Steel Orchestra of Trinidad and Tobago

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

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

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

Caricom’s elusive bipartisan dialogue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

That fete vs work slogan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Caribbean media reckoning

Recent media collapses in the English-speaking Caribbean have drawn attention to the vulnerabilities of an industry that has actually been quite problematic in our neck of the woods for many years - in the colonial era and beyond.

There is even a view that the tardy introduction of newspapering in T&T in the late 18^th century - linked as it was to introduction of the printing press – fell prey to a deliberate attempt at slowing the displacement of human labour through contrived delays in the introduction of mechanised processes.

There is a controversial study I cited in a 2017 article to commemorate 100 years of the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian which contends there had indeed been a connection between changing sugar technology and the trade in enslaved Africans.

If you get a chance have a read at https://wesleygibbings.blogspot.com for my take on this or download a copy of  ‘Changing Sugar Technology and the Labour Nexus: the Caribbean’ by Peter Boomgaard and Gert J. Oostindie.

In T&T, we entered the newspaper business later than most of our regional neighbours in 1799. For purposes of current concerns, I think we should consider that mechanisation had been as important to the introduction of newspapers as were the opportunities and trials of automation, followed by digitalisation and artificial intelligence.

The survival of formal media has thus always been problematic in the face of technological changes. Today, however, the virtual space and universal digital capacity present unprecedented challenges.

Mention of this dynamic has been a common feature of recent closures in both print and broadcast media under the cover of “industry pressures.” It was invoked when Newsday explained its dissolution – “this is an industry under severe pressure.”

The directors of Guyana’s Stabroek News expressed their own rendezvous with closure more provocatively: “The model of reportage that this paper has cultivated in its lifetime is out of step with the algorithmic formulae that now control the circulation of news online. Balanced coverage is not good click-bait.”

Cayman Island’s iEye News, which also shuttered this month, was not a hard copy newspaper with the print overheads of Newsday or Stabroek News but was an attempt at independent, professional journalism online. Publisher Colin Wilson referred to “sustainability challenges.”

Digicel meanwhile explained that by closing down Loop News last year, it was “reorienting” its business “from consumer media toward enterprise-level digital services.” In other words, the financial yields from its digital news service were insufficient to address the company’s broader commercial concerns.

An identical explanation was forthcoming in August when Sportsmax – also operated by Digicel with all its telecoms credentials - ceased broadcasting. So, this is not only about the availability of “technology.”

This lengthy preamble is intended to suggest that old-fashioned legacy media are not the only casualties of recent digital advances, and accompanying implications for creation and delivery of competitive content.

This era also marks disruptions in online media through the entry of new players in the news and information market – many (not all) of them amateur participants devoid of commitments to professional standards, including high production values and journalistic integrity, but big on entertainment value, propaganda, the salacious, and controversy.

These alternatives on offer are typically short on traditional characteristics. Instead, they include fake “news” sites that appear and disappear in tandem with political conditions (including elections), paid and unpaid propagandists, online trolls, bots, and the use of AI manipulated content - the most difficult of all to detect.

Add to these, regimes of prior censorship imposed via broadcast licences and cyber legislation, strategic litigation by the powerful (labelled by the press freedom community as strategic litigation against public participation - SLAPP), “media capture” by partisan commercial and political interests, international “big-tech” malpractice, and plain old fashioned censorship … or muting of the microphone.

People such as prolific T&T technology correspondent, Mark Lyndersay, have written thousands of words on the digital challenges, as there are dimensions to the operations of the legacy media industry that remain relatively unexplored and unaddressed by the affected themselves.

The 2021 UNESCO-supported Media Viability study of Jamaica conducted by the Media Institute of the Caribbean also offers wholesome starting points: “There are many areas outside the control of media houses that impact viability and sustainability, including the economic, legal and regulatory environments, global big tech organisations and changing media consumption patterns.”

However, the MIC study also identifies a key function of legacy media as “protector(s) of the public interest.” There is no shortage of the exogenous, but internal adjustments require far more attention. There is a lot at stake here, people. We should note who mock and cheer the failures and ask from whom they would prefer receive life-changing news and information.

 

When fear rules

Just sounding an arguably badly timed alert here. Smack in the middle of difficult fete choices, disputed competition results, blue and green roses, costume preparation, and mayhem on the road.

Acknowledging therefore that it’s likely to be just as lost as purposefulness in addressing some urgent issues of the day.

But still trying this because when the dust clears, our minds need to be directed sooner rather than later toward the manner in which we have slipped up badly on the subject of addressing criminal violence.

This, of course, is not to contribute to hysteria over this in the public domain. So, yes, party, celebrate, and have fun. But consider how we operate at this time of year and the positive attributes (an absence of mutual suspicion?) that point in the general direction of solutions and, perhaps, a route out of the malaise and sense of hopelessness.

I was taught a long time ago that while authoritarianism certainly points to the behaviours of the rulers, the compliant participation of the ruled is equally important to consider.

Position this thought alongside the fear, anxiety, grief, anger, and rage that accompany outrageous, murderous violence and what follows is more likely than not a pervasive response conducive to reinforcing authoritarian instincts and actions.

It’s amazing that the real experts at this have not been clinically examining our collective condition in this manner. This is not dry, esoteric theory.

What we have been witnessing – and this is not peculiar to any political administration – is a tendency to avoid nuanced, deliberate, and careful attention to emotion-inducing realities and instead “solve” problems in the same manner in which they greet us. Violence, therefore, tends to stimulate more violence. Impunity greets impunity. And dissent, poetic or not, will not be tolerated.

They say this is perfectly understandable when people feel besieged by a challenge. If it involves threats, injury or death there is going to be fear and anger and a reliance by the affected on those in charge to end it.

There is more attention to “what” is needed than to the “how.” A few weeks ago, for instance, this space was employed to have people consider why a penalty of death is so easily integrated into a notion of punishment.

Survey the population today – even in the middle of a wine or jump – and capital punishment for acts of criminal violence will win overwhelmingly. Then ask whether people believe that the shortcomings within policing and the criminal justice system can mean the execution of someone who might well be innocent.

Well, that’s okay, it’s unlikely to happen to “people like me” -  “I do not look like the usual suspects. I do not live where they live.”

Include in the survey questionnaire the method of punishment and list the options: public lynching, dismemberment, burning at the stake. “Wait till somebody you know is raped, maimed, or killed!”

Responsible official action needs to dampen the bloodlust rather than fuel it, as in saying out loud that “stand your ground” does not mean a right to murder a housebreaker or mango thief. That the more guns there are, the more shooting there will be. That genuine ameliorative measures aimed at underlying causes are essential in any proposed solution.

We have not considered, as well, that continued use of emergency powers actually signals a sad failure (incompetence?) to administer ordinary law and the systems that uphold it. Global examples establish an addictive nature. Forget, for now, suspicious, perennial, “specific threats” to national security.

There are also countries that have reached such a persistent and longstanding pass largely on account of perceived political threats. It’s an easy segue from “threat to national security.”

In the Philippines, for example, disgraced ex-president Rodrigo Duterte (and I am aware of people here who were once proud of him) employed emergency powers to address “lawless violence” more than once.

Human rights groups estimate that as many as 30,000 people were killed over six years of his rule by the police, vigilante groups, and other civilian “supporters” of the move to bring order to crime linked to the trade in illicit drugs. Narco-terrorism?

Perish the thought that civil liberties should be asserted under such conditions. That new measures should be so framed as to protect the innocent and to minimise rather than increase violence in all its manifestations.

Such a posture requires credible, trustworthy, honest leadership that does not exploit understandable public panic. What is unfolding before our eyes are long-term consequences that will lead to community alienation, unaccountable police behaviour, and a loss of confidence in the administration of justice.

In other words, it’s possible to take one step forward and two backward on this issue.

Pan’s so-so results

(Kinda sad that I had to explain to so many people that this is satire. Which I suppose means it did not work)

All of three years ago, I proposed the development of a framework for identifying Panorama character typologies in order to better understand responses to the judging of steelpan competitions.

This includes an ability to attend a pan event, not listen to full presentations and yet brand the panel of judges shameless “bootlickers” and “mafia.”

There is even talk of judges meeting bands for free t-shirts and other “personal favours” in exchange for points at secret meetings late at night at the Peschier Cemetery in the Savannah.

A fella from San Juan said he once witnessed the entire thing and recorded it but concedes nobody will believe him as these days it is possible to see something with your own two eyes … and it never happen.

Meanwhile, nobody is calling names, but talk has it one of the judges is related to an obeah woman in Les Coteaux and has a family tree traceable to Gang Gang Sara and her West African village that spread generations of genetically predisposed criminals globally.

“Hecky”, the Tobagonian journalist, swears that under the silk cotton tree at Golden Lane lies evidence of this. He once advocated for white washing of the trunk of the tree to ward off malignant spirits. Some people swear they have recently begun seeing the white wash late at night when the moon stands at a particular angle but by early morning, it’s gone.

One member of the infamous “Hotspot Tourists” clan even claims to have recordings and witnesses with sworn testimonies. “Hotspot Tourists” include pan crawlers who hire maxi taxis to take them to panyards in areas they’d usually avoid. Sometimes they don’t recall where they’d been but become supreme authorities on “syncopation” and “polyharmonies”.

They only comprise one percent of all pan competition attendees. But they pull all the strings. They are the ones who make the beer and the booze pass.

Meanwhile, “How? How? How?” goes the refrain when the results land after a lengthy North Stand experience covering six cases of beer, at least a dozen bottles of rum, curry mango, pineapple chow, peanut fudge, tooloom, pigfoot souse, barbeque chicken, and two pots of pelau.

 “What’s that bothersome noise coming from that stage over there?”

So, yes, the “Hotspot Tourists” – the “eat-a-food elite” - were at it again at the Medium and Large band semi-finals this year. Bellies full, and so they - noses browned or reddened by the booze - freely and openly bad-talk the judges.

Not to be denied, the “Grand Standists”, known for an ability to sit quietly and listen to every band, are full of their own, informed views. They are described by people such as Paul as the “first noters” – meaning that they are there to stand for the playing of the national anthem, stay there to the bitter end, have their fair share of educated opinion, and can tell the key in which any song is being played.

They generally stun the “Hotspot” bunch – ridiculing their preference for the backsides of performing bands on the other side of the stage.

Vanda, who possesses “Grand Standists” qualities walks with a notebook and keeps score. And, yes, she too will be up bright and early the following morning with extensive comments on the performances of both the bands and the judges.

She would typically conclude that the winning band (once not her own), was only “so-so” in quality but that “the judges know best.”

“But so-so gets you very far in today’s world,” she opines.

She is actually a member of the “Panyardists United” bunch – that group that has a strong connection with a single band but makes an attempt to visit panyards and gather intelligence on the techniques being explored by others.

They are not the type to switch bands that easily, even if they cuss the one they support and call on them to adjust their arrangements. “Just fix it,” is typical advice.

And, if their band does not acquire the points they expected they’re more likely than the others to simply say: “oh well, wah we go do?”

There are also members of “Pan Music Nostalgia” – the group of old-time pan supporters who yearn for the good old days of “badjohns” and fractured skulls, stick fighters with crooked, broken fingers, drunk men capable of consuming large volumes of canal water without falling ill, and single-octave tenor pans.

They all declare that the old days were much better and while today is good it’s no more than “so-so” and there should be an attempt to make Panorama great again.

Disclaimer: All characters and events in this column - even those based on real people - are entirely fictional. Santimanitay.

Our precious pan nurseries

By the time you read this, our country would have already experienced one of the most beautiful, high-quality, and popular events on the seasonal calendar.

Both editions of Junior Panorama excelled when considering the music presented - the Ministry of Education’s National Schools Panorama Finals at Skinner Park, and the Pan Trinbago Junior Panorama contests comprising Under-19 and Under-21 bands at the Queen’s Park Savannah.

Unlike the QPS version, I was out of the country and had to follow Monday’s event online. As was the case on Sunday in Port of Spain, I looked not only for musical skill, but also for the degree to which hard work, diligence, and joy were evident.

These are qualities not unique to the steelpan but are par for the course whenever steelbands assemble to show audiences what they have.

People who remain sceptical about the value of the instrument as a national asset should try to attend at least one steelband event - the Schools/Junior Panorama in particular. It should be a requirement for everyone in decision-making positions when it comes to pan.

Isabella Camacho played bass with Legacy of the Saints in the Under-19 category

Minister of Education, Dr Michael Dowlath, appeared to recognise such value at the draw for positions last Friday, when he raised the issue of music education, including the teaching of pan music, in the holistic development of children. This is important.

But he could have gone further in acknowledging the unique qualities of the instrument, its indigenous antecedents, and the model of social organisation in which it thrives.

Currently on the table is a promise to engage in post-Panorama consultations to ensure that this year’s mishap involving the choice of venue for the Junior Panorama Finals does not recur.

This confusion led to anger and dismay in some quarters, quiet resignation in others, and the sad disappointment of many children.

It might be that two separate events, with support from both the MOE and Pan Trinbago, can occur in the future. There is nothing wrong with a schedule involving both venues. But the best of the secondary schools, whatever the respective monikers, should be given the chance to contest and compare, at whichever venue.

For example, the Pan Trinbago Small Bands Final was hosted, without fuss, at Skinner Park and comprised bands from both islands — north, south, east, and west.

I did not hear a single word about Skinner Park being “too far”. In any case, too far from where? What I did hear, when it came to the secondary school bands, was that notice of the venue reached schools too late, and that there were serious issues associated with logistics and cost. I have no reason to believe the complaints were trivial or designed to jeopardise the MOE event.

It eventually fell to Pan Trinbago to fill what would have been a terrible breach when the organisation was approached to do something about the prospect of numerous bands not having a performance space. At that point, the Under-19 contest was born.

Hopefully, both parties will recognise the resultant problem of school-based bands not being exposed to competition at the highest level, involving the best the school steelband landscape has to offer.

So, if competition 2027 talks are convened promptly and in good faith, it should not matter what is eventually determined as the best arrangement for the students, and for pan.

Among the influential factors would be Pan Trinbago’s undoubted organisational capacity, its pioneering, tried-and-tested template for such events, and the influence of a government ministry in making numerous things happen through access to state resources.

From the feedback, the ministry could have done with some Pan Trinbago assistance on Monday.

In the end, two critically important issues are at stake. The first, and more important, is the interest of the thousands of young people directly and indirectly associated with pan and the competition.

Invaders Youth won in the Under-21 group

The second has to do with supporting the development and growth of the steelpan as a key national resource.

The contests play a role in erasing several mistaken notions about the quality of our young people, of all backgrounds, and what they bring to the table. It is also now widely agreed that, no, young people are not moving away from pan.

As a pan lover and Panorama regular for most of my life, I hereby confess that Junior Panorama is my favourite and most emotionally stirring event when it comes to this wonderful instrument and all that comes with it.

Let’s please get this right. There are pan nurseries to be attended to and managed.