A Crisis of Trust

It is clear to me that a lingering belief in some great and multi-faceted injustice resident among us is not solely the stuff of contemporary partisan deliberation.

If we dare pay closer attention, we will recognise some familiar elements of fear, distrust, and a lack of confidence in key institutions, and in what the resulting future is likely to bring.

Distrust in institutions is deep-rooted, culturally expressive, and increasingly articulated by younger generations and creatives.

This did not arise yesterday morning upon the incomprehensibly oppressive behaviour of officialdom and is expressed as disapproval over the status quo resulting in dissent and resistance.

The steelpan developed this way. Ban the drums (the Peace Preservation Act, 1884) and tamboo bamboo followed. Ban the tamboo bamboo (Summary Offences Ordinance, 1934) and along came pan – a singular, unique force for indigenous innovation and change whose place will not be denied.

In my view, creative defiance is imperilled mainly by societal retreat or surrender. Listen to our young people though and you will see that, even as dissent is being expressed in new and different ways, that isn’t going to happen any time soon – with or without the involvement of traditional players such as labour unions, human rights activists, and politicians.

Should our youth retreat or surrender, an already brittle civic substructure can and will collapse. Already, they are not turning up at the polls as a symbol of disapproval - whatever their deployment to fill space at the rallies and public exhibitions.

This situation, in my view, represents evidence of a genuine state of public alarm – over and above shady circumstances designed to barely and opaquely meet constitutional benchmarks for an “emergency.”

My participation in two recent activities reinforced these views. Last week at the Caribbean Media Summit hosted as a hybrid event from Port of Spain, a common thread related to retreating “trust” in media and official institutions would not go away.

Marching for Press Freedom - Trinidad Nov 20, 1998

The declining credibility of legacy media – both conspiratorially extracted and not - was repeatedly cited as being among the major challenges to their continued viability.

Apart from a decided failure to adapt, this phenomenon results from the unprecedented challenges of the new social media space, mis and disinformation (read “propaganda”), targeted undermining, and malpractice occasioned by the emergence of generative artificial intelligence.

The trust factor was however not generally considered to be the concern of only mass media but also of official institutions.

There are studies in other parts of the world that establish relatively inelastic relations between trust in media and trust in institutions of the state (and vice versa). But that’s for another occasion, perhaps when our universities start doing some of the important work.

It has been suggested that both an inclination and capacity to defend truth, accountability, and democratic values are prerequisites to both strong media and credible governance. In their absence, a crisis unfolds.

Recent events in T&T and elsewhere in our region prove these points. If, in fact, there is a belief that some great darkness is descending on our nations - and I believe that to be the case in T&T - it is clearly not the time to either ignore the causative factors or to impose regimes of restriction and oppression to limit expression of such apprehensions.

These are not entirely my own thoughts. The second important event I attended last week was the Bars Spoken Word show at the ThinkArtWork Studio in Port of Spain.

The young performers there provided a most articulate expression of distrust, fear, and looming despair you would otherwise have been detecting in the public views of creatives in other fields.

Those who have not been looking are amazed at the continuing explosion of creative expression in all its forms – art, music, drama, dance, literature. People attracted to such things are spoiled for choice but are also increasingly being exposed to the seeds of aspiration and change.

Leading the 1998 March

Hope? Yes, there is. There has to be – free expression in itself bearing that particular message. Whether it can be whipped into submission is another story. I suspect it won’t.

I will speak more about the Bars event on another page of this newspaper. But we ignore the messaging of our youth and our creatives at our peril. They are not displaying a preference for tribal or partisan allegiance. They are speaking truth in new and different ways.

Expression relaying a crisis of trust will not be silenced.