A CARICOM rod of correction

During a journalism workshop in an OECS country about 20 years ago, we were doing a word association exercise. Word: “Wesley.” Response: “Seafood.” Word: “Beach.” Response: “Reduit.” Word: “Trinis.” Response: “Arrogance.”

Sometime before that came an exercise in another island to assess knowledge and acceptance of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME). There was a roomful of people with small and medium businesses.

“Can you imagine?” one participant interjected, (because of this CARICOM business) “every cent of my retirement money is now in a bank owned by Trinidadians.” Supportive groans, side-chatter, and applause were followed by a call to order.

I once called a PR guy here, following a journalism exercise in Suriname to tell him that one of the biggest signs in Paramaribo contained the logo of his T&T bank, and it was stinging the eyes of Surinamese people who thought they were holding the sticky end of a CARICOM stick and it was now being driven into their heart.

By then, one of our soft drink manufacturers had significantly and painfully eaten into the market of a longstanding local producer. There was a growing view that the hospitality of the people of this mainland country was being mistaken for some kind of weakness. A more culturally sensitive touch was clearly required.

“I think that sign should be bigger,” was the PR guy’s response. Giggle, giggle.

North, south and east of here, there has been a view (substantiated by trade and economic imbalances) that T&T has been extracting more from CARICOM arrangements than we have been investing politically in the process.

However, uninformed public opinion here has been that regionalism has done nothing to justify the costs and time devoted to what, some hold, is a remote fantasy hinged on an expired regional paradigm.

This column has repeatedly cited the empirical bases for the more rigorous embrace of the Caribbean social, economic, and cultural space. There are serious grounds to frame a survival project.

Recent Caribbean Private Sector Organisation (CPSO) concerns about the “local content” law in Guyana are rooted in such a summation and should not be ignored or passed to some vaguely mandated “committee.”

President Irfaan Ali’s countervailing diagnosis however asserts: “Do so, don’t like so.”

So, as we speak, forces are massing in Georgetown against Port of Spain and Caroni and San Fernando and Couva and Pt Fortin.

The sad part is I have heard people, who have clearly not been paying attention, actually wonder why.

Surely, “local content” within the meaning and spirit of a single social and economic space, embraces a much wider horizon than domestic territory.

The brutal truth is, even as some Guyanese politicians are mistaken about the implications of a single economic space on “local content”, Port of Spain, Caroni, San Fernando, Couva and Pt Fortin have over the years been busily fine-tuning their machinations to constrict, not expand, entrepreneurial boundaries.

Given today’s realities and demands, can you imagine the psychic transformation that would now render them capable of claiming/yielding common space with Kingston, Castries, Georgetown, and Paramaribo?

It has not been much different in St John’s or Bridgetown, but we in T&T need to busy ourselves with resolving the circumstances that have led us to believe we are capable of subsisting as two islands unto ourselves.

We have been working hard to tailor our institutions accordingly. CARICOM nationals have had to join inordinately long queues to regularise their status here. Up to a few years ago, Skilled Nationals applications languished for months and months on a government minister’s desk.

The immigration default is to shut out and deny without regard for a binding Treaty (of Chaguaramas), domestic legislation and policy (a Skilled CARICOM Nationals regime among others), and the authority of the Caribbean Court of Justice which, in my view, has been underutilised to challenge numerous injustices against regional nationals here.

Notwithstanding a record spanning 17 years, there remain people in law, politics, business, and public affairs, who still repeat the nonsense that “Trinidad and Tobago is not in the CCJ.”

As a consequence of all of the above, particularly in now buoyant Georgetown, “local content” policy is perceived of as a mechanism not only to assure national benefits from an emerging, lucrative source of economic salvation, but as a rod of correction against those of us not previously minded to honour regional commitments in spirit, in practice, and at law.

When pan won

The thing with pan, as with all art and music, different people experience different things when we meet it.

So, true, there is some consensus that on Saturday Trinidad All Stars made our hearts skip beats. The hair at the back of our necks danced and swayed – the siren of the Unknown Band (and not from a COVID bound ambulance) reminding us that all of this was still urgent and real.

That opening medley seamlessly transporting many of us from an Impossible Dream to the Stardust in our eyes.

True, Moods’ rendition of the Al Green classic, Let’s Stay Together, took some of us back to that house party where we met early loves. Tornadoes and Supernovas brought us prayerful messages and melodies.

Yes, there were also the other giants – Desperadoes and Renegades and Exodus. For sure, Starlift and Phase II and Skiffle and Invaders and Cordettes and Pan Elders were also there.

Note, I am mixing the bag – Medium with the Large. Coconuts and Peewah – wonderful in their own right.

Yet, through all of this, people who have been around the music and the instrument for a long time, were noting at least one dramatic transition, as the traditional Panorama model was (thankfully) modified to constitute an unbridled exposition of what pan is capable of despite vain expectations of a contest.

“Who won?” was the refrain all of Sunday. “Pan won” was the overwhelming response. But there was more.

For one, there was much to disclaim the view that “young people not into pan.” The evidence against this has long been abundant.

Has Pan Trinbago done the figures though? What is the average age of pan players in all categories? What is the average age of the current crop of arrangers? How does it compare against, say, 25 years ago? This would certainly settle my guestimate of declining age averages.

For instance, it was only when TTT’s Ruskin Mark spoke with Dr Mia Gormandy-Banjamin about some of the “oldies” being played you remembered that this brilliant, accomplished musician is still in her mid-thirties!

I happened to have followed almost the entire process this year – from the Single to the Small to the Medium and Large band performances. Young people ruled the roost. The transition is undeniably on!

One of the two young arrangers for Silver Stars, Kersh Ramsey, even spoke with Ruskin about “succession.” It is not the kind of word easily employed when used alongside the fact that 47-year-old Liam Teague (once a boy wonder himself) is a longstanding incumbent. Ramsey’s partnership with Ojay Richards must be considered among the most promising pan alliances in a long while.

Young Melodians arranger Raechard Bernard, who moved from stageside to the main stage on this occasion eloquently described the involvement of his teenage charges on stage. His band followed Arima Angel Harps whose arranger, pan phenom Aviel Scanterbury, comes from the same age group.

This column risks some notable omissions, but I hope you see where I’m going with this. Pandemic conditions and an accompanying revisiting of major pan events have conspired to remind us of the great future in store for pan music.

Let me tell you what I thought made this point most forcefully. This might be controversial. Couva Joylanders. Stefon West. “Essence” by WizKid. You know what I am talking about?

This leading Medium Band (2020 champs) used the occasion to tell us that our young people are taking over. West must have initially met some resistance … not from the players. All over-40s Google it.

An Israel-based young pan musician arranges a song for a Couva band composed by a popular 31-year-old Nigerian afrobeats singer/songwriter on a Savannah stage two nights before the days of Carnival.

The teenager on the double tenors on the frontline closed her eyes behind her face shield and threw her head back. Mothers’ milk on the faces of the double-seconds.

In May 2020, when the world was closed, Boogsie played “Yesterday.” One online comment I jotted down (since it wasn’t me) went: “I am in tears. Is this normal?”

Well, a bunch of young people from Central Trinidad moved me to conclude last Saturday that pan had won at least one battle over despair and looming hopelessness. I could well have asked the two-year-old question myself.

There is a lot more to be done to win the war. The children will have to lead us there.

When the lights went out

The lights went out last Wednesday and everything became so clear.

Paraphrased as a “catastrophic (engineering) failure” by the general manager of T&TEC, Kelvin Ramsook, the perils we confronted bore all the hallmarks of crisis bordering on disaster.

At sessions involving Caribbean and Pacific journalists, my friend and colleague, Steve Maximay, has been cautioning against casual conflating of hazards, crises, and disasters when, in fact, these phenomena occur at distinct stages of a process culminating in mortal harm and distress but emerging from a variety of latent perils – the hazards.

It is clear from last week’s experience that “catastrophic failure” along the engineering chain that links power generation and transmission, telecommunications services, and the provision of water, had the relatively unrestrained potential to become a health, security, economic, environmental, and public liability disaster.

From the reports so far, all except the latter featured rather insignificantly. But it could have been a lot worse. We appeared to have dodged a lethal bullet.

Based on the general principle that formulating a suitable response should never be left for when a crisis arises, it is important to note the multi-faceted dimensions of the required actions. They are not all technical/engineering in nature.

The logistics to address them include vital features of public communication, especially since social behaviour becomes important for purposes of mitigating the impacts of both human and non-human system failure.

So, yes, the independent power producers (IPPs) and T&TEC had disaster recovery protocols to address the knock-on impacts of serial technical faults. There was failure at this level. There are different hypotheses by experts – a community to which I do not belong.

Likewise, some of this is not new to WASA. The folks there had surely contemplated the prospect of a complete shutdown of power. Ditto the hapless telecoms service providers. Ditto state security and the main disaster and emergency agency, ODPM.

While there are investigating teams to deliver technical verdicts, claims of shameful failure are difficult to dispute.

There was no power, no water, limited mobile call service, no data, and a pervasive feeling of uncertainty and insecurity. Can you imagine the plight of homecare COVID patients to cite one scenario? This entire situation, to me, represented both discrete and collective dysfunctionality at several levels.

But even more than this, and this is the gist of my contention today, there was no evidence that the relevant state and private agencies had at any time convened, as part of a pre-arranged protocol, to implement a well-formulated crisis communication strategy. This was particularly urgent, given the fact of a pandemic.

I know enough about this to conclude that we are not instinctually predisposed to integrate communication functions with the technical. The composition of the current investigating team and their TORs clearly establish this.

In fact, the guidebooks (and actual practice in many jurisdictions) place public communication – as a feature of crisis policy and planning - at the top of the agenda, alongside the work of security experts, engineers, disaster recovery specialists, politicians, and others.

There is no evidence that anything of the kind occurred last Wednesday. There was no prompt assembling of institutional assets at the level of local government, state and private media, and numerous other partners to achieve such an objective.

There was also no pre-arranged, authoritative spokesperson/s to carry the required messages to inform and to provide comfort and confidence. Only ad hoc reliance on T&TEC professionals addressing just one dimension of the challenge. In this respect, the prime minister needed to be heard.

Meanwhile, the mandatory “golden hour” of crisis communication was lost. As far as I am aware, the first official dispatch came three hours into the crisis via T&TEC.

By that time, the haze created by social media misinformation had already led to traffic jams, talk of militant union action, crime sprees, and other rumours that won’t be repeated here.

Street corner windshield cleaners directing traffic provided an irresistible metaphorical statement on what actually happened last Wednesday. The day the lights went out and we saw so much.

 

The true measure of pan

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We always knew it, but the COVID-19 era is now proving beyond any reasonable doubt that pan as a unique percussive instrument for solo and orchestral music; as intellectual property; and as a platform for social mobilisation, has value way in excess of the roles Pan Trinbago and Panorama play in providing performance platforms, bureaucratic guidance, and money.

It is true that the governing body needs to get its act together and that the constant quarrelling must someday end. But if we did not know it before, we now understand there is much more to the question of pan than state support for competitions and events, channelled through an NGO.

And while judicial edict regarding Pan Trinbago may help clarify some matters, it won’t resolve the dysfunctionality that follows state patronage and cabalistic influence.

The fact is, despite an official hiatus spanning many months; music, innovation, and creativity have prevailed in ways that challenge hierarchical claims based on geography, resources, and large numbers.

In a real sense, the pandemic has levelled the steelband playing field. “North band” chauvinism, “big band” braggadocio and “big sponsor” advantage have come to mean almost nothing.

If you spent last weekend following the gruelling proceedings involving 50 small and single pan bands, and looked beyond near organisational farce, you would have found the key ingredients that render pan, in all is manifestations, the greatest thing we do in this country.

Yet, the masochism of 50 performances over two days and nights, as the Pan Trinbago team moved from band to band, was almost as cruel as the Medium/Large Band Semi-Finals of 2017 that began at 9.00 a.m. and ended at 3.45 the following morning – 58 bands later. Yes, I sat through all of it.

However, between 2020 and today, we ought to have learnt that more does not mean better and that in some respects a schedule of non-competitive performances spanning months is far more respectful than a weekend blitz of “auditions.”

Meanwhile, though needlessly competitive by design, in 2020 and 2021, PanoGrama employed online platforms to bring together some of the best pan talent in the world. Duvone Stewart launched Pan Chronicles online and mustered a global following of thousands.

In 2020, a group of youngsters staged De Coalition – a virtual, international pan collaboration. Wack Radio also hosted a series of ‘Live Stream’ concerts and individual players and stage side bands have been performing and producing and, when not on the road, composing and arranging.

There are numerous activities that have employed new, creative platforms outside of the normal channels of pan expression. I cannot name them all here.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think Panorama is the one event deserving of the title of Greatest (Musical) Show on Earth at Carnival time. But it has to and will change.

But I have been able to see Duvone, Boogsie, Dane Gulston, Chuma Akil Jahi Watson, Triston Marcano, Andre White, Hammond Mitchell, Stefon West, Zahra Lake, Natasha Joseph, Mikhail Salcedo, and Aviel Scanterbury in action.

There are many, many more players, bands, and events that have managed the capsizing of the steelpan order. Not easily. Not painlessly. But they have proven the resilience of the instrument, its music, and its people.

I have never quite subscribed to the late Merchant’s 1985 assertion of a pan crisis. It is not that pan has been in any “danger.” It has been the traditional infrastructure and social order under attack by technology, changing demographics, youthful enterprise, and the globalised nature of pan.

Even as we focused on jingoistically hogging the specifications of the panstick rubber, we were losing intellectual property (IP) advantage in the area of pan innovation.

What, for example, has been the fate of Jomo Wahtuse’s “Xylopan” or, more recently, his ‘JW Hydroforming Press’ for which he obtained a patent in 2020, shortly before his death?

Innovators such as Anthony Williams, Ellie Mannette, Neville Jules, Bertie Marshall, Brian Copeland, and Wahtuse have made valuable contributions to the instrument. To me, the spirit of their contributions is even as relevant as sustaining traditional events.

I have heard some of the conversations about pan in the context of the ‘Taste of Carnival’ experiment with Pan in De Sancoche and Musical Showdown in De Big Yard. They do not leave me convinced that people understand a return to the past is unlikely even as the prospects for dogged insistence on the old formulae for pan success remain dim.

In any event, the true measure of pan is much more than that.

Death and the Laughing Face Emoji

It wasn’t minutes after the incorrect online report that a Venezuelan baby was killed, following an “exchange of gunfire” between the Coast Guard and a boatful of “illegal immigrants”, that the laughing face emoji of social media appeared.

The “exchange of gunfire” bit has since disappeared from official reporting, but there is noteworthy, continued insistence on describing people as being as “illegal” as the process employed to take them from one country to another.

Ritually deployed as gratuitous mockery of human distress and suffering, the little yellow grinning, squinting face was initially intended to signify empathic joy or laughter. This is still largely the case, but it has metamorphosed on some platforms.

In 2015, its equally popular variant, the face with tears of joy, became Oxford Dictionary’s first-ever pictograph ‘Word of the Year’.

These two emojis, in particular, have now ironically grown to be the pandemic favourites of COVID-deniers-turned-anti-vaxxers and are currently deployed to signify callous indifference each time official statistics are announced.

Look it up next time you’re on social media. Then click on the culprits and follow a trail virtually guaranteed to find faux religiosity, racism, xenophobia, conspiracies, and pseudo-science.

Meanwhile, in the other world, gloating on human suffering and mocking associated emotions is typically on display through declarations such as “bursting out in laughter” at the tearful announcement of a spike in the number of pandemic deaths by public health officials.

It’s there in the narrative disingenuously distinguishing the anti-mandate campaign from anti-vax advocacy, even on the part of those who are vaccinated “just in case” - in the way agnostics sometimes pray.

So it was that some folks were sniggering and laughing, via emoji, at the death of Ya Elvis Santoyo last Sunday, even as news of a mass return was being absorbed. “They looked for it” would essentially summarise one collective sentiment. “Who tell them come here?”

By the way, it is now confirmed that there was no shootout – contrary to the hair-trigger police template of preliminary press responses.

The Coast Guard media dispatch confirms this, even as it raises technical questions regarding SOPs under such conditions. Hopefully an investigation does not take months or years.

Much of this comes as the focus has turned from the combined impacts of enlightened policy, recognition of international conventions, and rigorous policing of applicable laws, to dogged, exclusive reliance on the latter obligation.

To its credit, the current administration in 2019 introduced the stopgap measure of temporary registration for Venezuelan migrants who had arrived “whether legally or not.” For the most part, this has become one of those permanently temporary interventions born of political paralysis.

The “close the borders” crowd had stood by to jeer and mock and curse prospective beneficiaries when they assembled. It was June 2019. I cannot forget it. I noted who remained silent. Who fanned the flames.

Here was the laughing face emoji on full human display as frightened men, women and children lined up in light rain at night while, on the other side of the road stood the “close the borders” bunch - now more frequently seen at anti-mandate/anti-vax demonstrations mocking the threatened and the dead. Today, they drag empty black coffins past those filled with corpses and draped with real tears.

What the hell have we come to?

And, yes, human emotion is capable of limitless accommodation. We can grieve for Christian Liverpool and Keithisha Cudjoe at the same time as we mourn Ya Elvis. It is possible to lament a lack of water and dangerous pot-holed roads while bemoaning the lack of official diligence on immigration policy and action.

So, a baby is shot by adults with big guns and the laughing face emoji appears. Who remains to say: “Don’t do it!” Whose press conference, full of self-righteous indignation and outrage will address this? Who is there thinking that compassion can buy me votes?

Not those who confer unequal status on “de small islanders and dem”, “de chinee”, “de wonpasent”, “de venes”, “de Ns and the Cs”, “Laventille” and “Caroni” and other racist code worthy of emoji deployment.

Little Ya Elvis was shot and killed. The laughing faces appeared. There are times when civilisations sink beneath the sea and disappear.

The CCJ’s long, hard road

It seems that almost every time the subject of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) comes up, the people responsible for sharing details on its history, design and functioning have to retrace steps executed a million times before.

This would have been much less painful had our legal communities, and those in associated disciplines including journalism, paid greater attention to the vast compendia of data and information disseminated on a consistent basis since the first signing of the CCJ agreement almost 21 years ago.

Much like current pandemic struggles, the real issue has not been a paucity of hard information but of near wilful ignorance, misinformation, and simply not paying attention.

Deep down, it also appears Caribbean people are yet to cross the colonial Rubicon. It’s there, right now, with the transition to republican status in Barbados. It has also been the challenge of countries such as Jamaica and The Bahamas that have publicly kept their Caricom options open.

There’s also the curse of political hypocrisy excused as rational pragmatism. One prime minister signed the agreement to set up the Court then, having lost office, declared a “lack of confidence” in something that was yet to be properly tested.

Another pointed to an absence of “Indian” judges in 2005, in 2012 described it as indispensable in “furtherance of our national sovereignty”, then eventually reverted to dismissing its equal applicability across civil and criminal jurisdictions.

It is thus conceivable that the host country could persist in refusing to sign up to the Court's Appellate Jurisdiction as a final court of appeal, even as it remains by default a signatory to its Original Jurisdiction to settle CSME issues. 

I added this last bit of information since it is not true to assert, as I heard out of Saint Lucia last week and all the time right here in T&T, that there are Caricom countries that are “not part of the CCJ.” It is the kind of ignorance people, even in legal practice, utter too often without contestation.

It is perhaps for this reason, CCJ President Adrian Saunders took pains to relate some simple facts about the CCJ to a Special Sitting of the Joint Houses of Assembly of Saint Lucia on January 20.

Like every other member of Caricom and participant in the CSME, for instance, T&T is automatically a part of the Original Jurisdiction. In fact, there have been several cases defended by this country at the CCJ. So, stop saying T&T “does not use the CCJ.”

Further, T&T does not “fund the Court and doh use it.” Outside of several routine obligations as host country, the CCJ is funded from the proceeds of a US$100 million trust fund. The “proceeds” of the fund, not the initial capital which someone in Saint Lucia speculated was probably already all spent.

The judges and staff of the Court are selected by a Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission and not by Caricom leaders. The President is selected by the Commission and appointed or rejected by the votes of at least three-quarters of the Heads of Caricom States who are not entitled to propose candidates of their own.

I have spent some time checking the number of cases settled at the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council - so vigorously defended by millionaire attorneys and politicians in T&T - and found that, in 2021, there were just nine such matters. In 2020 there were another nine and, in 2019, 16, and 11 in 2018.

So, let’s get this straight. All this talk about the ethnic makeup of the CCJ bench, the lack of confidence in the quality of judges, and sundry nonsenses are all about a miniscule share of all matters that pass through this country’s magisterial and judicial channels.

Had the passion of objections to the CCJ been applied to fixing broken lower court systems, life could have been a lot different for us.

There have been failed attempts via referenda in St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and Antigua and Barbuda for some of the same reasons of domestic politics, money, interest (low turnouts at referenda), and a lack of paying attention.

Barbados, Belize, Dominica, and Guyana have made the move. Today, the SLP in Saint Lucia possesses the required two-thirds majority to make the constitutional changes in order to usher in the CCJ. They will get there soon.

Over here, bipartisan support is required. To cut a long story short, this is going to be one long, hard road for the CCJ, even in its own hometown.

 

Dear Comrades

Comrades, it is absolutely understandable that media performance in the pandemic should come under intense internal and public scrutiny. At times like these, people legitimately consider the media’s role to be pivotal in either empowering societies to come to terms with extremely difficult circumstances, or to play a hand in failure.

Rest assured, this is the same in every other democracy in the world and is characterised by remarkably similar benchmarks – both informed and uninformed.

Everywhere, it seems to me, the discussion centres on a variety of metrics associated with objective professional journalistic standards, industry-focused dynamics - including profits and viability – academic research (the paucity of which is tragic in our case), scepticism and cynicism, and political preference/disfavour.

It is useful for us who have stayed the course to know precisely what we are dealing with in order to ensure we remain focused on delivering news, analysis, entertainment, and information capable of contributing to enlightened decision-making and sound behaviour-change/reinforcement.

Commentary emerging from chronic cynicism and sheer political preference are easily recognisable. Do not ignore them though. Read and listen carefully. They are useless for any serious re-framing of professional approaches and are never wholly beneficial for purposes of serious introspection. But they should not escape your critical attention, however insidiously cloaked as expert commentary of one kind or the other.

One tip would be to note the minute you witness monolithic reference to “the (amorphous) media.” It does not matter the purported credentials of the messenger, including tangential and even past (typically unremarkable) engagements in the profession. I have heard, for instance, of deals between “the media” and “the government.” What deals? To save lives?

Be aware, though, that at the same time ours is not a perfect professional discipline. Do not be touchy and defensive. There are indeed some from among us who cannot contain our enthusiasm for people and interests, others whose malpractice is indefensible, and those who enter the industry with eyes exclusively set on a variety of other goals.

Yet, most of us start our day every day with only the thought of diligently and competently doing our jobs. For example, poll any newsroom for views on the role people see for themselves in the financial fortunes of their newspaper or broadcast station, and the vast majority would tell you that’s not what’s constantly on their minds on assignment or at their workstations.

The thing is, we are in the middle of a crisis in which the foundations of our professional practice are being tested at every level, even as there is an undeniable reliance on mainstream “legacy” media to validate the outputs of Wild West social media frontiers.

Sadly, some deem it a losing battle in the face not only of contentious virtual content, but of wilful vandalism. Lift the lid and you will find a teeming nest of vapid, busy under-achievers – many of whom have transacted the woefully low entry requirements of the social media space, but even some of whom employ this other territory we call our own.

However, this is an old set of circumstances on a new field of play. The practice of politics and the agendas of preference/disfavour have always challenged the value of facts. Media submission is also a longstanding passion of both the powerful and their unwitting subordinates.

The media industry here, and almost everywhere else, has tried to play a leading role in promoting awareness of pandemic realities. Our industry bodies – the TTPBA and MATT – have engaged in addressing the destructive impacts of COVID denial and the incomprehensible designs of increasingly active anti-vaxxers.

Media houses have routinely interrogated the integrity of pandemic management measures and now openly, and correctly, support the programme of national vaccination.

It has been said that the presumed “power” of the media has two razor-sharp blades on either side. The truth (or the pursuit of truth) can indeed undermine and defeat as much as it can satisfy the public interest. But urgency is not panic, and caution is not fear.

Dear comrades, there are many things we can do better, but there are numerous positives to claim. Good journalism may yet save the day again.