The pandemic bottom line

Now that COVID-19 has begun to fade into the background – though it has not completely disappeared - we should not let too much time pass before convening an honest retrospective on the country’s pandemic response.

This should be designed to capture everything from the quality of official interventions to civil, political, scientific, communication, and other areas of national performance.

Of course, there will always be difficulties associated with the mediation of such a discourse, particularly since virtually all quarters of recognised authority are known to have fallen short – however hard we all tried. The judiciary, I believe, remained intact and independent.

The fact is nobody really saw this coming in the way it eventually did. And, in the process, every strength and every weakness of a country still in the transition to full maturity lay exposed for all to see.

That said, show me a country, small or large, that matched the challenge through public policy and private action to the extent that the pandemic turned out to be, as some impostors here continue to suggest - much ado about a relatively minor matter.

The purpose of a full review in T&T would be to examine both the brittle and the strong points of the institutions - formal and informal – that acted on our behalf, however marginal or integral their actual roles.

In the process, we are likely to discover as much beauty as the utterly repulsive. Some of the latter has been chronicled right here on this page and expressed as privilege, political opportunism, charlatanism, and a most cynical cleavage to myth and untruth.

Such public observations therefore disqualify me from a mediating role since there is no possibility of a “middle ground” when close to 4,400 have died.

From the very beginning when COVID-denial (“it’s just a bad flu”) barged onto the public stage, to claims that pandemic measures here comprised a uniquely disproportionate reaction (“the rest of the Americas remains open for business”), to an assertion of ethnic favouritism, open promotion of vaccine-hesitancy, to the suggestion that many who died would have died anyway. There is much to consider along the way.

These are not pleasant memories. They all pointed to a willingness by some, led by opinion-leaders acting from the standpoint of personal privilege, to have the country sacrifice what they considered to be lesser lives and livelihoods.

Today, even as the significant dent sustained on the economy is being addressed (as is the case almost everywhere), there is a narrative which purports failure while hopefully envisaging consequential partisan fortune. This is matched and outdone only by the parading of statistics on violent crime as a function of political boastfulness.

It has to be that we are afflicted with some kind of illness deeply embedded in our collective psyche that’s destined to be far more fatal than the virus which overran the globe.

Last week, a few of us were remembering covert food-sharing escapades, mask-wearing habits, “essential” workers and the media, vaccination certificates, pandemic elections (there were several throughout the Caribbean), quarantine detentions, border closures, the press conferences, wild parties ignored by the police, “private” beaches, painful nasal swabs, who visited previously unexplored territory for the vaccine, COVID-deniers who fell ill, and most sadly we remembered those who died.

At least informally, we have been conducting our own individual and communal reviews. But it would be worthwhile for us as a country to conduct a clinical examination of all that went right and the several areas in which we fell down on the job.

It could be that the university folks are already having a rigorous look – as is their duty. Some of their professionals played particularly important roles in drawing attention to mental health perils and the science behind the vaccines. Others, not that much.

The Media Institute of the Caribbean, with which I am aligned, initiated several introspective journalistic reviews of what was happening on the public communication front regionally. The Association of Caribbean Media Workers frequently brought regional journalists together to catch up on the challenges and published ‘Through the Pandemic – State of the Caribbean Media Report 2022.’

Seems as if the sector in which I work (reviled and mocked as it is) admirably saw a role for itself in leading an open and honest discussion on what went wrong, and what went right.

In the process, we unearthed numerous areas of fault and fragility, and points of real strength and resilience. The rest of society needs to know how we really made it to this point.

The press and human rights

It’s World Press Freedom Day today and it appears most people here don’t really care or understand what it’s all about. It also follows the observance, two days ago, of International Workers’ Day aka May Day.

Filipino journalist, Juan Pablo Salud, established a connection on Monday when he posted to his Facebook page: “One fact you don't hear very often is that writing is labour, and writers - novelists, journalists, poets, essayists, playwrights, screenwriters, songwriters, social media content creators … form part of the workforce.

We are found in every industry, every human endeavor since the dawn of civilization.”

This made me recall the time when (as a reporter and trade union member) covering labour news, I turned to a news editor and said of a planned union demonstration: “Shouldn’t we be out there too?” – despite knowing intimately of the weaknesses and foibles of a labour movement proceeding slothfully into the future, to the extent that today it appears stuck in the tarpits of slow death.

Whatever the appropriate response, I believe press freedom is intrinsically aligned to a wide swathe of freedoms and human rights – conscientious commitments that distinguish us from other animal groups.

Press freedom, as one by-product of wider freedom of expression, plays a key role in ensuring that other rights are the stuff of lived reality. This obtains even as we recognise that all rights are for everyone.

These rights include the full gamut of civil and political rights, alongside the economic, social and cultural. It is impossible, or at least highly unlikely, to distinguish the conditions conducive to one from the other without at the same time denying the inalienability, universality, and indivisibility of such freedoms.

In countries such as ours – the products of colonialism, slavery, and other forms of coercion – we continually encounter the cognitive dissonance that emerges each time we speak of asserting human rights. There is this endemic, quick resort to prohibition and an absence of the habits of freedom.

There are also people who despise the (admittedly imperfect) press and would bask in its demise over narratives or perspectives being given time and space that are not in keeping with their own.  

Another group includes those who do not appear to understand that press freedom implies the right of audiences/consumers to seek out, access, and procure content. Press freedom, therefore, is not only for the press.

All platforms can occupy space under the expansive umbrella of free expression, but the discrete elements (inclusive of amateur social media outputs in all their manifestations) are not all the same and distinctions are deservedly made.

Press freedom makes specific demands of mainstream, legacy media that do not necessarily extend to less formal platforms – whatever the common legal and presumed ethical obligations. This is, however, not to diminish the value of other channels.

The media’s validating role is also key to addressing disinformation and propaganda couched as independent news and information. Had things been different, considerable pandemic progress would not have been realised.

These things are being considered at a time when human rights and freedoms are being tested in unprecedented ways.

In the Caribbean, for instance, a scarcity of resources together with relatively weak social and political institutions conspire to undermine the prospects for peaceful and equitable growth and development.

Pandemic measures added considerably to the already challenging situation. We also face violent crime as a singularly critical threat to Caribbean civilisation, accompanied by an inability to properly understand and to address it.

We have seemingly been moving from one crisis to the next, and the implications for media practice at times such as these are exceedingly difficult to negotiate.

US scholar Dr Courtney C. Radsch, to whose research I have recently contributed, asserts: “When there is a fast pivot or crisis, media become even more politicised, and other institutions are affected in ways that put further pressure on independent journalism both inside the country and in surrounding areas, as well as in those that become migratory hosts.”

Additionally, in our neck of the woods, the indispensable role of reliable news and information in the achievement of even the most modest developmental aspirations is being undermined by brittle media infrastructure, endemic mis and disinformation, and governance systems that are distinctly opaque and unaccountable.

It has also not been helpful that politicians and their surrogates increasingly employ subversive tactics to undermine the credibility and value of independent journalism even as they ironically do so at their own peril.

At stake are rights in excess of those claimed by the media and journalists. We’d do well to remember this.

Young people and the "common agenda"

(First published in the T&T Guardian on April 26, 2023)

I am almost certain that most governments were not sure what they were getting themselves into when they delivered a 2020 mandate to the UN Secretary-General to come up with a roadmap for advancing a “common agenda” in response to “current and future (global) challenges.”

It had to be they did not countenance the explosive implications of a revised order, or different way of doing business that cedes power, privilege and responsibility to otherwise maginalised social, economic, and political elements.

Today, three years after this instruction to the global body, and the worst impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war-mongering, imperialist desire, self-destructive development planning, and even more of the same old, same old remain firmly in place.

There in fact appears an even more intense devotion to the status quo – even on the heels of pandemic devastation.

Significantly, last week’s release of a third policy brief related to the “Common Agenda” mandate focuses ambitiously on youth participation in the decision-making process.

The “glass ceiling” concept has, quite rightly, occupied gender-aware spaces, but I can think of no other group – at least here in the Caribbean – more marginalised by power dynamics than our young people.

Think of the processes in which youth are engaged to convert ideas and dreams into tangible enterprises contributing to economic, social, and cultural wealth. I see few prospects for change.

The blockages, you see, are not passive omissions of policy and practice, but active borders policed by regulation, convention, and blatant discrimination.

On more than one occasion, I have had the painful displeasure of witnessing the deflating impacts of this phenomenon. I am sure that you have receipts of your own. Young people – bright-eyed and bushy-tailed – whipped into submission - seen but not heard, denied voice and opportunity.

The UN policy brief thoughtfully addresses some of these, but almost entirely from the standpoint of official validation through a process of so-called “empowerment.” “We” (who are in charge) should open doors for “them.”

There is a presumption of dominance in keeping with status quo dynamics when what is evidently needed is a revolution that turns our realities on their heads and shakes … hard.

What is the fear behind stepping aside? I have advocated for this for more rapid and relevant embrace of digitalisation in both the private and public sectors – a change recognisably dragging on its bottom to nowhere.

Come on. Stand aside, be prepared to offer advice based on experience, and pass the assignment to digital natives who eat, drink, and sleep such a boundaryless reality.

We have dinosaurs fixed on risk instead of young people who are recognising opportunity.

The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, in introducing the brief surmised that “transformative changes will simply not be possible at the scale required without the buy-in and contributions of a wide range of actors. This is especially true of the 1.2 billion young people alive today.”

Sounds like we have heard it all before, right? I have … like 50 years ago (minus the population figure).

I think the time has come for all of this to move from the stage of official briefs to multi-stakeholder action.

Our Caribbean governments joined the call for change in 2020. The UN system has done some work. What have we done? What do we expect to see come of this?

The painfully obvious through all this is that young people have, as the UN SG suggests “become a driving force for societal change through social mobilisation – pushing for climate action, seeking racial justice, promoting gender equality and demanding dignity for all.”

Right here in T&T, youth initiative and creativity are visible in music, art, and the employment of innovative technologies.

They are the ones who should be steering us through the digitalisation of government and private enterprise. I have argued before that an age ceiling should be set for experts leading the digitalisation processes.

Give me 30-year-old digital natives who ask all the “foolish questions.” Who understand that downloadable forms represent nothing new. That technological facades for manual back-ends are no longer fooling anyone.

I also feel sorry for the 50 and 60 and 70 year old politicians pronouncing authoritatively on needed prohibitions rather than the exploitation of social media opportunity.

I regret, on behalf of them, the false expectation that their own calls for a common agenda for change could countenance their own demise. Sadly, I am almost certain they will resist this with all their might.

Make or break in a small space

Today’s column ought to have been about the regional symposium on ‘Violence as a Public Health Issue – The Crime Challenge’ which ended yesterday.

But because of my early deadline for submission of this, bungled arrangements for meaningful media coverage, and the absence of essential background reading, I have chosen to resume a discussion on converting our cultural assets into both wealth and social wellness.

However, before I leave the symposium alone (though I found the leaders’ roundtable … instructive), I just want to make it clear I agree that criminal violence provides an established path to public health crises. There is sufficient literature on this to at least agree with the main principles.

The political commentary on this particular point has, however, been so underdeveloped and near irrelevant that it is advisable to pay attention almost solely to what real experts say on the subject, based on a level of empiricism and scrupulous study. This cannot be left to amateurs, whatever their own political, professional or social status.

Calls for more guns, application of emergency powers, hanging people, increasing penalties, eliminating rights, blaming the media, and de facto vigilante civilian policing almost routinely emerge as predictable creed in an environment in which wholesome understanding of cause and effect is ignored or absent.

Now, therefore, for something about which I know a little, and which is not entirely unrelated to the above. Last weekend began for me on Saturday morning at Arnim’s Art Galleria in Port of Spain with a viewing of ‘Memoirs: A Sonnylal Rambissoon Retrospective Pt. 2’.

This is an exceedingly valuable exhibition for anyone with an interest in a wide variety of artistic media. Now, my saying so does not under any circumstance make me any kind of expert connoisseur or reviewer. I am suggesting this as someone who has re-entered the world of visual art following a decades-long hiatus.

The exhibition ends on Friday but there is an upcoming lino block engraving workshop on the 29^th at the same venue which references Rambissoon’s woodcut prints.

After leaving Arnim’s on Saturday, it was off to the Fine Art Market at Anchorage in Chaguaramas for observance of World Art Day.

Let me tell you: some of the best people in the world are artists. There I was with my phone scrolled to my Instagram account and some of my own modest work. Former journalist, Halcian Pierre, currently described as a “neo pop” artist was present with kind feedback, along with almost everyone else I spoke with.

On location as well was retired master broadcaster/communication professional, Percy Parker-Williams, with his vast collection of new artistic work.

There was also impressive young artist, Vanessa George, who claimed that a tabanca had driven her to some fantastic work. There was a fabric designer, together with sculptors, and work in oil, acrylic, watercolour, pens, wood, steel, concrete.

Having spent too much time there, I had to rush back to UWI for yet another Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA) student music recital. Scores of young musicians, beautiful music, an audience spread out on “the greens” at the Creative Arts Centre in St Augustine.

All of this meant that I could not make it to Naparima Bowl where a Jazz Festival had begun with names like the phenomenal LeAndra accompanied by the National Steel Symphony Orchestra, Chantal Esdelle and Moyenne, Solman, and Rellon Brown and Dominant Seventh Jazz Band did their thing.

Anybody notice yet where I am going with this? My longtime colleague and friend, Peter Ray Blood, can rattle off perhaps another dozen events over the weekend that proved that many people are choosing not to stay locked away and unexposed to the explosion of creative power currently being unleashed nationally.

David Rudder and Comrade BC Pires were all week hawking Gary Hector’s ‘Naked’ production. I heard things went well. And, yes, there was more. Ask Peter. And there was also the launch of Desperadoes’ new panyard.

Then, yesterday, even as Caribbean politicians and experts dissected rampant criminal violence throughout the region, I was at Nalis in Port of Spain helping cultural anthropologist, dance master, and writer, Sat Balkaransingh launch a new collection of poems.

I thought about all the people in our small space who are missing out on much of this through both justifiable and manipulated fear. But my mind has also been on all the others who have chosen hope through the opportunity to witness creation rather than yielding to the spectre of destruction.

In this small place, people and things are both broken and made.

 

Our deadly implementation deficits

Follow current national, regional and international dynamics, even superficially, and you’d come across ubiquitous reference to “implementation deficits” as a risk factor in the transition of ideas into lived reality.

For instance, the climate crisis - especially relative to our experiences as small island developing countries of the Caribbean - is replete with instances in which the big countries that have contributed most to the challenges posed by carbon emissions habitually renege on commitments to alleviate the impacts of human-caused (anthropogenic) climate change.

Regionally, some obligations under the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas suffer at the hands of grand pronouncements not reaching the stage of on-the-ground action in the respective member states. True, there is redress through the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) – set up to adjudicate on breaches of the Treaty. But should it always come to this?

In any event, and as an aside, I am of the view that insufficient use of the CCJ in its “original jurisdiction" to adjudicate disputes over implementation of the Treaty has allowed significant breaches including free movement of skills provisions, and the meaning of “single market” conditions to pass unpunished.

On another occasion, I can speak specifically about Guyana’s local content regulations in the energy sector and, in T&T, of official breaches of acceptable practice when it comes to the free movement of regional skills.

The other arena in which we witness implementation deficits is exemplified in the number of times stated good intentions are never converted into consistent, effective actions.

To be fair, to speak of a deficit does not automatically reference malicious intent, especially in this latter context. It is not that our leaders, at all levels from national to community, do not mean well or simply do not care.

This is how political parties get to power and stay there – through demonstrations of good intent. People won’t vote for politicians who say or suggest from the start that they do not plan to address a problem of violent crime or minimise the impacts of a pandemic, for instance.

It is also fair to assume that people interested in wider political or even communal support must first display a willingness to get things done for the benefit of everyone. The problem arises when there is a gap between ideas and full realisation of plans arising from such ideas.

There is a significant amount of literature that explores the underpinnings of such deficits or shortfalls. I am however most convinced by the assertion that in too many instances, process takes on a life of its own and eventually overrides anticipated outcomes.

It cannot be, for example, that a severe shortage of fire tenders in T&T has been ignored and categorised as a low priority. Additionally, and for certain, this is not a belated realisation by everyone from the prime minister to politicians across the aisle, to senior public servants, to community leaders.

A few years ago, while examining the phenomenon, Lois Parkes of the Caribbean Centre For Development Administration (CARICAD) identified some key elements of a successful implementation process: The Idea, Leadership, Research, Stakeholder Engagement, Conceptual Design, Approval, Project Planning and Implementation, Team Development, and Strategic Communication.

While all of this cannot be denied as major benchmarks for the success of projects, they at the same time prescribe processes already well known to our legendary Caribbean bureaucracies. Sometimes a pothole in the road simply needs to be filled with anything before something else happens.

In a region where everything is a priority, people need to simply get going on the immediate, apparent needs as a matter of urgency. For where along Parkes’ continuum, for example, remains the acquisition of fire tenders to address emergencies in T&T?

What do we tell the family of Zaya and Kemba Morris about all this? On what were the minister, the permanent secretary, and the fire-fighting hierarchy otherwise too busy or under-resourced to address this important need? At what stage of the process?

When these people in leadership go home after a day at work, on what tasks do they tell their families they were so busy? At what stage of the process had been the procurement of fire tenders? Where on the project spreadsheet was this priority issue? Where was the vigilance of civil society and political activism – the “stakeholder engagement”?

There is a deficit in our implementation agenda that creates a yawning chasm between initial realisation/idea and achievement of goals. It sometimes proves to be deadly. Let’s fix this, please.

 

Our precious health workers

I don’t know about you, but I think a much bigger deal needs to be made of the fact that this is WHO-designated World Health Worker Week (April 2-8).

I saw one estimate that with a world population of close to 8 billion, there are an estimated 59 million health workers – 70% of whom are women. This includes the full range of professionals and other staff who work in a health or social care setting – both private and public.

The statistics for T&T are not entirely unimpressive but subject to numerous levels of interpretation and important nuances. For example, in 2019 there were between 3.5 and 4.0 nurses and midwives per 1,000 population.

I have seen different figures in different places, and the Registered Nurses Association has pointed to some negative qualitative values such as the low number of ICU and specialist nurses and the well-known flight of knowledge and skill.

But this is not all about the numbers, as important as they are. The focus must remain on the environment in which these people work, including low official priority, poor infrastructure, overcrowding, and occasional lack of supplies. Important as it is, it’s not just the money.

Over the past three years, we have had special cause to recognise the important role of healthcare workers and to pay tribute to their strength and resilience through a most difficult period in human history.

Yet, on Thursday April 9, 2020, when in T&T we were asked to spend a minute or so to stand and applaud these people for their work as we faced a pandemic, there were those who chose “scamdemic” theory, the “overkill” narrative, unforgotten sourness, and partisan hubris to shun the call.

We stood at the neighbour’s fence and joined with little Isabella and Milan clapping and cheering for the people on a frontline that has since witnessed the loss of over 4,300 lives, including some of theirs.

My sister, Vanda, has been a nursing heroine all her working life and I am aware that she has not been alone. Our first round of applause went to this group of healthcare workers.

Our system places a majority of workers in the sector under state employment. This means that governments have a high level of control over conditions for the proper execution of duties - both the enabling “hardware” (infrastructure and tools) and “software” (appropriate management systems and regimes for compensation and rewards).

Years ago, a former minister of health confessed to me, privately, that his portfolio had been subjected to a high degree of “benevolent neglect.” It was around the time I was noting the move to encourage “customer service” as linguistic substitute for the notion of “patient care” in the public health system.

I am not sure if this “customer” thing still prevails (though I visited the superb Arima General Hospital as recently as Saturday), but to me at the time it did not help the cause of the state health system to mimic the predisposition of private facilities.

Most of us can rattle off the private healthcare stories – that time a family member on the eve of major surgery was made to await the proceeds of a substantial ATM withdrawal before being attended to et cetera, et cetera.

There might be a good argument for moving toward “customership” in the state sector but so many years later, I am yet to witness any substantial benefit arising from prior efforts – not the least being the plight of healthcare workers.

It did not require a sense of “customership” on Saturday when I visited a relative at AGH to witness high-quality care and professionalism in the work of the nurses and attendants on duty.

But it did occur to me that clean, comfortable, and well-maintained premises play a role in worker satisfaction and, resultingly, a positive attitude toward the jobs at hand. Even more should be adequate remuneration and benefits in keeping with one of the most important jobs in any society.

Under such circumstances, private medicine would have no real advantage over socialised medicine – whatever the dogmatic ideologues and millionaire practitioners contend.

Hopefully, when the UN High-Level Meeting on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) convenes in September, countries of the Caribbean will have something to offer to the ongoing discussions on proper health care for all. In the process, we should report on what has been done to benefit workers in the sector and to encourage better quality service and care.

 

Engaging the multiverse

 You can listen to this here:

At last week’s Forum of Journalists organised by the EU-LAC Foundation in Stockholm, two presenters on a panel on which I served alluded to the cross narratives of the modern era that render the work of journalists and academics infinitely more difficult than it has ever been – or perhaps recognised in the past as being challenged in that way.

For those unfamiliar with the boundless, growing maze of current mass communication it might all sound like fanciful, even fantastical excuse-making for endemic imprecision or malpractice. Some see it as “too much freedom”, “licence” and even sacrilegious departure from longstanding and cherished values.

It became certain though, as we discussed these matters, that successive generations have encountered similar transitions, albeit at different rates of change and engagement.

Even as one European academic spoke, it dawned on me that the determinants that influence the quality of history’s first on-the-ground drafts have throughout time always existed to impose questions of authenticity and even outright truthfulness through ubiquitous, multiple realities and narratives.

It has always been that if journalism, or its rough equivalent, does not or cannot or has not produced reliable first takes on our histories, there will be difficulty with coming to terms with current realities through retrospection.

We think, for example, of our own Caribbean histories and the parallel and integrated narratives of slave-owners and those of their human chattel and other intermediaries. Current projects to achieve reparatory justice are highlighting the several confusions.

What then, does all of this mean for journalists? I asked. One colleague who had recently travelled to Moldova in the face of the assaults on Ukraine by Russia, seriously contested prevailing mainstream narratives reflective of presumed public opinion.

It was a discussion I was patently incapable of engaging, except to note its association with the concept of inter-woven realities. There are scholars examining this as a sub-set of multiverse theory which goes beyond examination of “the two sides of the coin” or even multiple perspectives on the same land or peoplescape.

It occurred to me, that while being frequently mocked by people who don’t know better, modern journalists (including Caribbean practitioners) have been called to new duty in ways predecessors would doubtless be entirely ill-equipped to manage.

The world has changed and so have tools and circumstances through which media professionals have been having to deliver on a growing variety of needs and responsibilities. This is a rather bitter pill for some and needs to be administered in small, palatable doses and without offence.

Yet, life in these times subsists on pique and hubris even in small vulnerable spaces such as ours. I have been both fortunate and plagued, through engagement of the national, regional and global dynamics, to have witnessed the changing landscape.

Substance has grown to overtake the designs of supremely malleable form. TikTok’s verticality. Instagram’s command of visual space. Twitter’s authoritative immediacy. Social media’s subversion of traditional structures of storytelling. It is now clear that management of fact now exceeds the call of orderliness and polite compliance with ageing rules.

Social media, artificial intelligence, algorithms, bots, the failing viability of the “mainstream”, and a redefining of the challenges to “legacy” conspire to surpass ancient habits and values.

Fail to understand these things at your peril, even though S.I Rosenbaum’s contrarian op-ed last week in the New York Times eschewed the escapism embraced by notions of such real-world multiversity.

“If we have to believe in something invisible, let me believe in a version of the universe that keeps my focus where it belongs: on the things I can touch and change,” he says … hopefully.

Oh, were it that easy to do as it is to say. Even such views hardly travel along tracks of their own. There are in fact alternate realities that run alongside, through and between the paths of what is often deemed to be “truth.”

All of this musing to say that modernity will not be turned back. It is true that radio remained when television arrived, but the fax machine has virtually disappeared alongside typewriter ribbons, while telex persists in limited application.

The past, Rosenbaum insists, can subsist alongside both the present and the future as durable timelines. In other words, I dare argue, all of these are inter-related realities.

I happen to think it has always been this way. However, there are now tools to capture it more efficiently, and cover more about which we were never aware. Framing this as journalistic challenge is another way of securing understanding. The young among us know this far better than the rest of us. Their time is upon us.