Some real local government questions

(Published in the T&T Guardian on May 25, 2023)

It’s very likely that by the time this is published there would have already been sufficient in the public space to make sense or nonsense of speculative offerings on Privy Council Appeal No 0016 of 2023 regarding the Local Government Reform Act of 2022, and what becomes of the resulting vacuum.

It is acknowledged, through majority decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC), that such legislation had had the illegitimate impact of extending the terms of office of local government representatives “not by the electorate but by the Government, which brought the amendments into force while those Councillors and Aldermen were still in office.”

There has been sufficient advised and mis-informed, partisan and independent commentary to signal a high degree of public interest in this matter, but this space is not about to be consumed by passions over the judgment.

It is also clear that elections should be announced. But there is another huge national assignment before us, to which insufficient attention is currently being paid, preoccupied as it is with Privy Council edict.

There is work to be done to move the concept of local government past its near absolute subservience to executive authority to a point of meaningful autonomous governance.

Since my first assignment as a local government reporter in the 1980s I have witnessed delays and lacunas of multiple varieties. So, the current situation does not alarm me very much.

In 2016, I was also invited to moderate public consultations on local government reform, and this space has since been used on numerous occasions to highlight the urgency of what was discussed, and the significant level of bipartisanship displayed.

Additionally, as a citizen, I have witnessed the degree to which local government performance frequently outweighs the value of parliamentary representation. For instance, I live in a community that has witnessed exchanges of partisan roles on several occasions with no change in this dynamic.

Today, what the JCPC judgment has done is to redirect our attention toward a much-neglected area of national life. It is important now, even as legal and political fallout is being assessed, to maintain some focus on dissecting the requirements of our local government environment.

This is important since the multiplicity of “little” things of community life often aggregate in values in excess of some of the “big” things at the national scale. Here is where “governance” comes to life through the delivery of social goods and services that make a difference in our day-to-day lives.

Most members of parliament who have transitioned from local government are easily recognised by their attention to the fine details of service delivery within communities. You can spot them from a distance. Mind you, this is not to say that the best local government representatives make the best parliamentarians, since they are almost entirely separate disciplines.

Now, what am I really fussing about today? It is May 2023 – exactly seven years since the last round of public consultations to consider an evolving menu of options for local government reform.

It was a process that spanned political administrations and included key players such as former ministers Surujrattan Rambachan, Hazel Manning, and the late Franklin Khan.

Significantly, there has been no serious contention over the main requirements of a reformed system. Chief among these was the ability of local government bodies to keep the proceeds of the Property Tax and other revenues in order to maintain stronger financial autonomy. Granted, the Property Tax has taken on a life of its own.

This issue was captured in the 2022 amendments and was a significant feature of the reforms related to the fiscal independence of local government bodies.

Other goals - some of them strongly represented in the amendments, others not - included a higher level of executive authority for the municipalities, a variety of new responsibilities including school maintenance and social services support, an expanded role for better resourced municipal police services, and added responsibility for disaster management.

For these and other objectives identified in the reform process, it will require much more than simple political will or even legislation. It will take the concerted interest of all civil society players to ensure that the goal of more effective, meaningful, governance at the local level is achieved.

All of this in turn will mean that beyond the hustings and the partisan flare-ups that can and will occur, a transition to community self-interest and responsibility, away from arbitrary executive action can become increasingly possible.

I am awaiting the political discourse which captures such possibilities. The Privy Council judgment only hints at it. But there is a quite a lot more to say and do about this.

 

 

Addressing social media and disinformation

 

View my take on the subject here

Confronting plural crises

The theme assigned the upcoming regional meeting of regional labour ministers in Guyana ambitiously focuses on “social justice” during what the International Labour Organization (ILO) proposes to be a discussion on “the foundation for a sustainable Caribbean transformation.”

I am not sure how such fanciful themes are brainstormed and finalised, but it must have been that somebody or bodies spent time on a host of stuffy texts which explore current thinking on notions of equity and justice as fundamental components of the solution to what the framers of the May 23-25 conversation describe as “plural crises” in the Caribbean.

They must have been reading every newspaper there is to read, and followed all the newscasts, social media posts, and the lamentations of writers, musicians, and artists. It would have also been necessary to sift hollow political polemic and sloganeering from lived experience and trauma.

There had to have been a battle against political incumbents who claim, “all is well” (“excellent”) and those who narrate tales of terminal decline - until their turn arrives and all is suddenly well and “excellent”.

There had to have been the backdrop of April’s crime and violence talks and the largely infertile menu of under-developed, whimsical prescriptions depictive of cluelessness of high order … in high places.

Few from among us would contend that “plural crises” is the stuff of hyperbole. That we indeed face a multiplicity of multi-faceted and rapid downhill journeys on carriages fixed to wobbly, decaying, disintegrating wheels.

Those of us who have decided to stay, physically and emotionally, are left with a task way beyond the limits of partisan desire - the alternatives being exile of different degrees and expression.

You can sense an absence of commitment from a distance. There is a willingness to initiate destruction at the onset of defeat. Chronic claims of victimhood as a salve for complicity. Sectional triumphalism and factional defeat when victory becomes elusive. A quick resort to active and passive exile – darts thrown from both safely afar and within the neighbourhood.

Plural crises indeed. Little time to find how we came to this. To trace a lineage of descent. To contemplate the joint enterprise of loss. Instead, a simple resort to blame and hopelessness.

In that light, does the ILO (and, by extension, its Caribbean partners) understand what they are really getting themselves into when they meet in Guyana next week? Perhaps. I have seen that in the concept note for the meeting that last year’s communique from the Caricom Summit is cited with reference to a “whole of government and society approach to recovery and resilience.”

This is a tall order in any context. Of the host country Guyana, for example, Caribbean economist, Marla Dukharan, reported recently: “Guyana is still the world's fastest growing economy, but has the lowest import cover and they are withdrawing as fast as they deposit into their Sovereign Wealth Fund.”

How will this be addressed within the context of a meeting of labour ministers all ostensibly committed to “priority attention to and investment in integrated policies and strategies to create decent jobs, extend social protection and facilitate just transitions”?

Where will T&T’s growing socio-economic divide feature in the discussion on “human-centric” economic recovery and the challenge of labour migration in key sectors? Add to that the role of inward migration in expanding opportunities in our labour market.

Importantly, as well, is the requirement of “just transitions” within the context of inevitable global economic change, and an unfolding climate crisis against which all discussions on Caribbean climate must be nuanced.

It is time national dialogues in our region move more firmly in the direction of these subjects that have a bearing on our future viability. I looked and looked again at what the ILO has in store for Caribbean governments next week and hope we take an appropriate cue with eyes set on issues that reach farther and wider than unstable, chaotic labour markets and interventions to stabilise them.

Our labour ministers in this region are routinely clustered among the least influential of Cabinet members. Quick, name three of them from any three Caricom countries including your own.

True, such meetings are not meant to resolve all the problems of the world. But they play a role in defining the nature and pace of change. Come away with a reinforced status quo, and you have reached nowhere, achieved nothing – whatever the fancy language.

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.