Election agendas in T&T

There are few areas of public governance that have been the subject of as many studies, consultations, speeches, and White Papers as the reforming of our system of local government. Yet, local government election campaigns are about the worst possible time to label prospective reform issues as central to their eventual outcomes.

For one, the kind of change needed to regulate better quality representation and service delivery is not the prerogative of councillors and aldermen in a municipal corporation. This is a process suited to enlightened parliamentary decision-making, and faithfully compliant executive action.

Once elected, local government representatives will be responsible for implementing whichever reforms are eventually enacted, but they are not the ones to determine the legislative conditions under which they are to perform.

Secondly, the least of the apostles at local government election time are usually the actual candidates who routinely receive third or fourth or fifth-class billing on the hustings.

It should not inspire anyone that being a local government representative provides a stepping stone to a parliamentary career, when in fact it is a substantially important job that has meaning for people and their communities.

In the process, community needs and ways of managing them, are rarely at the top of the main campaign agendas, and it has become reliant on some kind of “reform” to accord local representatives their appropriate place in the scheme of things.

At this time, even the partisan huddles at cottage and home meetings focus on strategies to win, and not necessarily to work out ways of resolving community challenges.

Instead, the advent of messaging apps has played such a role, during terms of office, and helped stimulate joint deliberation and action on immediate needs, almost in defiance of the formal systems for addressing them.

Virtual “local government”, via WhatsApp in particular, has thus latterly represented an alternative platform (at least at the primary level of discourse) to the research and solution-finding functions of statutory meetings. I am really not sure where village councils stand in this regard.

Another reason why local government reform is such a remote (or even irrelevant) matter for consideration at this time, is that these contests have traditionally been reduced to statistical indicators of the future prospects for political parties at general elections. August 14 is no different.

Current campaign shenanigans are dominant in the public discourse, and who aligns with whom is currently deemed infinitely more important than accumulated water puddles in the drainage system that will soon yield the next dengue outbreak.

I suspect that the more devoted representatives agonise constantly over the manner in which their sponsor political organisations organise these campaigns. Some of the most committed, competent and conscientious politicians I have ever met have been local government representatives – on different sides of the political fence.

Many of them would tell you that when it comes to solution-finding and the allocation of frequently scarce resources, there is a level of mature bipartisanship that kicks in. This is particularly true around times of crisis and emergency.

You can also usually tell the difference between parliamentarians who have served in local government and those who have not – not that this represents any kind of upward mobilisation, for they all serve national interests however communally sub-divided. But there always appears to be greater sensitivity to the micro-issues.

They eventually learn, you see, that the real action resides in the delivery of goods and services at street, block, and community levels. Efficient public health and waste management, community safety and security, spatial planning and development, and community infrastructure and services - all things of value that exceed almost everything else in national governance.

What a reformed system can do is to ensure that these matters are attended to with a higher level of orderliness, transparency, and efficiency, through the wider availability of resources and planning systems to ensure prompt and reliable delivery.

In a sense, that’s all we need. But the outcome of these current elections can change none of that. August 15 will find us in the same legislative space.

But none of this is to dismiss the need for comprehensive reform of the system of local government. There have been numerous iterations that have largely received bipartisan support. It is really hard to distinguish between what Suruj Rambachan and Hazel Manning and Franklin Khan advocated so strongly for. In principle, their proposals were the same.

But that’s not what these elections are all about. Local government reform could not have been more irrelevant at a time of local government elections.

Procurement’s concrete barriers

So, there I was, preparing to engage in big people business this week with a commentary on the procurement law fiasco. Then came one of the more eminently sensible public voices, in the form of Helen Drayton … right here on this very page last Sunday. You can skip me and find her column.

What more can I add, I thought. Ms Drayton argued in favour of sound, rational law-making in order “to foster good governance, accountability, transparency, integrity, value for money, efficiency, fairness, equity, and public confidence.”

That her perspectives are now being only marginally noted signals a sad absence from the independent benches of our parliament, with all due respect to the incumbents. Yet, thankfully, this voice of reason prevails through the devices of a free press. Ditto the more strident efforts of Afra Raymond, aligned to the necessity for greater transparency.

But before I get to some of the more substantial offerings of these two citizens, Ms Drayton in particular, I offer a perspective to consider. If, as I argued three years ago, legislation to govern state procurement is not accompanied by an uncompromising commitment – through legislation, convention, or regulated practice – to a higher level of transparency it would amount to nothing more than inconvenient, fanciful adornments.

Additionally, throughout the various debates and public discussions when the subject became fashionable, I was reminded of a classroom many years ago with Dr Daphne Phillips-Gaskin at the front explaining the true meaning of authoritarian societies, including the adoption of such mindsets and practices by hapless subjects.

This makes it is easy to understand why when traffic needs to be diverted, a concrete culvert instead of a more forgiving obstruction is routinely considered. The words of a late colleague who had just lost a daughter on one of our highways linger: “Concrete? It had to be concrete? Not a cable, a plastic barrier. Concrete?”

Why, after all, use plastic or cable when a single slab of concrete would do?

I kept counting occasions such as these when enlightened, weighted, nuanced solutions were being thrown in the fire in exchange for legislative concrete and steel with sharp edges.

So, a public threat is observed. Spurn precision and professional judgment for a state of public emergency with all attendant risks associated with suspending a wide swathe of human rights. So even as I ranted over its unlawful application back in 2011, there was in the background to this outrage, broad public advocacy for steel-reinforced concrete.

More recently, people wanted pepper spray. Take pepper spray. Enter a regime of requirements befitting far more harmful instruments of violence. How many pepper spray permits have been granted since then?

Three years ago, I saw it coming. Politicians in and out of parliament, civil society organisations (including well-resourced business chambers), social commentators – all desiring the application of a sledge-hammer – however desirable the expected outcome.

Ms Drayton kindly ridicules a notion of “teething problems” and notes “a failure to understand the full implications of meaningful procurement law and a lack of preparedness.” Indeed, fully in keeping with the “culture” to which I constantly allude, the former senator notes “suspicious public ‘jammin’ to proclaim the law.”

I recognised nothing “suspicious” though. Only an authoritarian culture working its way through the complexities of democracy. Early on, I turned to an influential business executive and asked whether the business community understand what it was asking for. This was not meant to be an insult, but simply to sound an alert at the approaching menace of a sightless, legislative sledgehammer.

Now, as usual, we have to set about repairing some damage and Ms Drayton’s prescriptions sound absolutely fitting.

They are repeated here because they will unfold as critical areas for consideration in the coming days. There has to be a temporary stay on the requirements of the Public Depository. Private sector players ought to have sounded much earlier, urgent alerts on this, but there we go.

The other point made by Ms Drayton relates heavily to my constant harping on the imperatives of real, non-cosmetic e-governance. Why should it be that there is a concern about the “ease of navigation” of the Depository website? Where are the experts on such matters?

Then there is, and more closely aligned to my own inexpert observation, the need to impose a sensible "spending threshold for public service accounting officer and the CEOs of other public entities within the law.” Why is it necessary to say this at this stage?

Finally, Ms Drayton proposes a six-month period “to improve the system” especially since there are close to 33,000 “lines of business pending prequalification.” She is a woman of boundless faith.

 

 

SOS of the Luddites

I can see it now. The massing of the public service technophobes. They told us so, didn’t they? It took a cyberattack to remind us, hasn’t it?

Witness the Luddite recoil. The resort to the “good old days” when paper and files grew yellow in the cupboards. All it took were locks and keys and cautionary memos.

And by the way, colleagues, “ransomware” refers to a very specific category of cyberattack. I thought Mark Lyndersay and Celia Gibbings made some of these things clear, courtesy the TTPBA recently.

Anyway, stand by for the resurrection of systems that empowered and enriched some by slowing the march to modernity.

Even so, I am still not failing to remind people that at approximately 2.20 p.m. on Thursday September 23, 2021 – in his capacity as minister in the Office of the Prime Minister - Stuart Young announced the arrival of “digital vaccination cards” in “four to six weeks.”

This is not at all to knock Minister Young personally. I am pretty certain he understands the immense value of digital governance and is a private practitioner when it comes to those automated things in life that make things easier and more convenient.

In fact, he probably moans and groans each time some of us go back to those fateful days of pandemic misery and the false hope that, at last, politicians and bureaucrats had joined together to acknowledge new realities and were prepared to embrace a different set of solutions.

Of course, all of this goes way beyond digital vaccination cards and their inexcusable non-appearance. But it was a useful test case with strong relevance to the fact that both strenuously active and quiet, disruptive resistance to change are perpetual features of our exceedingly slow march to innovation.

As I have said before, this is not unique to the public service and state authorities. Shiny, new digital facades to conceal manual processes are evident throughout the private sector in key areas.

However, the resources of the state are, by definition, assets of the population intended to sustain human and social development and to ensure tolerable levels of existence in our spaces.

Yet, the official instinct to prohibit rather than to facilitate appears to dominate the drive to digitalise and to move forward. In some instances, the move has been backward rather than forward.

I noted, for instance, PM Roosevelt Skerritt’s lament regarding the continued use of paper ED (Embarkation and Disembarkation) Cards for intra-regional air and sea travel between Caricom states. This was during 50th anniversary celebrations. He quite diplomatically did not mention T&T, where he delivered his speech, and where the absolutely unnecessary practice of collecting and collating ED cards continues. The folks at CARICOM-IMPACS must be the most patient people on the planet.

But we don’t only insist on printing those silly pieces of paper that do not even have enough space to spell the name of our own country (I usually write “T&T”). That’s clearly not enough. Now, the airlines want you to write, at the back of the slips, the expiry date of your passport!

This adds insult to the emotional injury of passengers who know that for entering numerous countries of the world (including Dominica, Grenada, Barbados, Saint Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, and Jamaica), the trees used to print those useless pieces of paper (in defiance of the benefits of the Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) and other technological platforms) are being saved.

Where are the airport kiosks on arrival in T&T, by the way? Could it be evidence of the agony occasioned by the relinquishing of authority and power? How come online payment for government services is being touted as some kind of modern, revolutionary marvel? Ditto downloadable PDF forms.

It cannot be that politicians and senior public servants do not know what is happening in so much of the rest of the world.

Now comes the cyber attack on the Attorney General’s office. I see several MPs (government and opposition) attended “a workshop” last week and some consequently claim to know all about the challenge being faced. Sigh.

Moving backward has a way of gaining momentum of its own. I see longer ED forms. Disappearing bar and QR codes. The return of the ledgers. Lines at the cashiers. Paper, paper everywhere.

Our souls would have been saved; I suppose. The Luddite SOS satisfied. The past embraced as a way of inching forward or, worse, standing still.

 

 

Slow birth of a Nation

Almost every day now emerges confirmation that had some form of collective deliberation and action not existed among our small, brittle states, we would have had to urgently apply every hue and shade from our vast creative palette to design an appropriate response to matters now emergent globally in measures of life and death.

It is true our Caribbean has not always engaged fraternity with untrammeled self-esteem and courage, and the patchwork quilt we have contrived is too often viewed from the messy underside. But there has been an unfolding design best examined by eyes acting unapologetically on behalf of minds … and hearts.

For what we have before us is in fact a home. A house of many mansions. Our space. And, for the vast majority of us, our past, our present, and our future. For us, for me, the decision has been to stay and to hopefully help construct a single space beyond boundaries marked by flags and solemn pledges that often fade and become backdrops to landscapes of the large and strong and boisterous.

Nobody ever said it would be easy, and we've actually been at this much longer than the fifty years the buntings for which drape our troubled islands this short week. We in fact came formally to a semblance of this through colonial ambition, sometime before the seductive call of individual and collective self-determination.

In 1966, CLR James surmised that the imperialists had indeed “poisoned and corrupted that sense of self-confidence and political dynamic needed for any people about to embark on the uncharted seas of independence and nationhood.”

Then, as he addressed a Montreal audience, CLR turned dramatically to the words of George Lamming: “Free is how you is from the start, an’ when it look different you got to move, just move, an’ when you movin’ say that it is a natural freedom that make you move.”

By then, we had already spurned the hopeful mold of federation (1958-1962) and begun to temper our passions to the rudiments of a Caribbean Free Trade Area (CARIFTA) - today mostly and anachronistically remembered as an annual platform for emerging sporting excellence, and not for unrealised, lofty ambition on trade and commerce and fraternal relations that faltered and fell in 1972.

So it was in 1973, even as the then European Economic Community (EEC) was finding second breath with the admission of the UK, Ireland, and Denmark, something called the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom) was inaugurated.

Today it is one of the oldest surviving integration movements in the developing world. Some commentators do not apparently count the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) established in 1967.

We observe 50 at a time when partnerships are in states of sharp realignment. Foes are becoming friends and friends now turn to foes. The enemies of some enemies are now our friends, and the friends of enemies our foes.

It is, in a sense, the timeless, spaceless digitalisation of engagement, as opposed to past analogical relations - tending more and more in the direction of cohesion for solutions; in many instances in the face of fragmentation. It might well be that things have always been like this, but these are perilous times during which there is no promise to survive.

In small spaces such as ours, after all, the option to disappear or to depart is always before us like a tattered menu. There are flags on these islands and coastal states that flutter restlessly. Feet, like awkward moko-jumbies, which often stomp to one side and then the next. And often, there is a stumbling, then a fall. And the outstretched hands aren’t always clawless and kind.

Aimé Césaire is mandatory reading on such matters – not the hopelessness of the return to his native (colonised) land, but his instructions for survival.

At the end of it all, fifty – half a century – means very little on its own. Again, CLR: “I believe that there is taking place today in the Caribbean, one of the most exciting and unusual developments in the modern world – the formation of a new nation.”

He must have known that for the purpose of survival, we can and should not have it any other way.

Postscript: I don’t think any Caricom anniversary celebration is complete without mention of the journalists who, over the years, made sure that official events sometimes staged in cynical secrecy were dissected and interpreted on behalf of Caribbean media audiences.

Here are some I have worked with and can vouch for their valuable contributions: Torchbearers: Rickey Singh, Dr Canute James, Peter Richards, Hugh Croskill, Andy Johnson, and Bert Wilkinson. There are many more. But these are my top picks.

Elections and migrant policy

(First published in the T&T Guardian on June 28, 2023)

It took Miriam Aertker, head of an international inter-governmental agency occupying often controversial space in T&T to remind everybody that, one week ago, the global UN system was calling on people everywhere to take a moment to recognise World Refugee Day.

“Refugees and asylum-seekers are uplifting the communities they live in,” Aertker is quoted as saying last Sunday at Refugee Day observances in Chaguanas – a community that has become emblematic for its embrace of the phenomenon.

Few others ventured to engage the subject on June 20, even as the fury and hubris of campaigning for local government elections and an otherwise packed and heated public agenda occupied hearts and minds.

There are sufficient signals in the public space to suggest that our country’s messy engagement of international and humanitarian law, against the backdrop of stated commitments to convention and best practice have painted an unimpressive picture of where we as a nation stand on this important issue – whatever the poor examples set by the big and wealthy.

In addition to the technical nuances of our migrant challenges – and bear in mind we are not speaking only about Venezuelans now resident in T&T – there are underlying questions related to the entire nation’s predisposition on a matter on which we have, over time, been both subjects and objects.

All of this should thus not confound us as much as it apparently has. The (Venezuelan) registration process, for example, exhibits the several confusions. Important questions regarding the persistence of the challenge of Venezuelan migration and the pervasive positive and negative outcomes that are likely are in need of clear answers.

Had there been better informed policy, guided by a body of consistent political and public opinion informed by an understanding of the main socio-political principles involved to achieve peace, cohesion and productive outcomes, there would have been no need for current ad hoc and improvised arrangements.

The conduct of the process appears to reflect official indecision and imprecision in applying set guidelines and principles.

Even so, the political combatants have not been consistent with their public messaging on this question. The “close the borders” crowd now confusingly straddles continuing xenophobic resistance and ill-defined proposals for reform, some of which betray an ignorance of what is required to ensure compliance with humanitarian imperatives and our own underdeveloped policy infrastructure.

I am, by the way, composing this while at work in a country, Sierra Leone, that has had more than its fair share of refugee challenges. During a civil war waged between 1991 and 2002, thousands of nationals fled violence that led to at least 50,000 deaths and devastating injuries that remain evident as disability statistics. When voluntary repatriation was offered in 2008, a majority returned.

There is evidence that in the case of Venezuelan migrants in T&T, there has been a notable degree of repatriation and re-assimilation on the mainland. There has not been the same horrific violence witnessed 20 years ago where I am, but a similar requirement for orderly processes to find acceptable space both at home and in host countries.

Meanwhile, back in T&T, the political aspirants with eyes fixed on August 14, have found little to be attractive in the issues associated with democracy and rights, and the vast potential of those who now not only share space with us, but have become an interwoven element of our social fabric.

This is clearly an issue that has the potential to substantially boost our democratic credentials. But we have not always seemed prepared to pick up the political tab.

All the things we treasure and love – enterprise, music, art, sport, food – now find broader even more diverse space in the face of our already well-known heterogeneity.

But, even as Aertker spoke, not one political party was busily asserting concern about the plight of people living in this small space; perhaps out of fear that this would offer evidence of inconsistency with current political messaging.

The current scenario does not engender significant optimism. Children remain out of school, some newborn have reportedly not been registered, the provision of primary health care has been inconsistent and challenging, and secondary and tertiary care are, by way of practice, explicitly excluded as an entitlement at state facilities under our 2019 health policy for non-nationals.

Last week, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres reminded everyone of our “duty to protect and support refugees - and our obligation to open more avenues of support. This includes solutions to resettle refugees and to help them rebuild their lives in dignity.”

Was anyone here paying attention?

Pan’s great hope

The recent Pan in the 21st Century/Pan Down Memory Lane competitions staged by Pan Trinbago helped reinforce the numerous features of pan as more than a versatile percussive instrument the world came to know in its current general manifestation almost 100 years ago.

The conduct of these concurrent competitions, featuring single pan and scaled-down conventional bands, was categorically dismissive of the unfortunate view that the steelband as a socio-cultural construct is not a powerfully instructive model for wider socio-economic/cultural development.

Only those who pay little attention to what has been happening over the years would deny such value. It however remains a state of ignorance from which key decision-makers in politics, business, industry, and education need to awaken.

Ironically, the staging of the event less than five months after a phenomenal Panorama competition also proved that competitions – important as they are – do not a steelband movement make.

Pan Trinbago is best placed as a facilitative organ of the movement. But its heartbeat emerges from a combination of geographical communities and communities of interest, and not from the bricks and mortar of a registered institution.

President Beverley Ramsey-Moore appears to understand some of this and, whatever the licks she can and will (justifiably) sustain on some matters of regulation and detail, she has proven capable of engaging such a dynamic.

For instance, there is scope for revisiting the Panorama model including some contentious rules. My QRC pal, Eric McAllister, is one of several pesky advocates for change. These people need to be heard. Even so, Panorama is, indeed, the authentic ‘greatest show’, even as there is much more to pan than competition.

The fact is the mobilisation required to execute the 21st Century and Memory Lane competitions could not have been conjured out of nowhere or nothing. There is something in this that’s far more valuable than even the contributions of more prominent social institutions.

The “big guns” did not even have to be there, for this is something greater even than they.

Had we been learning from this model of social organisation many national difficulties could now have been addressed as routine matters.

For starters, how do we square claims about a so-called “lost generation” when so many well-disciplined young people turned up at practice, learned their notes, followed instructions, pushed the pans, and performed with looks of joy and satisfaction on their faces?

Who are these young people? Where do they come from? What “hopelessness" are you talking about? Will I see you at the panyard? Have you been to the shows? Have you witnessed joy in the face of considerable pain? Is all this fiddling while the city burns or ramajaying to reinforce important foundations?

Pan Trinbago can indeed significantly address the problem of over-reliance on state largesse, especially if it follows through on Ramsey-Moore’s commitment to finally erect its headquarters through a diversity of funding mechanisms.

However, there is also the even more important job of constructing a real pan theatre, several versions of which have already been imagined and designed. This, to me, is a state imperative with important business and other commitments.

It will help strengthen T&T’s claim to be the global hub for pan music and performance – a claim that has more benefits than are often immediately recognisable.

I sat at the June 11 finals, even as the rains threatened, and at times was so moved by what was on display that I cursed the numerous times I have uncritically heeded notes of hopelessness and despair.

There is no denying we face rather bleak times – full of murderous violence, vulgar political hubris, official and private incompetence, and a sense of incapacity as new perils emerge.

The panyards provide inspiration and guidance we dare not ignore.

Today, I also pay special tribute to winners First Citizens Supernovas and to Chord Masters. Richard de Coteau and the hugely talented Andre White led Chord Masters, the reigning Panorama Single Pan champs, to victory at Pan Down Memory Lane.

I am totally biased when it comes to Pan in the 21st Century winners First Citizens Supernovas though. Their Lopinot panyard is the most beautiful panyard I have ever visited, its players mostly young and wonderful, and its arranger, Amrit Samaroo, establishing himself among the leading, in this field, in recent history.

Have a long look at these bands and tell me what you see. Go past the expressions of unbridled joy on the faces of the players. Note the dexterity and skill. Calculate an average age. Have a look. Now go talk about hope and hopelessness.

Inconvenient flooding truths

So, it’s the rainy season and the flooding has already started. As a two-time flooding victim myself - albeit more than 25 years ago - I can tell you it ranks among the top saddest and most unpleasant human experiences.

The numerous human emotions that occasion slow and/or sudden washes of water through cherished belongings and the accompanying sense of regret, danger, and loss are difficult to describe and are best recorded only by people who have been there themselves.

This is thus not the kind of issue to explore through cynical, opportunistic political commentary or even the cold instruments of scientific observation. There is little that can comfort the affected. Insufficient sandbags to stem the flow of grief.

But it’s also a story that begins long before the advent of the rainy season. In my role as a journalism trainer, colleagues are perhaps fed-up of hearing me say that the flooding event in June is the culmination of the private and official behaviours of January.

Telling the story of June without referencing what happened in January is therefore often an unpardonable journalistic omission, especially since it’s a tale of pervasive malpractice at different levels.

The fact that this is a multi-dimensional issue makes it difficult to engage in a society at all levels set on applying simple, linear diagnoses to complex challenges. There is science, but this is also perilous emotional terrain.

For, yes, proper development planning has been almost absolutely absent over our independent years, but there are critical socio-cultural antecedents that are difficult to ignore.

So, the Town and Country Planning Division and other central and local agencies can be flagged for chronic, multiple failure; but independent citizen predisposition and behaviour are not to be overlooked.

For example, slash and burn agriculture on the hills “to make (an honest) dollar” in February, now flows in volumes of disassembled soil to fill the watercourses and to challenge production of potable water.

“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink” – as if there exists a magical funnel in the sky to channel rainwater into the pipes that keep households, communities, industry, and commerce alive.

Then there is the ubiquitous role of “drainage” and embankments as cure-alls, important as they are, against the reality of extreme weather events, established geographical watersheds, and changing ocean tides. Surely, the hydrologists recoil in terror at the thought of island-splitting man-made torrents directed at a supposedly endless, accommodating sea.

It's also not simply a matter of litter - whatever its important, contributory role. That too, must end. But that’s not all there is to it.

It may well be the silent view of many experts in such things, that there are communities essentially unviable over the long term.

True, the same has been said of some nation states even as they persist - small in size, perennially endangered by nature, economically vulnerable, chronically under-developed, and evidently versed in acts of collective societal suicide.

But this is no cue for surrender. It is, instead, a call for decision-making that is cohesive, collective, and rooted in inconvenient facts.

It’s not a challenge unique to us in T&T. For example, I have lived and worked in Guyana and know that the challenge of Georgetown bears painfully obvious solutions largely left unspoken, and which no one dared utter ahead of Monday’s local government elections there.

I have also been to Belize where Belmopan became the nominal capital in 1970 when Belize City proved to be overly and expensively vulnerable to annual storms and hurricanes.

So many years later, the inland capital is yet to become the thriving hub of national life the original coastal city has remained. We learn from this that it clearly takes more than engineering and politics to address societal imperative and survival instinct.

In Jamaica last week, I witnessed the scourge of flooding in communities positioned along the banks of deep and shallow gullies where mountain run-off is noted to have become increasingly torrential.

It seems that everywhere in our region there is a need to sit around the tables of decision-making to work on ways to match science, politics, culture, and the proceeds of history. It calls for a significant downing of political and communal arms.

In our case, such an approach apparently confronts a gloomy future with advancing floods and accompanying pain and grief. There are hard facts left to be faced.