Refocusing Caricom

By this time next week, the winning team from the ICC T20 World Cup would have already left for home, a multinational security mission dominated by Kenyan forces arrived in Haiti, and Caricom leaders readied for another summit in Grenada.

The meeting commemorates 50 years of political independence for Grenada which, 35 years ago, also witnessed the signing of the Grand Anse Declaration on deepening the integration movement.

These developments are highlighted here because they each bear unique messages related to Caricom’s survival project.

The first is that while cricket as played in some, not all, Caricom member states contains instructive elements that can help guide integration efforts, it is hardly a subject worthy of the kind of attention and resources it has been formally receiving.

We can start talking real business if/when we decide to send a Caricom team of athletes to the Summer Olympics or a single Caribbean contingent to the FIFA World Cup – two areas of sporting endeavour in which all member states have displayed levels of deep interest and high excellence.

Countries of the United Kingdom have been participating in the Olympics as a single team since 1908. This, of course, would be an impossibility when it comes to football.

I have dealt with this here before and also wondered what it must be like to sit around a Caricom table as a delegate from Belize, Bahamas, Haiti, or Suriname and listen to talk of the “good old days” of Worrell and Walcott and Weekes.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I will never say anything bad about Clive Lloyd who receives an Order of the Caribbean Community (OCC) in Grenada next week, but I just worry, on behalf of some members of the fraternity, about the priorities often on the table.

Then comes Haiti and continuing instability there. There has been some idiocy on public display by several commentators regarding Caricom’s role in the latest round of crises in this member country that needed to be confidently and forcefully attended to by the regional leadership.

To associate Caricom participation in the search for solutions to the problems of Haiti as an external, surrogate intervention on behalf of others is to fail to understand the nature of our collective relationship. It also betrays a special kind of condescension when it comes to our small countries and the integration movement that drives collective actions.

Whether or not you believe we should have ever performed the initial act of “widening” to embrace Haiti in 2002 is now an irrelevant concern. I believe, especially in the face of the current situation, Caricom’s role has been seminal.

For one, it served to blunt the notion of outright invasion by invitation – a compulsion heavily rooted in sentiments on the ground throughout Haiti.

Next, there are continuing 50th anniversary Caricom celebrations and Grenada’s own half century of independence. The Grand Anse Declaration of 1989 represented, at that time, the single most important development in the history of Caricom since its launch in 1973. The founding of the Caribbean Court of Justice in 2005 was the next.

None of this is expected to make sense to anyone fixated on a national destiny marked by denial of geographical and historical antecedents. There are, indeed, passengers on board the Caricom ship who’d rather not be there. Jamaica’s Bruce Golding Report noted structural flaws and, in the process, proposed a series of ultimatums regarding future participation in the Single Market.

Should the latter occur, this would take Jamaica to the status of The Bahamas which has habitually cherry-picked its obligations. Added to this, a majority of member states have chosen to forego the opportunities presented by the appellate jurisdiction of the CCJ, even as they are bound by its powers related to Caricom Treaty obligations.

The experiences of integration movements around the world do not significantly differ. Have a closer look at developments within the African Union, the European Union, the ASEAN grouping and others. We could certainly have done more but have actually not done that badly.

The Caricom Secretariat, though, would do well to modernise its operations. Its public communication functions are particularly weak and there are operational features in other areas that can benefit from the more appropriate employment of new approaches and technologies.

I am aware that study after study has been conducted into these areas of weakness, but it is time that the better recommendations are adopted.

The bureaucrats may well find that in pursuit of the key agenda items including food and nutrition security, the climate crisis, and foreign policy, upgraded internal processes would serve the regional project well. This is not only a matter of achieving focus but employing different lenses to deliver clear direction.

 

Organised labour - the risk of irrelevance

As with every other sector, our labour movement lags dramatically behind in its consideration of the pace of technological change and its dramatic impacts on the world of work. In this, our unions do not stand alone, but it is tragic that they do.

I listen carefully to their leaders and spokespersons for the slightest clues that the concepts of collective bargaining, social protections, and a durable social compact through the concept of multipartism are being critically examined in the face of the changed technological tide. I have heard nothing particularly inspiring regarding such a dynamic.

I have perhaps now overused this space to remark on the sluggish embrace of technological opportunity – from simple digitisation to digitalisation to more advanced employment of artificial intelligence to generate greater efficiencies, improve government capacity, and enhance the quality of life of all citizens.

There are people studying net impacts and there are divided juries. But this is clearly not an advancing evil to be resisted – as we are currently witnessing via appalling public service backwardness. It is not on any political platform in any meaningful way, and few are the civil society organisations realistically engaging the phenomenon.

So, this is not to continue the hammering of trade unions as is the wont of ideologues, politicians, and business leaders. The labour movement actually offers space for creative engagement of these issues, since it intrinsically and by its very nature engages elements of our society often shut out from the national discourse.

Its preoccupation with the achievement of social justice adds an important dimension in the conduct of public policy. For, whatever the challenges and opportunities of different times, the interests of people must be paramount.

Yet, have any of the activists, even as they recognise Labour Day today, looked at the impact of technology on growing informality in the labour market? The fact that, especially post-pandemic, there are growing numbers of people who are exploring options for remote work and for the independent deployment of generative AI and other new tools in enhancing output.

That, despite our own Caribbean lethargy on this question, the modern workplace in many places is being remodelled and retooled to deliver more, at a faster rate, and at lower cost. That the consequences are not all necessarily detrimental when it comes to absolute employment numbers – though there are clear shifts from the formal to the informal. One key question for labour unions is the degree to which the new reality provides safeguards against exploitation and assures a level of social protection.

In the latter regard, state programmes such as our National Insurance Scheme must adapt to be able to capture the growing numbers of “self-employed” and others that escape the net of formality, tax compliance, and the protection of their diverse service providers.

So, it should be expected that our unions would by now be actively studying the actuarial implications of an expanded safety net and the strengthening of measures to secure the interests of participants in a new economy.

All of this means that the declining number of organised workers – now at around 25% of the labour market – must begin pressing for much more from the organisations to which their dues are directed. It also means that the remaining 75% will be able to locate a centre of informed and equipped influence to advance the cause of their social participation and protection.

To whom is the informal sector turning for the assurance that they are not forgotten in the process of national planning? What are the processes to ensure that in the transition from the formal to the informal or from entry into the new, emerging economy, people are not left alone to languish in the event of failure?

There is much work to be done. Our labour unions played key roles in our early history to transform a legacy of exploitation into one in which workers participated meaningfully in national life. As a labour reporter and union member in the 1980s I also recall the transitioning to centres of learning and enlightened discourse on changing workplace circumstances.

Yes, the leaders of those times past are unlikely to survive the current period. The messaging is different. The demands have changed in ways we never imagined. The call now is not to political independence and genuine emancipation, but to master new tools to take us forward to a future in which we are in far more control of our destiny that we ever were. Anything else condemns the forces that be to irrelevance. That’s an actual risk of these times.

Finding flags to fly

Nothing like a big sporting event to ignite emotions typically associated with the flying of one’s own national flag and tearfully rendering the national anthem.

For some, like my nephew “B” and people I am sure you know, the latter exercise includes notes not reflected in the official music score. That is probably because the anthem was written with phenoms like Ella Andall in mind! Lesser mortals change keys when we reach “here every creed and race.”

But it does not always require authentic credentials to stimulate this level of sentimentality when it comes to sport. I remember for instance, back in 1989, almost being ejected from Radio 610 when people thought the “red” shirt I wore on the day of the decisive (and losing) T&T vs USA World Cup Football qualifier had not been red enough.

I simply had not found time to procure a cheap T–shirt on Frederick Street and I rather liked the one I had – which I did not stop wearing until only a few years ago.

There were on-air colleagues claiming the occasion was the most significant in the country’s history! A public holiday was declared even before a single boot touched a ball. Flags and red cloth sold and sold and sold. I was, apparently, the only person on the face of the portion of earth occupied by T&T that did not have a shirt the correct shade of red.

Wayne Brown wrote that the whole affair closely aligned with what we recognise as ultra-nationalist “fascism” of the type that in later years led to serious calls for the flying of national flags at all homes. A whole government minister was given the brief to pursue the “patriotism” agenda.

Wayne and I tried discussing what was happening over lunch one day. But it was a silent affair with lots of head shaking, grunts, and groans. Two people known for talking your head off … beaten into disgruntled silence.

In more recent times, with no Wayne Brown in sight, came the CPL and the fake names and brands. I warned right here in this space that inciting nationalist fervour over pickup sides from everywhere would take us nowhere. I rooted for the “T&T Amazon Warriors” on purpose to make the point.

Yet, a real T&T flag was trampled in Guyana, and we realised there would come a time when the sentiment would harden and threaten a sense of fraternity between close communities. Oil eventually came and tore the masks off … and took some flesh in the process.

Then you realise that the Manchester United folks of Diego Martin were doing the same to the Gunners of St Joseph. Black eyes among friends. A few broken teeth. Flags and buntings waved in scorn at each other. What, then, becomes of red, black, and white? Who of the TKR has not cheered for the KKR? Where, by the way, is this “Trinbago” of which they speak?

The indomitable Fazeer Mohammed also advised last weekend about the power of money in professional sport. How international sport has integrated genuine feelings of loyalty to spin vast financial surpluses through contrived scheduling. The composing of tournaments in such a manner as to attract eyeballs and advertising dollars.

Nothing wrong with any of this, of course. It has always been that allegiance based on nationality has had the potential to convert competitions into wars with illusory stakes that imperil pride.

It must eventually be that the Man United crest will be as recognisable as a KKR gold and purple Viking helmet or as the birds of T&T’s Coat of Arms.

Then comes the West Indies. Not the one with the blue background with four horizontal stripes of black, white, and gold of 1958 when the West Indian Federation was born. Not even the one with the yellow stars and coconut tree adjoining a grey mass along a green ocean of the pre-1999 WICB generation. But the one with the yellow sun, three cricket stumps and leaning coconut tree registered by CWI Inc.

Yes, that one. The one with the anthem (a genius offering from David Rudder) that precious few in Haiti, Belize, The Bahamas, or Suriname know or understand. I can imagine the Caricom meetings at which cricketing nostalgia reigns and the puzzled and bemused looks around some corners of the table.

Yet, there are passions to match the hurts and triumphs of the EPL, the IPL, and even the CPL. Flags to fly over the ICC and FIFA. Anthems to be sung. Money to be made. This evening at the game I wear my own shade of maroon.

Dying for the records

There are several highly instructive points to be noted concerning the recent court experience of blogger/activist Vishal Persad’s Millennials for Change (MFC) in a freedom of information matter imaginatively labeled “Closed Cases: The Dead Speak.”

Persad had said at the start of the project in question that he was embarking on an FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) exercise “to compel the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service to disclose investigative files” in several past cases in which the suspects/accused “are now deceased.” This, he said, was “to help foster transparency and accountability in law enforcement.”

MFC then attempted to get its hands on police files related to investigations on people such as Dole Chadee, Yasin Abu Bakr, former chief justice Satnarine Sharma, and the late police commissioner, Randolph Burroughs.

Effectively spurned by the Police Service (“thorough and diligent searches were made for the requested information, (but) searches proved futile”), and in an effort led by attorney Keron Ramkhalwan, attention turned last September to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

Now, before we go there, the response of the police happens to be one helluva thing. Hopefully, this situation has either changed by now or there are firm plans to pay greater attention to securing such records. “Searches proved futile” is not a satisfactory response from a public authority of this nature. I thought securing intelligence was a key part of police work.

Meanwhile, the Office of the DPP acknowledged the request, then nothing happened for months and months. That was that. Or so some thought.

In January, MFC filed for a judicial review based on the lack of responsiveness of the Office of the DPP. Last week, Justice Devindra Rampersad ordered delivery of a firm decision by the DPP on whether the request would in fact be pursued. It was clearly not enough to say, “request received” and leave it at that. What makes employees of a population believe they are entitled to behave that way? If they say “no”, that will be another story.

This particular angle on the pursuit of public records, held in trust by a public authority, was inspired by the “FOIA the Dead” efforts of US advocate Percy Higgins who, since 2017, has filed freedom of information requests with the FBI on every public personality whose obituary appears in the New York Times.

A Freedom of the Press Foundation article on the project morbidly describes the website on which the findings are found as: “the transparency site public figures are dying to get into.”

The website now houses close to 6,000 pages of FBI records on 60 public personalities. I warn you, if you don’t have lots of time on your hands, do not venture onto that site.

It however appears that Persad was prepared to go there, and impressively so. So, point number one of my “highly instructive” argument: The Freedom of Information Act – whatever its flaws – is one of the most important tools for citizen access to the records of public authorities with few exceptions, as described in the legislation.

The Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC), which I serve as vice president, recently published an analytical report on the nine English-speaking Caribbean countries in which such a law exists.

Its principal author, attorney/journalist Dionne Jackson-Miller of Jamaica, noted in successive workshops with journalists that the basis for much of the official lethargy on this subject is a pervasive “culture of secrecy.”

Additionally, our FOIA is at the disposal of all citizens – not just journalists and others interested in publicising the material that reaches their hands.

Impressively, MFC, as an NGO engaged in blogging its activities, has also been able to access records on the employment practices of several government ministries and the Police Service.

It is also currently sorting the findings of an investigation into the granting of Firearm Users Licences; and pursuing more detailed information on the incidence of murder in T&T.

These kinds of public interest activities are to be commended. MFC is one of several organisations active in this area. Traditional journalists and mainstream media are not sole principals of such an obligation and its accompanying rights.

For this reason, among others, the current public communication landscape offers positive outcomes not previously available. It includes content produced by a wide variety of online operatives – especially those who consider themselves to be under a presumed obligation, as is the case with most journalists, to be honest, fair, balanced, and accountable.

Outside of that, it becomes more difficult to defend their work. Persad and his MFC team appear to be on the right track.

Elections and democratic habits

Next year, including T&T, there are expected to be as many as nine Caribbean general elections. Already, the political forces are vigorously massing in Anguilla, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and St Kitts and Nevis. And there is the possibility of an electoral contest in deeply troubled Haiti.

Meanwhile, the collapse of the coalition government in Sint Maarten has led to July elections - only six months after voters went to the polls. But outside of this, and so far, regional election addicts will have to wait until next year to bring out past election reports, scoresheets, and arrive at informed predictions.

So far this year, we have had local government elections in Belize and Jamaica, internal PPP elections in Guyana earlier this month, and on June 17 T&T holds two local government by-elections but not before June 15 when UNC members vote to choose key party operatives, not including their political leader.

Differences in internal electoral processes attract varying degrees of public interest in the mechanics of such contests, but they provide interesting clues into the democratic habits of the people and organisations that pursue occupation of national office.

Confidence in the systems that install leaders at that level necessarily translates into the way independent-minded electorates weigh their options when it is time to either accept or reject invitations for national support.

This must have been considered when the PNM moved away from its longstanding (and often controversial) “delegate system,” for internal elections, to “one-man-one vote” a little over a decade ago. The UNC should also be reading the room when it comes to the conduct of its own affairs. The current situation appears untidy.

The messages the party’s delegation took to the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) on May 1 should now correspondingly be key areas of focus for the party’s Election Management Committee (EMC).

Elsewhere, and within recent years, there has also been cause for grave concern regarding countries to which we once paid attention as models worthy of emulation.

This has, of course, occurred elsewhere in the past - with democratically elected leaders moving to undermine the bases of even their own selection through autocratic, anti-democratic behaviour.

Even so, there is little doubt that recent electoral decision-making around the globe has not always conduced to more democratic conditions. Witness recent electoral outcomes in Europe and Latin America, for example - relatively free and fair events producing results that do not necessarily reflect democratic values.

It can also be said that our big neighbour, the United States, at this moment does not present us with official behaviour that encourages broad or real political participation, while the politics of the United Kingdom are now more frequently offering lessons in the absurd.

Everywhere there appear to be conditions for re-examining electoral decision making to ensure more faithful observance of the needs of populations and application of principles to make life better for people.

Elections and their accompanying campaigns ought to signal levels of commitment to such an idea beyond the harnessing of votes.

On July 28, for example, the people of Venezuela vote at a time when an honest dialogue is needed to address the indisputable circumstances that led to a mass exodus of citizens over recent years. Has the Maduro regime put this on the table?

For November 4, against the backdrop of recklessly injurious actions against multilateralism and open violations of international law, is there a recognisable electoral platform exploring such depravities when it comes to the United States?

In India, where despite obvious progress at the macro-economic level continued hunger and socio-economic alienation prevail, the current lengthy electoral process (over 970 million voters!!!) is hardly being considered a watershed moment to help fill the gaps.

Ditto the UK’s July 4 elections with the possibility of stabilising a situation in which there have been four prime ministers over the past eight years representing the same political party; with none having served an entire term in office even as renowned social services sink into disarray.

As we speak, disgruntled, disappointed South Africans are today at the polls and the ruling ANC might struggle to attract over 50% of the vote.

For the rest of us, these examples hardly offer best practice models in the modern era. Election watchers should be keeping an eye out not only for statistical outcomes but for the extent to which elections are delivering results reflecting developmental needs.

Next year, we in T&T and some of our neighbours will need to get clearer directions on the hustings to ensure our votes truly count, however much the challenge clearly persists elsewhere.

Equal Opportunity for Some

Last week’s observance of International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) focused specifically on the threat that a lack of action on discrimination against members of the LGBT+ community can produce the awful impact of leaving some of our citizens behind.

“No One to be left Behind” was the adopted slogan against a backdrop of “Freedom and Justice for All.”

Those of us who subscribe to the view that observance of human rights requires recognition of their universal nature – meaning that all human rights are for everyone – find easy resonance between such a conviction and last week’s themes and sub-themes.

There is also the question of rights being indivisible, and inalienable, meaning that they cannot be sub-divided for convenience, and no one or no circumstance should ever be capable of taking them away.

The alternative, among other things, is the reality of officially-sanctioned prejudice and discrimination, and the hatred that either fuels much of it or emerges from it.

On another battlefront, for example, we have noted the degree to which reducing new migrant populations to caricature, linguistic mockery, and negative stereotyping has stimulated pervasive prejudice, contempt, and ensuing hate.

The “close de borders” crowd remonstrating angrily as Venezuelan men, women, and children lined up for “processing” in June 2019 in the rain were acting based on feelings of ill-will with the intention of seeing the animosity grow. I am yet to be convinced otherwise.

Since then, we have had to digest the fact that babies and children were kept behind bars, school age children have been denied the right to an education, and breaches of our country’s labour legislation have been routinised when it comes to migrants. These are not acts that proceed out of love.  

Meanwhile, an alliance has also been established to address issues associated with age and health condition/status when it comes to our Equality Opportunity Act.

The Add All Three campaign, led by the Coalition Advocating for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation (CAISO), focuses on these two omissions together with the legislated depravity of our EOC when it comes to the LGBT+ community.

However polite the resistance to change on the latter subject, in the main rooted in supposedly benevolent intentions, harm is an inevitable outcome once employment, housing, education and other opportunities are decidedly rendered out of the reach of some without offence to a law designed to guard against discrimination.

I am aware of the legal work once done to correct the LGBT+ anomaly reflected in the explicit exclusion of “sexual orientation” (not that this is even a correct formulation) as a basis for challenging deprivation of employment, educational, and other socio-economic opportunity.

Such reform was actually initiated from within the Equal Opportunity Commission by people who are no longer there. The current occupants of office need to resume the struggle.

It is nevertheless true that international conventions, to which we are willingly and boastfully subscribed, already point in recommended directions in all areas mentioned here, but the force of domestic law/protections is clearly necessary under current circumstances.

Why has this not been placed on the parliamentary agenda? Why is there not a stronger groundswell of political pressure to rectify this? Are we going to witness the appearance of these issues in forthcoming political manifestoes?

Last week, while speaking about this on IDAHOBIT at a British High Commission function, I also wondered aloud why a greater number of us in T&T are not embarrassed by the specific travesty regarding “sexual orientation” in our EOA.

Put in plain language, we have a law that promises to address the issue of equality of economic and other opportunity to the citizenry, but very pointedly excludes some. The framers of the law did not even care to engage in passive omission as has been the case with age and discrimination based on health status.

While that is being corrected, and as we pay attention to Add All Three and rectify our clumsiness over the rights of new migrants, we must acknowledge that we are offering equal opportunity to some, and not to all.

Is this how we wish to proceed? Should we fear the answer to this question?

Free Express and AI

Though last week’s Caribbean Media Summit hosted in Jamaica by the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC), Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM), and Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) focused primarily on Artificial Intelligence (AI) media and journalism, ominous public policy measures loomed in the background.

In fact, while media industry standards and self-regulation were emphasised throughout as singularly effective in addressing most concerns, numerous conversations over the three days of activities drifted seamlessly into what regional governments may plan to do about the unfolding phenomenon of “Generative AI” – the occurrence of content produced by AI.

One online contributor (there were almost 200 participants on the Zoom connection and another 30-40 physically present) surmised that the region’s customary technology “lag” was on display, and I thought out loud that perhaps our delay in fully entering the process can provide some small space to consider more carefully how willing we really are to entertain regulatory arms of the state.

It would also provide time to consider human rights, including freedom of expression, as an indispensable element of the unfolding scenario.

I have long been of the view that almost everything new to enter our post-colonial space has confronted a prohibition default. Few better issues than the major revolution of artificial intelligence to instil the kind of fear required to have officialdom activate regulatory drawbridges.

It became clear as the Summit proceeded that even among liberal-minded media professionals there was a view that caution on the side of official control ought to be a preferred option.

This left precious few of us standing alone. I had mocked the admonitory notion that “non-human intervention” into public values and standards presented grave dangers and advised that such intrusions were nothing new in our context and that perhaps organised religion (relatively free, as it were, from official sanction) can be cited as being among acceptable exceptions.

Yes, this was highly mischievous on my part, but I thought that the sorcerous implications of AI being described there could have served only to invoke the kinds of feelings that make us want to arrest and jail one another … or to shut each other up. So, yes, I continue to subscribe to the view that fewer regulations on public communication produce superior results over more laws, codes, and punitive official measures.

It is also true that today’s virtual realities have rendered most forms of regulatory coercion on expression an anachronism of the highest order. If anything, sanctions unilaterally determined by the major global platforms have been far more effective at imposing regimes of censorship.

Last year, for example, my social media photograph of raw oysters was flagged under some opaque requirement to adhere to “Community Standards.” Last week, the same strange message notifying of a decision to block a post appeared when I submitted an excerpt from this newspaper column! And I knew I was not being naughty.

We customarily protest these measures citing flawed algorithms or even AI itself, but the point I am making is that to a large extent, Big Tech companies such as Meta (Facebook), Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft have outgrown most governments in influencing online behaviours – many times irrationally and wrongly so.

There is thus a vigorous, nuanced discussion on how best to rein in these global superpowers in a manner that does not compromise the right to freedom of expression of their users.

Additionally, and getting back to Mark Lyndersay’s “time lag” (yes, it was him), the slow pace of digitalisation by our countries has created a situation in which the mining of online content for purposes of AI content creation grossly under-represents our actual reality.

UNESCO’s unfolding Caribbean AI Policy Roadmap flags some of these issues but takes aim more directly at the potential developmental impact of informed, ethical usage. There are significant provisos though that point to aspirations that are current deficiencies.

These include our ability to adapt effectively to technological advances, appropriate governance mechanisms for development and use, and ensuring that the challenges of sustainable development, the climate crisis, and socio-economic inequities can be addressed.

But all of this would be a tall order in the face of deficiencies in the areas of training and education, and the urgent need to promote greater digital literacy among our populations. These shortcomings cannot be legislated into resolution. My supposedly anarchic prescription, bypassing the instinct to command and control, appears eminently feasible under the circumstances.