The revolution underway

There are perhaps too many people who are not paying attention to the abundance of art and music and literature being produced at a time when narratives of hopelessness ritualistically enter the public discourse as a dominant national condition.

Yes, admittedly, notions of hope and success aren’t always “neutral” in scope and definition. So, there are indeed those who recognise advantage in the face of adversity, if only to assert superior command of possible solutions.

But this habit is routinely reversed when roles change - exposing pervasive preference for cynical abuse of the human traits that accompany uncertainty and fear.

This is neither new nor is it unique to our circumstances. So, do not reduce this to a mere reflection on the current state of affairs in T&T. Art as crucible of adversity is of longstanding vintage.

There has been, for example, the reformative impact of controversial art. Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgement” – now, at the time of the Paris Olympics, elevated to divine status by the ignorant and hypnotised – was decried in the mid-16^th century as sacrilegious depiction of what some consider to have itself been a work of literary fiction.

Back home, Jackie Hinkson’s Carnival murals have, since 2021, been among the most revolutionary commentaries on the state of national consciousness. I have described the work of this master as being among our finest works of artistic journalism. This year’s exhibition along Fisher Avenue in St Ann’s exposed both glorious and inconvenient truths about ourselves.

This is art as both historical record and commentary on current realities. Ditto the music of our times (including so-called “Trinibad”) – capturing the rawness of our realities, even as calypso (which once played such a role, prompting calls for bans and censorship) gradually withdraws into a much more comfortable, genteel space.

Yet, defiance and revolutionary fervour is being captured under far less spectacular banners. For instance, I spent some time two weekends ago, witnessing readings by two authors with child audiences in mind, and meeting a book dealer from Chaguanas, “Scribble and Quills” reporting solid sales (no, no school texts).

Even as I took two publications home, I knew that my long reading list would suffer further delays. Inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s recommendation as a supreme source of literary inspiration I have had E.E. Cummings’ “The Enormous Room” partly read on my kindle for weeks now.

On the physical shelf are Vaneisa Baksh’s “Son of Grace”, Valerie Laurent’s “mystory – My Yesterdays in Ordinary Time”, and the Jamaica Gleaner’s fantastic “Best of Jamaica” souvenir book on some of the people and institutions that have shaped the country’s modern history.

Yet here I am with 8-year-old Amayah Wallace-Anienonah’s “Quest for the Golden Diamond” and Nicole and Faith-Josephine’s “Canboulay – A Look into Trini Traditional Carnival Characters” (written with developmentally-challenged children in mind) in my hands.

Vaneisa, Val, Cummings, Hemingway, and the Gleaner will therefore have to wait. Here, in fact, are acts of supreme defiance – in contravention of the call to cower in a quiet corner.

Because, in this open revolutionary space are also to be found Mark Loquan “A Better Tomorrow” video series on pan, Pomegranate Studios’ documentary film on the life and music of Mungal Patasar, and any number of other productions being churned out by busy creative folk.

There is also the advent of what my son, Mikhail, has identified as “the autonomy of youth” via social media which offers egalitarian access in a way traditional platforms could not afford.

Here is a generation of unbridled content creators defying the traditional rules of official and mainstream control, waging war on past and present values that are designed to restrain rather than to liberate. Enter Kyle Boss et al.

Then, this evening, there is the Ensemble and Orchestra category of “Steelpan is More Beautiful” at Naparima Bowl. This will be followed on Friday by the World Steelpan Conference which is among the highlights of Steelpan Month.

None of this is meant to say that claims of hopelessness aren’t rooted in several realities generating deep concern, but that art, music, and literature are playing important roles in establishing context and meaning, serving as cathartic tools, providing weapons of resistance, and acting as bridges for the building of resilience and solidarity.

There is a revolution underway in defiance of advancing feelings of hopelessness and despair. Its soldiers are proceeding with eyes wide open to all realities. The change some portend in common narratives of the day will pale in comparison to what is in the offing.

Dying a Criminal

On Tuesday December 7, 2021, at about nine in the morning, I received one of the worst telephone calls of my life.

Less than 12 hours before, I had swapped food stories with an exiled Venezuelan journalist/communication expert and discussed how this once-accomplished professional could have moved away from cleaning houses in Trinidad and operated at her full potential in the Caribbean. She had big plans for herself. There was a hint of hope. Or so I thought.

In 2019, she had participated in a regional, journalistic project under the banner of the Caribbean Investigative Journalism Network (CIJN) examining Venezuela’s PetroCaribe efforts in the Caribbean.

Once the pandemic arrived, (and between housekeeping assignments) she also worked on a Spanish-language communication plan to encourage Venezuelan nationals in T&T to get tested for COVID-19.

Tragically, even if she had survived the dreadful hours prior to that December 7 call, it would not have been the end of the issue either psychologically or at law.

In fact, she would have faced the prospect of up to two years in prison for breaching the Offences Against the Person Act - legislation based on common law principles that sought to encapsulate longstanding, colonial-era, moral, religious and other social order imperatives.

On Monday, I was jolted back to December 2021 when I followed the proceedings of a “Kick-Off” webinar hosted by the Caribbean Regional Coalition for the Decriminalisation of Suicide.

The testimonies of professionals engaged in this effort, co-chaired by psychologist Dr Margaret Nakhid-Chatoor of T&T and including Caribbean and international experts and advocates, highlighted the anomalous, anachronistic nature of anti-suicide laws.

All the while, I was there trying to understand: what could possibly be the obstacles to decriminalising suicide/attempted suicide? The current effort by this coalition focuses on the countries of Saint Lucia, Grenada, The Bahamas, and T&T – all with sophisticated and enlightened legal professionals otherwise engaged in modernising outdated laws.

Indeed, as a mere amateur, I wondered if a suicide attempt is successful, its unlawful nature becomes moot. A corpse plays no role in a courtroom, especially as an accused criminal. And, if the effort is unsuccessful, in what ways does imprisonment address the underlying factors that led to such an attempt? This borders on the absurd!

In 2022, the government of Guyana struck the offence off its law books. When that happened, I recalled the efforts of organisations such as the Guyana Press Association (GPA) 12 years before this, to improve media coverage of suicides in order that journalists not contribute to additional suicides and suicide attempts through unprofessional media coverage.

I also participated in a similar exercise in T&T around that same time, and I am aware that there have since been more.

Could it be, I wondered, that such focus on media coverage of the growing incidence of suicide might just have contributed to second thoughts by the government of Guyana on the matter, eventually leading to the repeal of such an outdated law?

Among the numerous learnings from these experiences is the fact, as stated by Dr Nakhid-Chatoor on Monday, suicide is a mental health issue and not a criminal act, even as the supposed deterrent effect of such a law is completely unproven. In fact, in Guyana, the law was “replaced” by a National Suicide Prevention Plan.

The people who inspired such laws in the colonies, the English, themselves repealed the offence in 1961 – even before we became independent in 1962. Now, as we know, we do not automatically follow enlightened thinking by the people who imposed such laws in the first place.

We still have the death penalty (ironically adjudicated upon in the final instance by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council) despite it being finally abolished in the UK since 1998 - after being suspended about 30 years before that.

The death penalty is a much tougher knot to untangle here because of the thirst for vengeance in the current scenario, but decriminalising attempted suicide and suicide itself should in 2024 be a routine, simple, uncontentious act.

Attorney General, Reginald Armour, has a lot on his hands. But I am assuming there is nothing much to this, and that Opposition support should not be problematic. It should be in all manifestoes.

Let it not be said in the future that we had friends and family who died as criminals, but that the resources of the society and the state were expended more meaningfully on addressing this disturbing public health issue.

(Please note: The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 800-COPE and Lifeline can be reached at 800-5588, 866-5433 and 220-3636.)

Priorities, lies, and journalism

Rather inappropriately in my view, while receiving service at a supermarket counter last week, I was asked if I was the guy “who writes in the newspapers.” Following my hesitant confirmation, I was then asked: “why don’t you people write the truth?”

I had only days before suggested at a media workshop that journalists were among the professional groups that people love to hate – if only because our journalism so frequently presents things people would prefer not to confront or asserts things with which they do not agree.

True, there is malpractice as well, but for the most part I think colleagues leave their homes in the morning with an intention to do a decent job. Political partisanship and entrenched belief systems do play roles both in what is produced and even more so in how people interpret the work we do. So, there is also that challenge.

Additionally, one of the problems you have when you live in a place, like here, where everything is a priority is deciding on what is most important at any particular time when you are called upon to draw attention to the things that should urgently concern us all.

So, often, implicit and explicit bias dictates both what is offered for consideration and how that is interpreted by consumers of content.

It’s as much a peril for newsroom journalists as it is for newspaper columnists and other contributors of media content – that “not telling the truth” is as much a charge related to omission as it has to do with acts of inclusion.

Then, when a decision is made, it is important to convince both yourself and others that there is sufficient justification for suggesting, for example, that the fact of climate change (its anthropogenic nature being the sole source of worthwhile contestation) is as important a subject in the public domain as the management of water supplies in your community.

Additionally, what is there to say that a single mosquito that can end your life is less important than the possibility of collateral damage occasioned by political shenanigans in the US, UK, or Venezuela?

That the unattended pothole in your neighbourhood that cost you a tyre and a rim, is of less immediate significance to you than the impunity of a state accused of genocide and unlawful occupation of the territory of others?

Or that the failure of the policing of criminal behaviour ought to be of greater priority than ameliorative/restorative measures that may serve as effective pre-emptive strikes on causative factors?

Such matters are among the challenges of conscientious people who not only populate news and op-ed pages but all other citizens and their leaders - as presumably guided and informed by people who are supposed to know more about them than the rest of us.

Against such a backdrop, I believe it is increasingly important to be able to sift the assertions of charlatans (of which there are numerous), outrageous liars, and the outright ignorant through a sieve of verification. It is clearly important to focus on the responsibilities of the consumers of such content.

For this reason, I have become quite an advocate of what UNESCO has been promoting for years now in the form of “media and information literacy.” In a sense, it is among the supreme imperatives of the principle of self-responsibility – the often-elusive notion that people have a role to play in determining their own personal and communal destinies.

This “demand side” approach to critically assessing news, information, and entertainment, is clearly the single most impactful response to the current blitz of mis and disinformation. It is the “caveat emptor” (let the buyer beware) of the so-called information age.

I personally favour such an approach, since the more compelling lure of censorship remains the preferred option in too many instances. And when you add to this the fact that personal beliefs and convictions determine levels of “truthfulness” or “lies” what you are left with are rather oppressive conditions under which all ideas are left to contend, but only at the hands of people with clear views on what they hold as their “truth.”

So, yes, some of us are among those “who write in the papers” and there is often mis and disinformation to address. There are now some key players emerging on other, new platforms. To the extent that they consider themselves bound by similar professional values, they too play important roles.

There are many over the years who have contended that we are better off with such public communicators than without them. I happen to agree.

The clearer picture

The lead-in for a July 2 online GML story reads as follows: “Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley says provisions are being made to allow children from islands ravaged by Hurricane Beryl entry into Trinidad and Tobago to reside with relatives here.”

In under one hour, on the T&T Guardian Facebook page alone, there were over one hundred comments on the story. A link to further details was provided.

There are colleagues of mine who strongly advise against paying too much attention to the “comments section” of social media posts even by the local news organisation with which I am associated. They claim to care about my mental well-being.

“Don’t do it,” is the typically sharp admonition. But you know what? I believe that the interactivity of online media has helped further democratise the mass media landscape, brought previously marginalised and buried feelings to the fore, and should therefore never be ignored.

Despite the proven existence of anonymised and disguised partisan trolls, and the persistence of the barely literate, I think it important to capture the many flavours of public opinion and expression this way.

It is however important, as my friends have advised, to recognise that we engage such a process at our peril – especially on questions that have the potential to expose the worst in people.

“This man really making no sense at all our own people suffering and cannot get our own kids in school always saying no space I am tired of this man making bad decisions for our cou(n)try,” was among the earliest comments following the post on the children of the Grenadines.

Sometimes, with time on your hands, you check the social media footprint of such commentators to determine their bona fides and to get behind what motivates some people. The above quote was provided by someone who urges regular reference to the Bible.

“By 2030 you would have to get a backhoe to break down that voter bank,” another chimed in. This one appeared to have been a made-up profile with 245 rather suspicious “friends.”

By the time you check and cross-reference and scour lists of interests and “friends” it is possible to produce a  rough profile of the people and the circumstances motivating their interest in different subjects. There is probably already generative AI that can do the sorting for you without all the human fuss.

This was not the case back in 1991 when it was proposed by then PM ANR Robinson that T&T should have hosted fleeing Haitians following political turmoil there. All we had to go on at that time were placards and angry demonstrators pronouncing on the threat of “AIDS” and some kind of refugee “invasion” with the potential to tilt political balance, entirely on ethnic grounds.

The technology had not yet been developed to properly unravel identities especially among letter-writer pseudonyms in the press and anonymous radio talk show callers – though placards often betrayed dramatic similarities in design and language usage, and you worked out who, rather quietly, wasn’t really minding that a fuss had been generated over X or Y issue.

By 2017, and the offer to host Dominican children for six months following the passage of Hurricane Maria, social media was already in full swing. So, people who monitor these things closely were pretty much able to catch the gist of the arguments and to recognise common threads of interest where they existed.

It is however often the case that disparate, unconnected voices may potentially capture highly pervasive sentiments – however similar the language and arguments. For example, and even more recently, the “close de borders” crew shared common emotions with a variety of elements opposed to even the loosest application of humanitarian law when it came to distressed, asylum-seeking Venezuelans.

However, what I also look for are the key responses of people from among our “responsible” elites - politicians, academics, business, and other opinion-leaders. I check to see whether they approve or disapprove of disturbing public responses and behaviours.

For example, in the most recent instance of the children of the Grenadines, I have been keeping an eye out for rods of connection. You know: “I understand your point, but how can accommodating children in the face of such a crisis ever change the political dynamic, or reduce opportunities for our own children? Stop it! Stop it!”

But, vigilance over things virtual is meaningless without also keeping an eye on what is actually happening/what is being said in the real world. That is how you begin getting a clearer picture of the reality. It’s not always a pleasant sight, I tell you.

Of grief and fêtes

Let me be today’s wet blanket at a time when so many are declaring the redemptive qualities of fetes and revelry in the face of both imminent and actual tragedy and pain.

There is, admittedly, some 1990 T&T and Saint Lucia 2010 PTSD on my part. These were two completely different encounters with death and destruction marked by so-called emotional “safety valves” of different varieties.

I am willing to risk being part of a tiny minority of Caribbean folk not committed to the view that socio-economic and socio-psychological imperatives can provide a level of re-assurance that life may continue “as normal” even after the most atrocious assaults on lives and the quality of life in our tiny states.

In 1990, it amazed me that there had been some boastfulness associated with the fact that people had organised “curfew fetes” and danced long nights away even as bodies lay rotting in some facilities and on the streets of Port of Spain.

Then when Tomas struck Saint Lucia in 2010 and the mountainside came crashing down on Livity Arts Studio and other nearby structures, and bodies were still being excavated from muddy piles, and there was water in hotel swimming pools and none in Castries homes, the Caribbean Tourism Organisation announced that the island was “back in business.”

The string of angry emails to the organisation perhaps cost me some friends and (most likely) participation in future forums with my usual messages of caution about the net value of tourism as a stable, long-term solution to poverty and need.

Colleagues and friends and complete strangers from Caribbean countries (of which I have more than passing knowledge) hate when I meddle in “their” business this way, so I cleave to a few marginal voices expressing caution and care to secure a degree of validation.

For example, accomplished Jamaican journalist and attorney, Dionne Jackson-Miller, took some heavy blows on social media when she attempted to explain why some Jamaicans seemingly avoided the advice of disaster officials on the question of hunkering down at home. She hit an important nail smack on the head.

“So, a lot of people got REALLY upset when I posted that it's easier to talk about staying home when you live in a comfortable home!!!”, was her retort when faced with the accusation that she was implicitly encouraging slackness. She need not have explained more than she eventually did. My own response was that while there were clear dangers associated with the act of ignoring officialdom, there must also be space for some of us to “recognise our own privilege.”

It generated some additional queasiness when Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett announced on Friday that “Jamaica is open for business and, once again, the resilience of the Jamaican people is on full display … We are grateful that there has been no wide-scale impact to our general tourism infrastructure and our tourism industry is fully operational.”

Some clever social media user juxtaposed photographs of communities picking up heart-breaking pieces following Beryl, and the idyllic promotions of a tourism industry that cannot afford to miss a single revenue step.

Like Saint Lucia in 2010, there is space for a measure of (even contrived) “balance.” If tourism fails, the ability to recover from the annual assaults is substantially reduced. So, we resort to a kind of bi-polarity descriptive of completely different realities within a single space.

In St Vincent and the Grenadines where, if you don’t try to be strong nowadays you would shed tears every single day, post-Beryl, a scaled-down Vincymas proceeded over the weekend and up to yesterday. Here, again, is territory with which I am familiar. But they don’t like you in their business.

One person told me that the same way some people turn to prayer and religious devotion to cope, so too there are people who believe that dancing their sorrows away can help.

I hear this – loud and clear. But I think that these things underpin a significant psycho-social shortcoming. It might be that this is because I am not prone to superstition, and do not easily subscribe to a notion of  socio-cultural “safety valves” of the party kind.

In the meantime, there is also a new generation of cranks sharing voicenotes and social media posts on “geo-engineering,” the mythical connection between earthquakes and hurricanes, and general challenges (in some instances aligned to political preference) to clear scientific evidence that explains more intense weather events.

How is this different from the music cranked high while people pick up the pieces from broken lives? It’s yet another fete in the face of grief and suffering.

Our Survival Project

In case we were ever inclined to forget, Hurricane Beryl announced the dramatic start of a predictable, annual scramble for Caribbean survival much earlier than has been recorded in an exceptionally long time.

This diminishes (or perhaps reinforces), through immediacy, the broader metaphor of fragile socio-economic persistence because at stake are lives and livelihoods and other assets that assure viability in the face of extreme vulnerability.

Time to painfully recall the admonition of a young Kittitian student in Jamaica angrily moved by my suggestion that there objectively exists no real reason why some countries of our region consider themselves sufficiently impregnable to declare a notion of sovereignty.

Every single year, you see, we are confronted by the threat of devastation and the need to rebuild ahead of another interminable round of potential destruction. In some instances, elsewhere, human conduct in the form of violence and political instability exists as ultimately manageable traits.

We can end wars, intervene in conflicts, stand in solidarity against atrocities and help bring perpetrators to justice, even across borders. We can learn to negotiate and to understand each other better and punish those who thrive on violence and disruption. However hopeless may currently appear the plights of Palestinians, the Sudanese, Rohingya there have been paths traced by Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia which indicated resolutions … of sorts.

There are also episodic naturally occurring events that defy precise prediction, and we know some of them well right here – earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Shortly before midnight Sunday, there was a Magnitude 3.7 earthquake off Trinidad’s northwest tip barely noticed as we scoured online resources for word on Beryl.

In St Vincent, the folks of the village of Fancy who faced volcanic ash in 2021 now feared surging tides as the winds and rain raged.

Yet here we are, as usual, as expected, as officially declared, in “hurricane season.” It flows from our tongues in the midst of cricket commentary, defiant fetes, and political exchanges.

Over the weekend, a long relocated relative quipped about T&T and hurricanes that “they threaten but always avoid” as if to suggest that avoidance reduces direct and indirect victimisation and involvement. Devastation in Carriacou is our issue in T&T, in the same way a volcanic eruption in St Vincent clearly was, and so will any number of weather events yet unleashed off the west coast of Africa wherever they land in our neighbourhood … or right here.

The statement ought to also invoke an implication of collective responsibility – the stuff of which the regional survival project aka “Caricom” was meant to address.

What, therefore, is there to suggest the centrality of this question in our formal processes? Acknowledgement of the growing climate crisis has helped close some ranks.

The fact that while we occupy different vessels we sail on the same ocean or that in many respects we share cabin space on a small brittle vessel negotiating hostile waves. We can orient the narrative in different directions, but it almost always describes susceptibility to extreme outcomes.

How, in the face of this therefore, is a psychology of “invincibility” - as prescribed by my friend and colleague, Tony Fraser, with respect to cricket – a realistic possibility; and not simply self-delusion of the highest order?

This is not to dismiss the prospects for confidence and self-belief – for which we are well known in select areas of public life – but to acknowledge some stark realities including our deficiencies. And here, in my view, is where the skills of adaptation and change and mitigation of risks are left to be developed and honed.

The suggestion that perils “threaten but always avoid” T&T may further weaken the determination we employ to engage our own survival project and the wider regional rescue.

Maybe Beryl has opened an opportunity to reformulate the Caricom agenda not by supplanting existing areas of concern but by attaching stronger awareness of their survival implications.

We have several months left in this long season, and next year it will return. We cannot, as island and coastal states, relocate. The scientists also say, at the current rate, things will worsen.

When the postponed Caricom Heads of Government Meeting, initially due this week in Grenada, eventually convenes it might be useful to ensure this common thread of responsibility to ourselves is inserted.

The agenda needs to reflect such urgency through all issues requiring thought and action, and 12 months a year.

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.