What 'new normal'?

And here I was, thinking that yet another column on the digital failures of the pandemic period would signify thematic overkill.

Represented in modern tech literature as “opportunity,” the digital conduct of public business has, in our instance, been expressed as perpetual challenge.

Then, Monday, on account of the silly “proof of address” requirement of a growing number of public and private sector services, I attempted to log on to a public utility website – WASA in this case – and found myself confronted by the online traffic jam that conspires to “time out” especially when there is urgency attached to the transaction.

Here's the message word-for-word - the phrase “technical error” designed, with the naïve in mind, to provide convenient cover. The rest is all jargonistic gobbledygook meant to mamaguy and deceive: “A technical error occurred: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to obtaining a connection from the pool. This may have occurred because all pooled connections were in use and max pool size was reached.”

“Sorry, we just not ready,” would have sufficed.

For certain, the cognitive dissonance occasioned by unfamiliarity with a life made easier through technology, is not peculiar to hapless state services. It is there in banking, insurance, commerce, telecoms, and other areas involving private capital, profits, and vainglorious claims to operational superiority over the others.

You get a letter in the mail requiring that you visit an office … with the letter you received at the address, to which it was mailed, in your hands. Then you are asked to produce both the letter and something to prove that this is indeed your mailing address.

It’s like that time (years ago) I had an editor who wanted articles emailed to him accompanied by a fax and a call to confirm that both email and fax had been sent. So, no, media have not been innocent through all this. Hence the struggle with appropriate business models in the sector.

Additionally, though we remain under conditions of a pandemic (whatever the COVID denialists claim), there are lessons of this period already destined for the undercarriage of any passing bus.

Remote work, digitally composed documentation, online forms, and a variety of other now-acceptable phenomena are (many of them) destined to evaporate as magically as their acceptance emerged at a time of urgency and crisis.

The “new normal” is set to become nothing more than “normal” with a URL – “normURL”?

Bosses yearn for faces at the office. No banking is complete without long steupsing lines. Everywhere, paper is craved to validate reality. Bills are best paid in person for fear of online transactions that “did not go through.”

Former public utilities minister Robert Le Hunte was recently quoted as juxtaposing the “digital face” alongside the manual back end of our banking sector. It’s no different in a wide variety of other instances, including at agencies that once resided under his ministerial purview.

Given this belated epiphany on his part, I can only imagine the pain and agony of a Cabinet without Le Hunte at this time. Had he stayed, would we have had our digital vaccination cards by now? Would the “proof of address” requirement have remained? If so, what would have been the rationale?

Meanwhile, I am still not going to allow anyone to forget 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 possible arrival of “digital vaccination cards” in “four to six weeks.”

Two digital transformation ministers later, there is precious little - outside of a decade and a half old legacy bequeathed by former public administration minister Kennedy Swaratsingh – to signify a radical change in official mindset. The emotional software to accompany hardware acquisitions.

It’s just the old normal, hyperlinked from a shiny, new façade. Public servants know where, usually across the street, to send people to get “photocopies” of their documents and bank tellers still need to hold paper cheques in their hands.

I recently had cause to display my vaccination card for admission to a restaurant. I no longer need to do so. Thankfully. Mainly because the crapaud foot that names me on paper absolutely requires the backup of other ID equally primordial in nature and design.

The Climate Justice Question

I have recently been participating in a series of webinars examining the nature and scope of media coverage of the climate crisis with closer focus on the inequities that have marked its occurrence, impacts and the measures to minimise its effects.

In my view, even in the face of a pandemic, this remains the survival issue of our time, especially for small island states and low-lying coastal regions of the developing world.

In fact, the lessons of the climate crisis persist as precursors to the pandemic challenge through the convergence of science, public policy, domestic and international politics, and the work of mass media in exploring their true meaning for our societies.

This is no newfound concern of mine or of the Caribbean journalistic community. Seventeen years ago, I edited the Climate Change Handbook for Caribbean Journalists published by the Mainstreaming Adaptation to Climate Change (MACC) Project of Caricom – now the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) based in Belize.

It was a collaboration involving journalists and climate scientists and was among the first resources of its kind globally.

Then, last year, as an initiative entirely conceived by the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM), with support from UNESCO, together with scientists Dr Dale Rankine and Steve Maximay, I co-authored Reporting the Climate Crisis – A Handbook for Caribbean Journalists.

Yesterday’s launch of Climate Justice: Journalistic Perspectives Workshop by the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) signified an even deeper dive into the subject of climate change and its accompanying crises. This is particularly so when you consider the inherent inequities I mentioned earlier.

It is also absolutely relevant to the current challenge of pandemic management in that science is often challenged by a toxic concoction combining baseless scepticism and campaigns of disinformation.

In the process, there is a tragic devaluing of the impact of unjust antecedents. For, not unlike climate change, the pandemic has had uneven global impacts. From situationally specific pre-conditions, to access to the tools of correction, to the distribution of costs associated with varying levels of responsibility.

So, today, while less than a quarter of the population of the planet consumes over 80% of its national resources and generates over 90% of its pollution and waste, the remaining 75% are bearing the heaviest comparative burdens of adaptation and mitigation.

This raises the question of geo-political justice, including the distribution of liabilities, as the world now attempts to slow, if not halt, the prospect of ecological disaster.

This raises the question of geo-political justice, including the distribution of liabilities, as the world now attempts to slow, if not halt, the prospect of ecological disaster.

 

Yes, there remain those who are either suspicious of the doomsday scenarios being projected or doubtful about the link with human activity. But as is the case with COVID-19, it is best to go with the tested views of the vast majority of real scientists.

If the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) meant anything, it is that the transition from the status quo to dramatic reduction in carbon emissions – the Caribbean’s rallying cry has been “1.5(%) to stay alive” – will require adjustments that stand in contradiction with the developmental aspirations of many of our countries.

In our region, T&T, Suriname, and emerging energy giant, Guyana, are facing the long-term prospect of economies constructed on pillars whose value it is the concerted effort of the global community to diminish. It is estimated in some quarters, for instance, that in order for the world to meet emissions targets, oil production must be reduced by up to 90% over the next decade.

The measure used to describe the balance between emissions and captures is “net zero.” To me, this also signals prospective anomalies in the process of determining who cuts how much.

I remember sitting on an airline flight with a former energy adviser to the government of T&T many years ago and asked him: “What do you think will happen when all the oil and gas goes away?” (There was an estimate at that time of about 30 years probable oil reserves). He responded: “Don’t worry about that. For as long as the planet is viable, there will be oil to be found.”

That was just about 30 years ago. Today, the question has to be revised to focus on our share of a burden placed on the shoulders of the world by a few. Steve Maximay talks all the time about a “just transition” to accompany the amelioration of the climate crisis. That appears to be the more important question of today.

Not Welcome Here

Let me make it clear from the start. More often than not, oppressive, discriminatory state policy is not a reflection of popular behaviour or predisposition. For today’s example, I select the conclusion that T&T is not a welcoming society.

Let me restate: This does not imply that Trinidadians and Tobagonians are, on average, cold, unfriendly, and inhospitable people. We are not.

Just last week, for instance, in the company of a young Jamaican family member visiting for the first time, a joke with a Chaguanas food vendor about our advanced state of hunger yielded two free meals. No matter how hard we tried, the lady refused our money.

We returned a few days later with a gift and, had it not been for COVID, there would have no doubt been tight hugs in the manner of old friends or family. We were also offered free callaloo.

Contrastingly, a group of regional students here for mandatory UWI sessions departed as fast as their travel itineraries permitted - unlike their colleague who decided on an additional week.

It had not helped that their first and second official contacts had failed to provide basic welcome, guidance, and services that would have made their stay much less stressful.

It was also not good that tales back home of horrors past had prepared them for the worst – much of which, in their collective opinion, was eventually realised.

Through all this I am still holding my tongue on public exposure of a number of instances in which it is clear that our policy, law, and official practice constitute violations of the spirit of regional commitments. Yet, the speeches have been grandiloquent, and the signatures appear on treaties with flair.

There are two ongoing applications before the immigration authorities, for example, that are shameful and embarrassing to this country as former leaders in regional affairs. I cannot go into the gory details because there can and will be a vindictive backlash.

Needless to say, the application of archaic laws combined with a completely unhelpful, unwilling official demeanour has conspired to relay to those in question that they are not welcome here.

These are actual cases, the details of which would turn every citizen with a soul to anger.

Yet, I generously suggest that this does not only point to the disrespectful, contemptuous behaviour of state officials. It cannot be that people who grew up and went to school and live in my country can be so cruel. I refuse to believe that.

So it was that I spent part of last week with colleagues discussing media coverage of migration issues with a focus mainly on the arrival of non-Caricom nationals. Enlightening inputs from Justice Vashiest Kokaram and attorney/law lecturer, Jason Nathu helped us come to terms with the archaic nature of applicable laws and policy.

When considered alongside the concerns of agencies such as the UNHCR and IOM, it became clear that these things are only partially the function of uncaring state operatives. What we have is the absence of clear policy, enlightened law, and the persistence of a politics of division - the latter well learned from the colonials, but now with a momentum of its own.

You already know my views on the regional paradigm to which we claim to belong. International humanitarian law, the Treaty of Chaguaramas, domestic legislation and political posturing all conspire to paint a picture in direct conflict with actual process and action.

“You are not welcome here” is the essential message. No wonder why the longstanding cluelessness on matters related to refugee policy, immigration, tourism, and the application of regional solutions via institutions such as the CCJ.

None of this, by the way, is irrelevant to the senseless attack on recently-appointed attorney general, Reginald Armour – an outstanding, independent, legal professional with credentials that exceed the requirements of his new job. Real legal minds have already pronounced on the matter. But I hope we all got the implicit message.

Link this to what I flagged last week as the longstanding (racist) myth of invading “small islanders” for purposes of bolstering political support.

Over the years there has been little change when it comes to such matters since it has been deemed to be of political value to instil baseless fear regarding the inward flows of people – despite 400 years of arrivals.

“We” (who all came) have been saying “keep away” all our relatively short national lives. Many, many more have left though. Most, never to return.

Selwyn Ryan and the Google connection

Many journalists of years past, and who are still around, know that long before Google and Yahoo! search engines there were people to whom they could have turned for quick advice and reliable information on selected subjects.

True, they also relied heavily on the newspaper clippings of their respective libraries, which were facilities of varying degrees of sophistication, orderliness, and timely delivery. But the human touch was often faster and offered nuances and other gaps AI cannot now offer.

There were newsroom old-stagers whose recall was respected even at short notice, and external expert resources always ready to take your call. This often reinforced the clippings search.

At one time in the Express newsroom, we had David Chase, David Renwick, and Leonard Robertson. One phone call away, on matters of history, politics, and general public affairs, was columnist/academic Dr Selwyn Ryan, among others.

Last Sunday, I remembered when I had written a front-page article and was subsequently confronted by a furious editor-in-chief (Owen Baptiste) in typical irascible, blood-vessel-busting style about something reported by me as fact, but which one of his pals had called to suggest was wholly inaccurate.

It had something to do with the federal elections of 1958 which I was certain I had read somewhere and rather casually inserted as part of the story. Calling Dr Ryan rescued me from what would have otherwise been an editor’s savagery.

My late mother-in-law, Marianne Ramesar, worked alongside him at the ISER (now SALISES), UWI and, like Ryan, was of the view that no narrative on development and all its processes is complete in the absence of verifiable data and statistics. In my view, by the way, her own work as a historian is grossly undervalued

Today, I am part of a regional media development institute that is attempting to erect as a key pillar of journalistic pedagogy a notion of data-driven newsgathering. It is a painful challenge in societies that rely heavily on intuition, guesswork and vaps.

For instance, I have been concerned about the popular myth of substantial, decisive imported Vincentian and Grenadian votes in the late 50s and early 60s to bolster political support at elections. Data employed at the core of journalistic enquiry makes for a powerful narrative. That’s the plan. It’s not only for university researchers. This was a Selwyn Ryan lesson.

The years passed and all of this came to mind a few months after the 1995 general election that brought a UNC-dominated government to office, following a post-election agreement with the NAR. This is often inaccurately described as when the UNC first “won” a general election.

I was, rather surprisingly (as a non-academic), invited to speak at a UWI seminar on the impact of media coverage of that election on its eventual outcome. I called the paper Journalism and the Political Process.

The frightfully rigorous interrogation that followed reinforced the fact that this man, who had been our newspaper Google, had earned our admiration because of the respectful regard extended to us as clearly imperfect professionals.

Confidence in its soundness and acknowledgement of the paper’s weaknesses came from Prof. Ryan’s public and private responses to what he had heard. This is what true teachers do. The UWI has referred to him as “a brilliant research empiricist.” I think I understand why.

The seminar proceedings were subsequently published in a book simply called The General Elections of 1995 in Trinidad and Tobago. My chapter is there.

The phone call consultations with Prof. Ryan had actually continued long after the Express. He had endured - as head of the elections survey team of St Augustine Research Associates (SARA) - the recurring, outrageous claim that his research methodology was implicitly serving to stimulate ethnic dynamics.

Idle chatter over this had morphed, over the years, into vulgar slurs on his character and his commitment to country. Anyone who has read any of his insightful texts on ethnicity, race, nationalism, and politics would be hard-pressed to arrive at some of the conclusions that entered the public domain – many of them from the political platform.

I am yet to read Ryan Recalls, but I am certain that he either directly or indirectly addresses the claims that arose.

Yes, we have Ukraine and Russia. Oil prices and pandemic measures. Vulturous politics and charlatanistic adventurism. Much of that was within my sight. But, today, this space belongs to our pre-Google search engine and generous intellectual benefactor to a generation of T&T journalists. Thank you, sir.

 

A CARICOM rod of correction

During a journalism workshop in an OECS country about 20 years ago, we were doing a word association exercise. Word: “Wesley.” Response: “Seafood.” Word: “Beach.” Response: “Reduit.” Word: “Trinis.” Response: “Arrogance.”

Sometime before that came an exercise in another island to assess knowledge and acceptance of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME). There was a roomful of people with small and medium businesses.

“Can you imagine?” one participant interjected, (because of this CARICOM business) “every cent of my retirement money is now in a bank owned by Trinidadians.” Supportive groans, side-chatter, and applause were followed by a call to order.

I once called a PR guy here, following a journalism exercise in Suriname to tell him that one of the biggest signs in Paramaribo contained the logo of his T&T bank, and it was stinging the eyes of Surinamese people who thought they were holding the sticky end of a CARICOM stick and it was now being driven into their heart.

By then, one of our soft drink manufacturers had significantly and painfully eaten into the market of a longstanding local producer. There was a growing view that the hospitality of the people of this mainland country was being mistaken for some kind of weakness. A more culturally sensitive touch was clearly required.

“I think that sign should be bigger,” was the PR guy’s response. Giggle, giggle.

North, south and east of here, there has been a view (substantiated by trade and economic imbalances) that T&T has been extracting more from CARICOM arrangements than we have been investing politically in the process.

However, uninformed public opinion here has been that regionalism has done nothing to justify the costs and time devoted to what, some hold, is a remote fantasy hinged on an expired regional paradigm.

This column has repeatedly cited the empirical bases for the more rigorous embrace of the Caribbean social, economic, and cultural space. There are serious grounds to frame a survival project.

Recent Caribbean Private Sector Organisation (CPSO) concerns about the “local content” law in Guyana are rooted in such a summation and should not be ignored or passed to some vaguely mandated “committee.”

President Irfaan Ali’s countervailing diagnosis however asserts: “Do so, don’t like so.”

So, as we speak, forces are massing in Georgetown against Port of Spain and Caroni and San Fernando and Couva and Pt Fortin.

The sad part is I have heard people, who have clearly not been paying attention, actually wonder why.

Surely, “local content” within the meaning and spirit of a single social and economic space, embraces a much wider horizon than domestic territory.

The brutal truth is, even as some Guyanese politicians are mistaken about the implications of a single economic space on “local content”, Port of Spain, Caroni, San Fernando, Couva and Pt Fortin have over the years been busily fine-tuning their machinations to constrict, not expand, entrepreneurial boundaries.

Given today’s realities and demands, can you imagine the psychic transformation that would now render them capable of claiming/yielding common space with Kingston, Castries, Georgetown, and Paramaribo?

It has not been much different in St John’s or Bridgetown, but we in T&T need to busy ourselves with resolving the circumstances that have led us to believe we are capable of subsisting as two islands unto ourselves.

We have been working hard to tailor our institutions accordingly. CARICOM nationals have had to join inordinately long queues to regularise their status here. Up to a few years ago, Skilled Nationals applications languished for months and months on a government minister’s desk.

The immigration default is to shut out and deny without regard for a binding Treaty (of Chaguaramas), domestic legislation and policy (a Skilled CARICOM Nationals regime among others), and the authority of the Caribbean Court of Justice which, in my view, has been underutilised to challenge numerous injustices against regional nationals here.

Notwithstanding a record spanning 17 years, there remain people in law, politics, business, and public affairs, who still repeat the nonsense that “Trinidad and Tobago is not in the CCJ.”

As a consequence of all of the above, particularly in now buoyant Georgetown, “local content” policy is perceived of as a mechanism not only to assure national benefits from an emerging, lucrative source of economic salvation, but as a rod of correction against those of us not previously minded to honour regional commitments in spirit, in practice, and at law.

When pan won

The thing with pan, as with all art and music, different people experience different things when we meet it.

So, true, there is some consensus that on Saturday Trinidad All Stars made our hearts skip beats. The hair at the back of our necks danced and swayed – the siren of the Unknown Band (and not from a COVID bound ambulance) reminding us that all of this was still urgent and real.

That opening medley seamlessly transporting many of us from an Impossible Dream to the Stardust in our eyes.

True, Moods’ rendition of the Al Green classic, Let’s Stay Together, took some of us back to that house party where we met early loves. Tornadoes and Supernovas brought us prayerful messages and melodies.

Yes, there were also the other giants – Desperadoes and Renegades and Exodus. For sure, Starlift and Phase II and Skiffle and Invaders and Cordettes and Pan Elders were also there.

Note, I am mixing the bag – Medium with the Large. Coconuts and Peewah – wonderful in their own right.

Yet, through all of this, people who have been around the music and the instrument for a long time, were noting at least one dramatic transition, as the traditional Panorama model was (thankfully) modified to constitute an unbridled exposition of what pan is capable of despite vain expectations of a contest.

“Who won?” was the refrain all of Sunday. “Pan won” was the overwhelming response. But there was more.

For one, there was much to disclaim the view that “young people not into pan.” The evidence against this has long been abundant.

Has Pan Trinbago done the figures though? What is the average age of pan players in all categories? What is the average age of the current crop of arrangers? How does it compare against, say, 25 years ago? This would certainly settle my guestimate of declining age averages.

For instance, it was only when TTT’s Ruskin Mark spoke with Dr Mia Gormandy-Banjamin about some of the “oldies” being played you remembered that this brilliant, accomplished musician is still in her mid-thirties!

I happened to have followed almost the entire process this year – from the Single to the Small to the Medium and Large band performances. Young people ruled the roost. The transition is undeniably on!

One of the two young arrangers for Silver Stars, Kersh Ramsey, even spoke with Ruskin about “succession.” It is not the kind of word easily employed when used alongside the fact that 47-year-old Liam Teague (once a boy wonder himself) is a longstanding incumbent. Ramsey’s partnership with Ojay Richards must be considered among the most promising pan alliances in a long while.

Young Melodians arranger Raechard Bernard, who moved from stageside to the main stage on this occasion eloquently described the involvement of his teenage charges on stage. His band followed Arima Angel Harps whose arranger, pan phenom Aviel Scanterbury, comes from the same age group.

This column risks some notable omissions, but I hope you see where I’m going with this. Pandemic conditions and an accompanying revisiting of major pan events have conspired to remind us of the great future in store for pan music.

Let me tell you what I thought made this point most forcefully. This might be controversial. Couva Joylanders. Stefon West. “Essence” by WizKid. You know what I am talking about?

This leading Medium Band (2020 champs) used the occasion to tell us that our young people are taking over. West must have initially met some resistance … not from the players. All over-40s Google it.

An Israel-based young pan musician arranges a song for a Couva band composed by a popular 31-year-old Nigerian afrobeats singer/songwriter on a Savannah stage two nights before the days of Carnival.

The teenager on the double tenors on the frontline closed her eyes behind her face shield and threw her head back. Mothers’ milk on the faces of the double-seconds.

In May 2020, when the world was closed, Boogsie played “Yesterday.” One online comment I jotted down (since it wasn’t me) went: “I am in tears. Is this normal?”

Well, a bunch of young people from Central Trinidad moved me to conclude last Saturday that pan had won at least one battle over despair and looming hopelessness. I could well have asked the two-year-old question myself.

There is a lot more to be done to win the war. The children will have to lead us there.

When the lights went out

The lights went out last Wednesday and everything became so clear.

Paraphrased as a “catastrophic (engineering) failure” by the general manager of T&TEC, Kelvin Ramsook, the perils we confronted bore all the hallmarks of crisis bordering on disaster.

At sessions involving Caribbean and Pacific journalists, my friend and colleague, Steve Maximay, has been cautioning against casual conflating of hazards, crises, and disasters when, in fact, these phenomena occur at distinct stages of a process culminating in mortal harm and distress but emerging from a variety of latent perils – the hazards.

It is clear from last week’s experience that “catastrophic failure” along the engineering chain that links power generation and transmission, telecommunications services, and the provision of water, had the relatively unrestrained potential to become a health, security, economic, environmental, and public liability disaster.

From the reports so far, all except the latter featured rather insignificantly. But it could have been a lot worse. We appeared to have dodged a lethal bullet.

Based on the general principle that formulating a suitable response should never be left for when a crisis arises, it is important to note the multi-faceted dimensions of the required actions. They are not all technical/engineering in nature.

The logistics to address them include vital features of public communication, especially since social behaviour becomes important for purposes of mitigating the impacts of both human and non-human system failure.

So, yes, the independent power producers (IPPs) and T&TEC had disaster recovery protocols to address the knock-on impacts of serial technical faults. There was failure at this level. There are different hypotheses by experts – a community to which I do not belong.

Likewise, some of this is not new to WASA. The folks there had surely contemplated the prospect of a complete shutdown of power. Ditto the hapless telecoms service providers. Ditto state security and the main disaster and emergency agency, ODPM.

While there are investigating teams to deliver technical verdicts, claims of shameful failure are difficult to dispute.

There was no power, no water, limited mobile call service, no data, and a pervasive feeling of uncertainty and insecurity. Can you imagine the plight of homecare COVID patients to cite one scenario? This entire situation, to me, represented both discrete and collective dysfunctionality at several levels.

But even more than this, and this is the gist of my contention today, there was no evidence that the relevant state and private agencies had at any time convened, as part of a pre-arranged protocol, to implement a well-formulated crisis communication strategy. This was particularly urgent, given the fact of a pandemic.

I know enough about this to conclude that we are not instinctually predisposed to integrate communication functions with the technical. The composition of the current investigating team and their TORs clearly establish this.

In fact, the guidebooks (and actual practice in many jurisdictions) place public communication – as a feature of crisis policy and planning - at the top of the agenda, alongside the work of security experts, engineers, disaster recovery specialists, politicians, and others.

There is no evidence that anything of the kind occurred last Wednesday. There was no prompt assembling of institutional assets at the level of local government, state and private media, and numerous other partners to achieve such an objective.

There was also no pre-arranged, authoritative spokesperson/s to carry the required messages to inform and to provide comfort and confidence. Only ad hoc reliance on T&TEC professionals addressing just one dimension of the challenge. In this respect, the prime minister needed to be heard.

Meanwhile, the mandatory “golden hour” of crisis communication was lost. As far as I am aware, the first official dispatch came three hours into the crisis via T&TEC.

By that time, the haze created by social media misinformation had already led to traffic jams, talk of militant union action, crime sprees, and other rumours that won’t be repeated here.

Street corner windshield cleaners directing traffic provided an irresistible metaphorical statement on what actually happened last Wednesday. The day the lights went out and we saw so much.