Caricom’s Haiti question

A few weeks ago, a seasoned career diplomat asked me the shocking question: “What can Caricom do about Haiti?”

I replied tersely: “An honest response to your question will make me hate myself.”

After all, who am I? Haiti’s continued disintegration has been the subject of numerous academic studies and diplomatic actions and is the focus of constant attention by multilateral financial institutions, global NGOs, parachute journalists, and by no means least, the gaze of rich and powerful nations.

I made my first visit to the country in 1994 not long after the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide following his expulsion in the coup d'état of September 1991. A Caricom staffer at the time I was the least of the apostles, with a camera and notepad. I subsequently visited twice, on other assignments.

More than a year after the 2010 earthquake that claimed at least 200,000 lives, while on the way to the south, I noted that the streets of Port-au-Prince remained littered with rubble. I thought then that the government should have insisted that self-serving NGOs and missionaries flooding the country should have had to clear at least some portion of the mess before getting down to whatever they were there to do.

I also knew that remote, single-cause and over-simplified resort by ideologues to the tale of colonial depravities had been insufficient to grasp contemporary disorders.

Inspired in part by CLR James’s 1958 “natural unity” case for the Commonwealth Caribbean and Haiti, some regional politicians and officials had aggressively advanced the case for Haitian accession to the Caricom grouping.

For contrast, by 1994, full membership by Suriname – another non-English speaking nation with a different history, constitution, and systems of law and politics – was short months away.

Suriname’s integration into the community experienced bumps and diversions in the early years, but grew into a meaningful, mutually beneficial relationship.

Haiti however presented a qualitatively different challenge. It remained a target for opportunistic foreign interference, possessed of chronic socio-political dysfunctionality including systemic inequality, plagued by abysmally low economic performance, and lacked basic resilience in the face of high vulnerability to natural disasters.

In 1994, with the supposed return to democratic functionality, Caricom had offered support in strengthening the public service - as if the remnants of our own embrace of British colonial civil service culture had not included serial challenges of their own.

I remember the long table at Hôtel Montana and the smug offer of orderliness in government business in the midst of an environment in which the notion of a cohesive state was virtually non-existent beyond the walls of the National Palace.

Those talks went nowhere. In fact, the main feature of the ongoing relationship has been in the area of diplomatic support. It is not that Haiti has been the movement’s most reliable ally either. Reciprocation has been uneven, and the flare-ups have been sharply instructive. Loyalty is clearly among the main casualties of survival mode.

Regionally inspired development support has also been problematic at best, and satisfaction of needs left largely to arrangements resulting from geo-political shenanigans.

PetroCaribe funding, for example, led to what has been described as “an orgy of corruption”, and the presence of other global powers has been financially bountiful but minus durable, long-term results.

Numerous international NGOs, faith-based organisations, and other philanthropic agencies of all varieties have been engaged.

Yet, the country’s pandemic response has been among the most appallingly deficient. The health sector is in shambles. Current vaccine uptake is around 2%.

The much-adored Barbados lifted, then reimposed, visa requirements for Haitian visitors while most of the rest of us never budged. Visa-free Guyana became a transit point for Haitian economic migrants.

Back in 2001, the very first act of the Association of Caribbean Media Workers was a call for justice in the murder of renowned journalist/broadcaster Jean Dominique.

Last Sunday, Haitian freelance journalist, Romelo Vilsaint, was killed by the police in Port-au-Prince while protesting the detention of a colleague. This followed the murder of radio journalist, Garry Tess, and just over a week ago, the shooting of Le Nouvelliste reporter, Roberson Alphonse.

Last week, Alphonse’s newspaper – the country’s most reputable news publication, founded in 1898 – painfully suspended its print edition over security fears.

I have spoken with journalists there who now venture out only after elaborate planning. Gangs rule and what calls itself a government has summoned external intervention (again). There is thus an open invitation to invasion.

Land today, at Toussaint Louverture, and tell me what you see, feel, hear.

What can Caricom do about Haiti? Can we honestly, without guilt and self-loathing, answer the question?

 

Addressing disruption and upheaval

Something you learn early when you’re in the press freedom/free expression business is that explaining what you spend more than half your professional life doing is almost as difficult as managing the main tasks at hand.

As a branch of the wider pursuit of human rights, there tends to be some confusion over specific features of the assignment, even by others engaged in related vocations.

There is also a mistaken belief that because much of the redress relies upon enlightened legislation, activism should remain the exclusive preserve of lawyers and jurists.

The fact, though, is that too many of these professionals often display an acute unfamiliarity with human rights in the real world or recognise a role for themselves in ensuring their preservation.

This is not a backhand slap in the context of a legal fraternity here that bears the burden, imposed by a few, of a reputation based on habitual angling for lucrative state briefs and/or cannibalistic fees.

It is to suggest that despite an apparent glut in supply, there are precious few attorneys consistently occupied with the pursuit of human rights as a moral and professional obligation, and who favour the potentially lucrative status quo over costly disruption.

It has thus been left to practitioners of other crafts and directly affected communities to lead the charge. Yet, even so, there are numerous points of contention among us. Over the years, activists in other fields and I have often debated the cross-cutting nature of relations between wider social justice advocacy and freedom of expression/press freedom.

It is inconceivable that, despite some media malpractice and ill-informed commentary in the public space, a commitment to freedom of expression can ever be at variance with the universality and indivisibility of the rights of all human beings.

Yet, “freedom of expression” is mockingly parenthesised by those who find it hard to believe that in today’s world, it provides a context to almost every major social concern. Also, because it is routinely ill-defined, a loose conglomeration of all expression, including those designed to cause harm is often included.

It’s good to note the foundational Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the nature of social transactions involving those who seek, receive and impart expression. Put that way, accompanying press freedom includes not only the media, but the ability to seek out their content and to acquire it.

So, last week, I was in Costa Rica at an event entitled: “Information Literacy in the Age of Disruption” and I was there as an advocate for press freedom and free expression. Someone wondered aloud: What the hell is going on???!!!

As with today’s preamble, there is no easy way to explain this, unless you have been following what has been happening … to you … in today’s world. We are currently negotiating a process of upheaval and disruption in all facets of public life.

To focus on just one point, it is a requirement of our society’s battles with misinformation and disinformation (the former largely unwitting, the latter deliberately harmful) that we tailor our responses in a manner that is compliant with the promotion of more, not less, free expression.

Media and information literacy, or the implanting of critical thinking norms in interpreting media and other content, provides a free speech compliant approach.

Even so, Article 19 provides for exceptions. These include lawful derogations (and here is where many battles are fought) to secure the rights or reputations of others, and for the protection of national security, public order, or public health or morals.

The “public health” exception is particularly noteworthy in today’s pandemic world. Yet even this is insufficient justification to stifle scepticism – however deceptive or ill-informed. Big Tech platforms apply their own standards. We need to set our own.

Sadly, activists of the Americas assembled in San Jose last week somehow skipped the “disruption” part because there was just so much else to talk about. But I had contended that it was the most important sub-theme item of all.

The pandemic, political and economic chaos, and the end-stage dynamics of our planet have combined to disrupt everything. Here is where the rights of average everyday humans enter the picture in ways never before imagined.

If we were to err, though, it would have to be on the side of freedom and not prohibition. Media and information literacy provides a long-term avenue to achieve this. By itself, it can be as disruptive, albeit in a positive manner, as the phenomena it is meant to address.

 

The open governance challenge

(First published in the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian - October 19, 2022)

There has not been a time when I have not been sceptical about purported official commitments to open governance in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean.

Such cynicism has spanned decades and straddled political administrations of all flavours and in different Caricom territories.

The long haul, for instance, has proven me correct on almost all early points of contention regarding our Freedom of Information Act. I never thought it would go far enough.

I had once been cautioned against being overly militant on the subject because introduction of the law had presumably been guided by “good intentions.” Something was better than nothing, after all.

Today, a majority of Caricom countries either have weak or ineffective access to information laws, and almost half have none at all. The T&T Act is among the better versions, as supported by successive court judgments, but lacks what I consider to be wider social and institutional traction.

Most Caribbean laws of the kind are typified by long lists of exemptions that cover areas such as national security, foreign affairs, and “government’s deliberative processes relating to commercial business affairs,” if you know what I mean.

Accordingly, I presume, non-disclosure agreements like those attached to the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines are probably not unconnected to this latter principle. (And, by the way, T&T was not the only country in the world, as argued by some politicos, to be subjected to such a requirement.)

But should this not have been challenged as a violation of the spirit of “good intentions?” I really don’t know. But I think that situation ought to have generated far more pervasive queasiness - not rooted in disapproval of everything being proposed to manage pandemic measures as was the discredited case in some quarters here.

While public information laws are being gradually introduced in our region, inadequate as they are, the real foundational challenge is to transform the socio-cultural norms and power dynamics to conditions under which our official default becomes openness and not secrecy.

Academics who write about these matters reference an inevitable “cultural transition” in the face of a “post-bureaucratic” era, characterised by the impact of technological change on organisational structures and administration. But it’s even more than that because of the pervasive, inherent nature of the malaise.

It’s everywhere, from the smallest community organisations to big NGOs, quasi-governmental organisations, and the entire institutional organism that makes our societies move from one point to another. My shorthand for this is “our culture of secrecy.”

I belong to two Caribbean media development organisations that have campaigned for the adoption of meaningful access to information laws in all Caricom countries – the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) and the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM).

There has been very little resonance among other regional civil society organisations, some of which have assumed that such efforts are the exclusive preserve of a self-centred mass media.

This has been one of the issue’s most tragic characteristics: a belief that mainstream media are, by design, a special beneficiary of publicly held data and information which politicians and public servants believe are their exclusive property.

Contrarily, there is sufficient evidence to suggest now that concerned citizens, activists and other sectors have been among the more prolific users of the law to get to the bottom of official secrecy.

There are now expert users of such law who have yielded often spectacular results, supported by judicial systems that have generally displayed an admirable appreciation for its value.

However, both proposed cybercrime and data-protection legislation have recently been found to conspire to roll back some of the benefits. There has been a general sense that politicians and senior public servants are overly keen on ensuring this remains the case.

Very recent developments in T&T, and I am deliberately not wading extensively through those murky waters here, have also stressed the importance of disclosure in a much wider span of public affairs.

In this respect, the free press has an important but not singular role to play in unearthing the concealed and providing both a conduit and public platform for information unearthed.

Achieving more however requires deeper and expanded legislated access to official information, the protection of whistle-blowers, and systems of governance appreciative of the fact that the more people know about the things that affect them, the more inclined they are to make informed decisions and take required, appropriate action.

Such are the challenges and benefits of open governance. We’re clearly not there yet.

 

A Ramleela act of faith

Listen here:

The tenth and final act of Ramleela on a clear and cool evening at Cedar Hill, Princes Town found me scanning the magnificent amphitheatre for evident contemporary meaning beyond the epic play’s known vast and universal themes.

Thirty years ago, Derek Walcott had delivered the summation of an experience more expressive of faith than of theatre.

Yet, last Sunday, there was occasion to assess the difference, if any, between this act of grand street theatre and an unfolding reality recording alternating wins between circumstances determined to be “good” and those recorded as being “evil.”

All around the venue stood people as veritable props willingly summoned to animated attention. Seated was an expanded cast of men, women and children - applauding, cheering, gasping as barely choreographed battles and dances filled the space.

I kept my eyes on the little boys “sword fighting” in preparation for their roles as fierce warriors. Those who forgot their spears or bows raced anxiously back to parents in the stands and sped back, weapons in hand.

For Ramleela, we are all found to be witnesses to our own roles as amateur players moved by emotions theatre typically has the power to evoke largely as exogenous stimuli, and not as acts of self-belief.

Across the street from the delightful venue managed by the Cedar Hill Youth, Social and Cultural Organisation, the MP’s premises remained shuttered and unavailable for public parking while the MC delivered a hopeful welcome that remained unanswered at the end. 

In the audience of hundreds, a small contingent of guests transported by the National Trust whose support was recorded more than once by narrator/host/leader/mentor, Alvin Saltan. Graeme Suite was there to respond. Corinth/Cedar Hill Councillor Shawn Premchand announced continued solidarity.

How many, however unmoved by theologies of any kind, are swept through this - as with the rainy days before - to an understanding of dharmic conviction embracing civic duty?

Cedar Hill has played this role for over 140 years – a record that is soon to be archived at a purpose-built facility that already stands as an incrementally developing structure.

This, I thought, was community building of the kind that has as a philosophical base, what Walcott determined in his Nobel acceptance speech to be a script not fit for a cast of dramatic amateurs, but for an assemblage of believers.

This is not unlike Peter Minshall’s “Mas”, in which the purposes of belief, faith and conviction are captured through street theatre, music, motion, and defiance … if required.

Of Ramleela’s Felicity cast, Walcott concluded that “they were not actors. They had been chosen; or they themselves had chosen their roles in this sacred story … They were not amateurs but believers.”

It was at one such event at the Aranguez Savannah in the early 1930s my grandfather, who had not long sailed from China and was now witness to such a spectacle, had initiated a courtship that never died with my grandmother who was of African heritage.

Decades later, my Uncle Greg would display Grandma’s photo at the family village in Guangzhou most likely minus the Ramleela background which has roots in another continent and another time, but whose branches, leaves and fruits now straddle the globe.

Almost one hour into last Sunday’s performance, a man out of costume but not quickly determined to be out of place, stepped forward with what looked like the broken handle of a spade or fork, and struck one of the lead players in the head.

As the player fell, the cast froze as if on cue and the attacker threw the weapon on the ground, turned and walked quietly away.

There was no scuffle. No fight. No wrestling to the ground. First a sense of scripted violence. Then doubt. Then the sickening feeling that somehow things had gone dreadfully wrong, as the cast gathered around an injured man.

Saltan interjected from time to time with words of encouragement and the assurance that “this has never happened here before.”

“Evident contemporary meaning” had found space within the storyline. The action resumed after about 30 minutes as the attacker was handcuffed and led away and the ambulance left. The victim’s role now played by his son. We were later assured that the victim was “doing okay.”

As the Ravan effigy burned brightly at the very end, the crowd exited calmly to the bigger stage outside.

Commentary concerto in chapters

Chapter One – Allegro

There is so much to talk about this week, that I decided to present a few issues as separate micro “chapters.” It’s a liberty I claimed some years ago by describing the process as a series of “movements” (à la classical symphonic arrangements which typically require four discrete renditions).

But I have chosen to abandon such a rigid formulation and go for the flexibility of literature while retaining the relative orderliness classical music brings. So, this was my quick opening “allegro.”

Chapter Two - Budget Andante

This slower, slumber-inducing movement focuses on the annual budget presentation, side-talk, and “debate” which I followed from a safe distance this year. Full of hubris, privilege, and affected rage, it was difficult to extract from most of it any semblance of a distinction between separate nonsenses.

So, the prime minister - hopefully against the advice of the designated ministers purporting to embrace the marvels of an already ageing “digital revolution” – believes that “infrastructure” and “indiscipline” provide major barriers to the digitalising/virtualising of processes and public conduct, including the world of work.

For sure, he is not alone. Some captains of business and industry still apparently contemplate an elusive Millennium Bug and clearly embrace a notion of “the good old days” of office sweat shops with hapless minions at the other end of officious whips.

The storyteller would bring this chapter to a screeching stop with the summary statement: They spent a considerable amount of time saying absolutely nothing. At least not anything that will be remembered as compellingly as how hot the pepper was in the last doubles.

I would add: Read Terrence Farrell’s recent newspaper thesis on the perils of “gradualism” for one of the few sensible responses to this year’s slothful budget andante.

Chapter Three – CPL Minuet

This dance-inducing movement emerges with fluttering flags and jingoistic delight. No T&T Amazon Warriors but a promising T&T Patriots and, of course a TKR.

So, we went to the Oval in neutral colours to avoid the taunts and the absurdities. A South African bowled to a Pakistani and the catch was taken by a New Zealander and the crowd erupted with patriotic zeal!

Franchise banners and national flags wild in the wind, the way once displayed side by side in Europe, but this time minus the murderous results. Slaughter left to the field of play.

Put on repeat my 2018 melody: “If you use a national flag in the branding of any product, you can convert support into passion, affection into love, and a simple contest into a war.”

In Guyana, where one flag lay trampled some years ago, there flew in the Final the black, yellow, and green - more as political statement than cricketing wisdom. “Local content” now as forgotten as the Bangladeshi’s heroics mere days before.

How, I had asked, does Shakib prefer his pepperpot? Has Shai caught the minibus at Stabroek Market? And maybe Tahir prefers life in the marvelous Essequibo?

Enough, no more. ‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before!

Chapter Four – Genealogical Allegro

Long curious about numerous aspects of my mixed heritage, I have been engaging the activities of the T&T Genealogy Facebook Group in order to excavate specific clues about the story of my enslaved ancestors. Even in casual online exchanges, the richness of the discourse is abundant.

Being the product of Africa, India, China and Europe means there are numerous - most times previously unexplored - adventures to experience.

Last Sunday, group curator Ann Dardaine took more than one hundred of us through an audit of available resources to aid in researching our past. Excerpts are to be posted on the Group soon. Let me tell you, Dardaine’s presentation, as a researcher, provided valuable, authoritative guidance on adjoining the myriad chapters of our stories.

The Group is paired with like-minded amateur and professional practitioners in St Vincent and the Grenadines – where resides one arm of the expansive reach of the Neehall clan that first touched Caribbean soil in St Kitts in 1863 and emerged latterly as family matriarch in Curepe.

How does all this come in the final orchestral flourish? Nothing to quicken the heart more than the micro bits and pieces of our own stories. Some day I will tell you more about my Uncle Greg who journeyed to China to live and work in the very village my late grandfather left behind for his brave sea journey to our shores.

*Energetic cadenza and taper off as at the final flow at the end of a Port of Spain traffic jam or Caroni flood.

 

 

Cricket and the 12 and Under flag

Last Sunday - somewhere between the flying of the T&T flag to celebrate the wicket of Namibian cricketer, David Wiese, caught by Tim Seifert of New Zealand off the bowling of Jamaican Andre Russell and, later on, the vigorous waving of the Guyanese flag as South Africa’s Imran Tahir took the wicket of fellow countryman David Miller - came the first new edition of 12 and Under on TTT.

A juxtaposing of conjured illusion and the real. Fun in close communion with joy. It's the kind of life people of the Caribbean Sea live – child carriers of hope, and franchise cricket with nominal hosts that are entire countries.

The marketing so enthusiastically embraced that a flag was once disrespectfully trampled in disgust when it was thought that a non-national player, with ostensibly conflicted loyalties, had been less than enthusiastic during a game.

No need to recap too much about the techniques employed to stimulate interest. Fly a flag anywhere and you are certain to find interest and passion. Sympathies to entrepreneurs lacking similar opportunities at the IPL, BBL, BPL, and the PSL.

My good pal, Peter, is stumped way out of his crease each time I mention the lone national on the Saint Lucia Kings team and when he cries “big island” bias and outright t’iefin. It’s all part of the fun, though. Fly a flag, I wrote four years ago, and you change meaning. Expressed that way, a simple contest can become the bombing of Kyiv.

By 2018 when I was hauled over the coals for my observations, I had already commenced support for the “T&T Amazon Warriors”, now minus the “T&T” and habitually beaten by a team hosted in a place called “Trinbago.” At the start of the current season, I was backing the “T&T Patriots” and was targeted by fascist nationalists (lol).

So, on Sunday, having been to the QPO twice last week in “neutral colours” (I love cricket and the CPL is great fun), the flag that flew for me emerged from atop the TTT compound when 12 and Under was screened for the first time in decades.

Halfway in, I wondered whether it was intended to have members of the 12 and Under audience smile till tears came. I thought it was me alone. Then I saw that entertainment journalist, Laura, and others had been experiencing the same thing.

A little barefoot boy in his living room in front of a shaky phone sang and turned a big man’s legs into jelly (borrowing from David Rudder and twisting a bit). Another 10-year-old spoke eloquently about his introduction to the guitar and went on to perform like a seasoned pro’. Franka is sure he will beat them all.

Eighty video submissions, yes 80, had to be reviewed by a panel comprising young, accomplished performers in their own right. Nothing against the old fogeys, but it was refreshing to see that a new generation of talent has been elevated to adjudicate on our future.

Now, true, I also saw the children of the Samuel Badree and Daren Ganga academies at the stadium. They too, brought strong emotions. The commentator had been struck by the articulate responses to babyish questions. The look of hope in young eyes. In some ways, the interviews matched the finest strokes over the boundary that day.

So, here we go again, against the rub of the “lost generation” narrative. Here we go again, the explosion of creative power. In one month alone, a cascading of creative expression – pan, drama, dance, music, books, film, and the hope the young bring.

Yes, cricket too. It’s just the national flag silliness and faux “nationalism” I have a problem with.

On Sunday, we added to this the babies among us. However short on videographic production values, garish, oversized tags/badges and all, 12 and Under flew a flag on behalf of all of us. The children flew it high. I thank them. We all should.

 

 

 

 

Women and the Future of Pan

Among the numerous unspoken lessons of the Mark Loquan/Maria Nunes collaboration on the video series ‘Women in Pan’ – the first episode of which was premiered online on September 9 – is that the world of the steelpan is immeasurably linked to economic, social, and cultural development.

Note that pan aficionado/historian, Dr Kim Johnson, makes a distinction between the ‘steelpan’ as instrument and ‘pan’ as essentially a facet of human behaviour embracing love, resilience and survival.

There is a lot more to what the author of ‘The Illustrated Story of Pan’ has offered in support of the wider meaning of pan, within the context of our developmental deficits. Get the book.

But they largely coincide with my decades’ old argument that it could have been conceivable at one stage to have elevated the pan phenomenon to the centre of social, cultural and economic development. Not through jealously jingoistic possession (that window has long opened), but through extraction of unique assets.

You would have seen me mention numerous times a 1987/88 Independence Square discussion with the late (great) Keith Smith during which I wildly asserted that, over time, oil and gas will diminish in importance and value and that pan would have to come to the rescue as an additional wing of flight.

Even back then I knew I was not alone in believing that pan was the single greatest thing we did … and still do. And that we had a key before us to unlock a different kind of future.

Now, if you are inclined to believe that this only has to do with an exotic taste in music you don’t necessarily like, or represents some kind of modulated ethnic preference, read no more. This is not for you. This will infuriate you.

If you do not detect vast economic benefits by way of the availability of specialised skills, creative and intellectual property value, and the prospects for social peace, then this is not the space for you to envisage a future that’s any different from the current futile environment.

The pan aficionados may also not all agree that the story of pan, and all it represents - as expressed by Kim and others - also presents a narrative of missed economic opportunity.

And I am not speaking about the largely ornamental declaration of ‘national instrument’ status. The only time this has any value, beyond first place in line for gratuitous state financial largesse, is when ‘pan’ begins to define the essence of the development process.

Sounds fancy. But what does it mean? I would suggest that ‘pan’ in all its facets - as a model of social organisation, as a source of IP wealth, as the fountain from which unique musical capabilities (innovation, manufacturing, tuning/blending, playing, arranging, managing) flow – has all the elements of an alternative developmental path.

Somewhere in there is where ‘Women in Pan’ enters the picture. Yuko Asada, Dr Mia Gormandy-Benjamin, Vanessa Headley, Michelle Huggins-Watts, and Natasha Joseph speak frankly about the challenges of girls and women in navigating the steelband space and, in the process, narrate prospective solutions with broader application for all of society.

I took careful note of two particularly poignant moments – though there are several others. The first was Headley’s exploration of the implicit suggestion by some that as a woman arranger, “my music has a gender.”

She is insightful enough to consider the profundity of the observation, and the notion that among the obstacles to our wider development is the marginalisation of the leadership role of women in key productive sectors.

Then Gormandy-Benjamin pinpoints panyard challenges with implications for the manner in which the poor treatment of girls and women has been normalised in wider society and considered to be simply the way we conduct our business.

Yet, the transformation of the panyard over time has provided clues into how the problem can be managed at the wider level.

I remember interviewing Texan, Emily Lemmerman, seven years ago. By then, she had found relatively comfortable space even as a young, white, non-national, woman pan tuner making an annual pilgrimage to the steelpan heartland.

It all started not at Katzenjammers, or Skiffle, or at Phase II (among others), but at an orchestral percussion class in the US where, under the late (great) Ellie Mannette, her gaze shifted from the timpani to the pan.

All of this and more converged as memory and as emotion when I viewed ‘Women in Pan’ last week. There is not enough space or time to say everything that came to mind.

All I know is that this Loquan/Nunes collaboration helps us understand so much more about what should truly be important to all of us.