Caricom’s communication gap

Bear with me for this circuitous, but I think necessary, approach to addressing what is being dismissed by too many as an elementary issue regarding effective communication and the effort to manage the current barrage of challenges to Caribbean survivability.

Make no mistake about it, among the several features of the current global environment, dominated by superpower extortion and coercion, is the prospective dismantling of multilateralism and collective action as solutions to developmental needs.

Look today at where countries have long been rallying to the cause of shared resources and vision and witness the unravelling impacts. The challenges are nothing new but have intensified in recent times everywhere you turn.

Caricom’s longstanding embrace of open regionalism (maintaining a strong core while pragmatically embracing external opportunities) as a coping mechanism involving small, vulnerable states has predisposed its constituents to generally elastic approaches to changing external conditions.

In the process, and as part of the accompanying perils, anomalous global and hemispheric alignments have often proven disruptive. There is thus understandable room to agree to disagree on some things.

If it’s of any comfort, this is neither something unique to us nor new to integration movements wherever you find them. But the astute management of information flows is a constant, pervasive, mitigating requirement.

For us, in this small space and constantly confronted by questions of sustainability, there is a much more urgent need to ensure that conditions exist for sustained joint endeavour and that the populations involved are a knowledgeable part of it.

In the context of its indispensability to the region and given the importance of cohesive approaches to developmental demands, there have been successive examinations over the years of the work of the Caricom Secretariat as administrative centre of the integration project.

A few adjustments have followed, but insufficient to achieve the level of modernity, responsiveness, and leadership required under demanding circumstances.

As explained earlier, this is a lengthy introduction to the single point of effective communication as an institutional imperative indicative of the vital connection between the integration process and the people for whom it has been designed.

For example, it took a full week for the communiqué emerging from the Caricom summit in Barbados between February 19 and 21, to reach media and other interested parties.

By the time the document reached us, foreign ministers and other officials were scrambling to address several new and emerging issues. These included the Cuban medics and US visa threats on Caribbean officials, the cessation of Venezuelan oil licences, and that country’s incursion into Guyanese marine territory.

The outcome has been that some critical features of the belatedly released conference communiqué became lost in the immediate news agenda.

There has since been nothing to remind us of the continuing relevance of a few key points considered at the summit. Yes, there is a role for media and others in this and some of this has already occurred – Haiti, for example - but to focus on this responsibility would be to miss a major point.

Believe me, I am aware of the process to distil the proceedings of such meetings into a single, concise, publicly chewable document. I have been there myself.

Such an exercise must simultaneously meet the criteria of precision and timeliness and generate minimum discomfort among sensitive, self-aware hosts, participants who lead countries, their official contingents, and the numerous bureaucrats charged with ensuring that countries are not left angry, confused, or dissatisfied.

However, as has been the most recent case, the main purpose of such communication is too often lost in a maze of political and bureaucratic behaviours.

It must occur to all concerned that particularly in the current geo-political environment some principal elements of public communication need to be more urgently met.

This is why, in almost all other groupings of this kind, prompt accounts of discussions held, and decisions made are considered as almost important as the deliberations themselves, with communication teams forming an integral part of the proceedings.

Should the latter not be the case, information and communication departments become little more than post offices for dispatch. Resultingly, in the modern era, such a responsibility can be easily displaced by social media algorithm, propaganda, parochialism, and misinformation.

However, if from the start media are thought of as a needless, routinised bother and nuisance – as now seems to be the case - then all concerned should be prepared to confront the fallout.

Just a little advice.

Impunity in injury and death

Does our experience of violent crime constitute a public health emergency? Despite the cynical mockery in some quarters, it certainly does. It meets all the globally accepted criteria related to causes, effects, and possible responses.

However, since a Caricom resolution almost two years ago to employ such an approach, there appears to have been little effort anywhere to build appropriate levels of both public and official awareness to generate the required broad support.

In essence, such an approach recognises the impact of violent crime on high mortality and injury rates, negative psycho-social manifestations, and adverse implications for delivery of public healthcare.

There is a lot more to it than these principal elements, but I want us to spend some time considering the additional, and not entirely unrelated, crisis unfolding on our public roadways.

In many respects, acknowledgement of these two plagues – violent crime and road traffic mayhem - as critical challenges to national health, safety, and security is an important first step in recognising our joint responsibility for addressing them.

Among the last things people here want to be punished with are PR-nuanced statistics about reductions in the number of homicides and road traffic deaths.

Find a way of recording and acknowledging fear and you will better understand what I mean by this. People are witnessing the carnage daily. I have obviously not seen today’s reports yet but turn the pages of this very newspaper and you will understand what I mean.

There are people deciding not to go about what is expected to be their normal business because of the fear generated by the prevalence of both forms of violence, property loss, injury, and death.

In the process, public participation in defying the instinct to surrender is diminished.

In much the same way there are so many of us who know at least one person who has been affected by crime in its numerous manifestations, we can also point to a friend, relative, colleague, community member, or other acquaintance who has witnessed or been the victim of a horrible road experience.

Don’t look at the big turnouts at seasonal events alone to argue against these observations. They provide evidence of a resolve not to yield to pervasive anxieties about the prospect of harm and are not outright dismissal of pervasive realities and risks.

This is also not to point fingers at the poor policing of violent crimes and traffic laws, because the sustenance of fear is a joint enterprise that goes beyond the role of a single underlying factor. The police enter the picture rather late in the process of decay.

However, this is not to take them off the hook. People predisposed to violent or reckless behaviour thrive in an environment under which they are more likely than not to escape untouched (if they don’t suffer injury or death in the process), as opposed to being promptly intercepted, properly judged, and punished if responsible.

There is also the near complete absence of pre-emptive policing measures as contemplated by advocates of so-called “broken windows” theory (with all due provisos regarding its non-discriminatory implementation). For this, it is proposed that early symptoms of disorder in the form of ostensibly benign violations (Littering? Noise pollution? Public peeing?)  should be summarily nipped in the bud. (Yes, “nipped.”)

So, no objection from me regarding the prompt and widespread ticketing of drivers for everything from unlawful window tints to failed sobriety tests. No, there aren’t “more important things they should be spending their time and energy on.” If the authorities can’t meet their elementary mandates, then what’s the sense?

Ditto actions to address breaches of the public peace. I have been following the futile public complaints of one community regarding the loud noise generated by a single bar in the area. The police have a role to play outside of the limited actions related to the country’s Noise Pollution Rules. Hint: see what the Summary Offences Act [Chapter 11:02] says about “public nuisance.”

No, the amorphous “culture of noise” is a broken window to be repaired and the people who routinely break it need to be held responsible.

Even so, don’t get me wrong. A “solution” to the current mayhem is thus more than addressing a clearly deficient police response. While “terrorism” might be an appropriate metaphor and legislative stimulant it does nothing to address some fundamentals.

Impunity through ineffective policing bears tragic fruit elusive even of declared states of public emergency. Nowadays, we are experiencing its bitter taste.

Corruption chaff in the wind

Rather unsurprisingly, last week’s release of the 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) has gained very little traction in the public domain.

The report looks substantially at how corrupt public sector practices “undermine efforts to address the climate crisis, disrupt environmental sustainability, and hinder equitable progress toward a more sustainable future.”

In CPI 2024, Trinidad and Tobago scored 41 and was ranked 82nd of the 180 countries. The global average was 43 and our score in 2023 was 42. The higher the score, the “cleaner” the country. 

As far as I have been able to see, both on legacy and social media, there has been no serious engagement of some of the key assertions of this report which attempts to record perceptions by experts and businesspeople about the prevalence of corrupt practices globally, using 13 independent data sets from agencies such as the World Bank.

I think there are several reasons for the apparent indifference. And it’s not that I think there is a lack of general concern. As we witnessed last week, the subject was sensationally and absurdly invoked as part of a claim that the ethnic character of perceived chronic offenders is linked to strategies to gain political advantage.

And this excited so many of us that social media platforms remained lit and alive on the matter even through the Carnival fetes and constituency screening processes.

However, such a vulgar assessment of the corruption reality disregards the complex nature of the challenge and does not encourage engagement of the complex nature of what we confront.

There is nothing in the claim, for instance, that expresses a serious concern that corruption in all its manifestations - from the petty to the administrative to the grand corruption to which newspaper headlines are attracted – brings with it numerous threats to urgent developmental needs.

Little has been inserted in the public space to draw attention to the numerous economic, social, political, and environmental impacts.

Now, the latter (largely ignored) concern about the natural environment brings us back to the 2024 CPI and its concern about the climate crisis.

It is true, among other things, that the immediate lack of attention owes somewhat to the current heavy preoccupation with the ins and outs of the Carnival and election seasons – if you’re able to tell the difference.  

The public agenda is also justifiably, and simultaneously, preoccupied with the fact that the State of Emergency is not achieving the goals as set out in the core justification namely: to address anticipated heightened criminal activity involving high-power weapons and stimulated by “retaliatory acts between gangs.”

Who really wants to hear about the dissecting of systemic corruption and its impact on development at this time?

Additionally, and I think most importantly, the attempt by the Transparency folks to locate an intersection between corruption and the climate crisis comes up against several compelling phenomena.

These include the growing role of political anti-science. This is just a fancy way of saying that many political actors, both here and abroad, aren’t entirely convinced that human conduct plays as significant a role in changing climate conditions as is being proposed by most of the world’s leading scientists.

The climate crisis has thus been thrown by many in a public bin wherein also reside the remnants of the Covid-19 pandemic and actions to address it, lunar landings, universal human rights, and assertions such as the spherical nature of planet Earth.

There is a virtual global manifesto being authored to mobilise public action against scientific thought and action. So, any attempt to nuance the corruption case against the backdrop of challenged climate-related actions, is doomed to elude serious attention in some important quarters.

That said, in what I consider to be a major concession by the CPI authors, there is the assertion that even as some countries have impressive scores on the Index, there are practices related to the “washing” of corrupt money permitted with impunity in such places.

There is the accompanying question of the disproportionate, punitive emphasis on the practices of small economies such as ours when larger, wealthier countries with high CPIs are efficient facilitators of international corruption but are readily permitted to have their way. Marla Dukharan’s campaign for a global review of tax havens eloquently makes the point.

What, by way of political commentary, last week and over the weekend, explored these dimensions of the corruption question? There has been much chaff in the wind and little to indicate seriousness on these matters. We won’t reach too far with that.

 

A Question of Shelter

The recent demolition of squatter homes in Arima was bound to invoke mixed but strong feelings among those of us who have been following this recurring subject over the years.

The offer by the Sou Sou Lands Co-operative Society to assist in post facto relocation was also likely to generate even more intense emotions. For here was a once highly touted national solution in search of a durable, facilitative policy and regulatory environment.

From the early introduction of the “sou-sou” approach to the land and housing challenges of T&T in the 1980s, through its eventual burial under substantial political rubble, there has always been a concern by some (not many) that the time would come when amorphous aspirations to recognise a “right to adequate housing and shelter” would be exposed as the stuff of unrealistic, fanciful expectation.

Indeed, its place among the major components of economic, social, and cultural rights renders such a commitment a key part of developmental agendas wherever they are promoted and pursued. Yet, official policy is rarely matched by real action, and political narratives are routinely noted for their delusion or silence on this.

This goes far beyond concerns about abiding by the rules. It strikes at the heart of whether a duty of care is or is not embedded as a vital part of how we do business in this town.

It is clear to me that current efforts to deliver on this commitment, through a combination of state-constructed housing and land leases, together with open market forces, do not take several important factors into consideration.

Public initiatives are either woefully inadequate, bureaucratically inaccessible, conducive to corruption, and conducted in an unaccommodating climate. In the breach, families who cannot make the financial grade on the open market, and opt for the other available route, run the risk of evacuation with big guns trained on them.

Now, none of this is meant to endorse law-breaking with impunity. There are people who believe that, with some political posturing as a buffer, they can get away with wrongdoing. We are also all aware of the fact that in numerous instances, market speculation on and sale of state lands by cynical criminals boldly prevail.

This is among the wilful violations for which the force of the state can be acceptably applied … upon the perpetrators - with due consideration in the case of unsuspecting victims who are ignorant of the cautions of caveat emptor (let the buyer beware).

That said, even applicable laws acknowledge a favourable prerogative of the state. For instance, certificates of comfort are conditionally permitted in selected instances. But, in all this, people need to have knowledge of and confidence in the system.

The fact that it so often reaches the point of forcible expulsion and the destruction of homes also suggests to me that a measure of vigilance by authorities and the application of pre-emptive measures are disturbingly absent factors.

Amazingly, information released by the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) on the Arima site suggests there was access to construction data/images as far back as 2014 and 2018. Certainly, such monitoring mechanisms (satellite imagery mainly) could have detected work underway on some structures in recent months. Where was the action to ensure things did not reach the stage they eventually did?

I refuse to believe that people are generally comfortable, as is often suggested by some, with occupying domestic spaces over which there is such a high level of insecurity that they can be forcibly expelled. On this matter, people would much prefer, I am certain, to do things the proper way.

The sou-sou lands alternative offered an approach that acknowledged limited financial resources, pervasive unfamiliarity with cumbersome processes to get things done, and the acceptability of incremental development of the domestic space. It also revived interest in longstanding “gayap” practices to optimise the employment of community resources.

It was also meant, importantly, to be a pre-emptive intervention to extinguish the lure of lawlessness. I remember well the PR surrounding the projects. Did such an approach not work? Where are its main proponents today? Weren’t they close to centres of political power and influence?

Abandonment of such measures is among the reasons why the required trust in both the people and processes to meet our shelter needs is in massive deficit. Government boots and heavy artillery appear to be a preferred method. In the final analysis that’s guaranteed not to get the job done.

Pan vibes and hope

A good friend and valued colleague of mine asked me last Sunday why there isn’t more of a “vibe” in the Grand Stand of the Queen’s Park Savannah between Panorama performances.

I took this to mean that between the magnificent performances we were witnessing at Junior Panorama, there should have perhaps been loud party music, dancing, shouting across the aisles, and half-drunk groups conjuring up iron sections to incite riotous jams.

Then, on Monday, a fellow Caribbean journalist asked about the state of my (these days afflicted) legs after all the “wining down” at the show.

I am no prude, and I have grown to appreciate the revelry that occurs over in the North Stand and elsewhere in the vicinity (I shall not call its name) between performances. I seriously don’t mind - though I think a large, soundless screen on Chacachacare is more appropriate for those who go to party rather than to listen carefully to pan.

In all my 45 plus years of following the competitions and other steelpan shows, I have been in such company just once. Puke avoidance and paramedical assistance to the intoxicated are not my idea of fun.

And, yes, I get up to stretch my legs between performances and repeated playing of the various tunes of choice does help me flex even more.

Renegades Youth show their skills on stage (WG photo)

But I firmly believe I belong to a growing (not diminishing) category of people who go to pan shows for the pan and nothing but the pan – the greatest thing we do in all of T&T. My old Panorama liming partner, the late George John, would entertain not even the most hushed tones during performances.

A passing nutsman would earn the stare of agonising death, and the couple gossiping behind us as bands played would hear an untraceable “Shhhhh!!!” Whether on duty or not, we’d walk with notebooks scribbling points such as “too much banging of the pans”, “who but the audience is seeing the conductor?”, “that frontline tenor is shadowing”, and all the stuff I still do.

So, back to Franka. The music was loud when I responded – “The London Philharmonic. Do nutsmen pass by shouting ‘salt and fresh’ during performances?” The reference was appropriate for my once UK-based friend. She had surely been to the Barbican Centre and the Royal Festival Hall – and I am not at all saying what happens on stage there is superior to what we have on offer, but that there is clear respect for what is on show.

What I mean is that the evolving nature of the steelpan and what it is offering requires a greater level of regard even as it allows us to flex as Trinis between performances. I confessed to Desiree Myers of Invaders last Sunday that her band’s performance squeezed the season’s first pan tears from me.

Much of this is owing to my belief that the steelpan is the single most important asset of ours. I have also developed an appreciation for the value of competitions as one of the several activities to boost the durable, wider reach of the music. I did not always think so and it remains subject to the kind of change I recognise, as expressed below.

The fact is pan is greater than the competitions and even the national body which oversees its state and corporate assisted growth and development. It is a model for social development and a prospective, yet under-recognised, asset for economic diversification and prosperity.

And, if you think all of this today is to avoid confronting current dystopian descent home and abroad, think about what the instrument is bringing to us at this time. For close to 12 hours last Sunday, many (not all) of us were witnessing the great hope our young people are bringing to the table.

What is happening in pan is respectful of diversity, egalitarian in nature, and mindful of creative imagination as a resource of immeasurable value. We need to remain awake to this.

Additionally, I think there should be more about the (perhaps unprecedented) three ties in the 2025 Under 21 Final. Four bands tied for second, three for eighth, and two for eleventh.

Such tight placings can be interpreted to be implicitly flagging the true significance of the encounters as more than a mere competition. Ditto the other categories – wait till the Medium and Large bands come along to defy a notion of “judging.”

Once again, and through our children, hope has been laid on our tables. We ignore such an offering at our collective peril.

 

Things That Matter

With so much going on, including the global reach of tyranny, it becomes difficult to pin down individual, urgent needs for public attention employing the limited space of a newspaper column. But, as has increasingly become the case, life in T&T tugs you back on direct course … sometimes quite brutally.

For instance, an early morning message from a relative last Monday reminded me of the degree to which repeated political campaign claims can be distanced from lived realities.

Phone in hand at 3 in the morning, lying on her side on the dry half of a narrow urine-soaked hospital gurney, she wrote painfully in broken sentences: “Nightmare urine bag leaking on floor and bed. stomach bag never changed, or anyone ask if I hungry.”

Yes, dear minister, “media people” will see the broken urine bag and wet bed long before a freshly painted, reconstructed wall or building. So, don’t hold your breath for apologies or lengthy explanations. Vigilance casts wide, not narrow eyes. We consider ourselves to have failed if an entire story has not been told —fresh walls and unattended broken urine bags included.

The day before that text, I was told by a chronically and seriously ill friend that she had been turned away from the A&E of the same public hospital because prior blood pressure readings, taken by another state health institution of between 208/134 and 214/147, weren’t high enough for admission and treatment.

These episodes are highlighted at the top of today’s dispatch only because they constitute matters of life and death. But the malaise extends across the vast spectrum of services over which there is both administrative and political oversight.

It is not that some things have not improved. For instance, the inhumanity of some official procedures has been successfully addressed with the help of diligent public servants. Yet, there is so much that can be improved through the intervention of political vision aided by administrative competence and commitment in the vast majority of other areas.

I am not going to apologise for raising the “digital transformation” story for the umpteenth time here. Fellow media correspondent, Mark Lyndersay, who is far more competent and perhaps even more passionate on the subject than I, has said almost everything about the enormous gap between stated intention and current reality.

No, minister, at the current rate and under prevailing circumstances, there is no possibility of leapfrogging into what, for many countries, is already the present but which, for us, remains the seemingly distant future. And, yes, we know and understand the limitations; not the least being an unenthusiastic public service engine room. But what now passes as digital gains are completely unimpressive micro-steps.

I have, in this respect, developed the bad, somewhat self-destructive habit of taking note of the working environments of the bureaucratic big-wigs—some of whom reminisce boastfully on the smell of paper and ink. The politicians awkwardly and incompetently employing social media and AI as supposed image-enhancing aids. The public service processes across three and four steps that can easily and logically be one.

Now, about that small pothole along the Southern Main Road in Curepe opposite the betting place. That one that has been causing drivers to veer marginally into oncoming traffic. I wrote about it exactly one year ago. It’s not a large or significant pothole. Nothing for an MP or local government councillor to rage over. A small one left behind years ago following what might have been the laying of water pipes.

Somebody had clearly screwed up and another declared: “leave dat so.” Because “leave dat jess so” is how we do business around here.

It has apparently not been large enough for political points but has been used by people like me as an indication of how things work in this place. One of these late nights or early mornings, we will read or hear about the car proceeding north along the Southern Main Road in Curepe whose driver “lost control” and ran into an oncoming vehicle with tragic results.

So, today is not about global threats to enlightened progress spanning decades. It’s not about the climate crisis upon us. It’s not about election shenanigans and bacchanal. Neither does it sound the usual alarms about democratic relapses. It is about high blood pressure, urine on a hospital gurney, idle digital tools, and a small hole on the main road.

It’s about some of the many things that really matter at the end of the day.

The High Cost of Koochoor

Someone noted recently that this space has apparently chosen to “studiously” avoid the pre-elections goings-on that have so strongly captured public attention over recent weeks.

Believe me, this was deliberated but never intended to diminish the significance of what is before us at this time. It is just that I think we need to acknowledge the high cost of bacchanal.

Anyway, there has been a notice of resignation by the Prime Minister, the awkwardly transacted (however statutorily correct) assigning of a successor, muted convulsions, and a cognitive dissonance not routinely witnessed outside the hushed corridors and chambers of the ruling party.

The latter observation is not at all unprecedented. There were notable episodes over the years including late PM Dr Eric Williams’ 1973 threat to resign; the presidential appointment of PM George Chambers in 1981 when Dr Williams passed; more than one episode involving Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and late PM Patrick Manning, and Dr Rowley’s dramatic election as political leader of the PNM in 2010. There are more instances that could have been mentioned here.

Suffice it to say there have been equally, if not more, tantalising developments within the Opposition UNC from the very start in 1989 and characterised since then by defections and re-absorptions, alignments and re-alignments; brittle institutional arrangements, splintering (cue the launch of Hulsie Bhaggan’s MUP in 1995); Ramesh Lawrence-Maharaj’s Team Unity of 2001; the defections of Gillian Lucky and Fuad Khan in 2005; the launch of the COP in 2006; the emergence of political leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar following internal elections in 2010, and numerous other episodes.

Satisfied? Much of this has been reflected upon right here over the years. Additionally, there are very few current developments disassociated from the political habits of these two organisations spanning many years – the PNM being the more durable, stable, and set in its ways (the transformative one-person-one-vote reform notwithstanding).

However, what I believe is truly important at this time is the unfolding of political behaviour by an electorate that is ageing, besieged by a multiplicity of challenges that have accompanied a modern era dominated by new technologies and social media, people undergoing the pangs of changing belief systems, and many captivated by a perception that the distribution of real power and influence has shifted in new and different directions.

There are regularly quoted academics better known for expression of personal preference and guesstimates who ought to be otherwise busying themselves dissecting such matters and determining empirical bases for some of their steadfast assertions. My media colleagues need to undertake far more pointed interrogations of the numerous claims.

Fact-checkers often need to themselves be fact-checked. My perennial gripe has been concerned with the degree to which elections related shenanigans have displaced actual development concerns.

As a consequence, things such as the process to select candidates appears to supersede, by a wide margin, questions regarding a clear commitment to and agenda for securing the country’s future.

This is much more than shibboleths focused on “crime” and “the economy” – as indispensable as they as flags for immediate concern. Policing (cue a State of Emergency to strengthen this approach) is consequently offered as a solution to the problem of “crime”, and views on “the economy” conveniently aggregate overly loose and underdeveloped notions of “diversification”.

Yes, there is a need to reduce incompetence and corruption in the police service, and to consider future directions for the economy but what, specifically and incisively explained, is on offer in 2025?

Can Elections 2025 offer pathways for decision-making by the electorate that can take us away from what appears to be a terminally sorry pass? What specifically is on offer to suggest this may or may not be the case?

Yeah. Yeah. Whosoever wins will deal with these things when they return/get there. In the meantime, there remain concerns about modernisation of both the private and public sectors (read digitalisation of processes etc.); deeper integration of human rights as pillars of development (note migrant rights, LGBT+ rights, reproductive rights; the rights of the child); nutrition security; climate crisis measures; and enlightened human resource development exploitative of the vast potential of our youth.

Some of this is already there in available literature. This includes the far too easily trashed (and widely unread) Vision 2020 document, published in 2005, and numerous other clinical examinations by others. But mention this in the throes of political tumult and koochoor nuh and prepare yourself for the bin with a party brand or some other label implanted on your backside.