Wednesday, 21 May 2025

Our crowded agenda

Though Friday’s ceremonial opening of parliament simply sounds the opening whistle to signal the start of a new session, there is every indication that the forthcoming legislative agenda has the potential to keep members intensely engaged – especially if we were to take seriously the announced transition of election “minifestoes” to official policy.

It is however also true that not every UNC campaign wish means an amended law or a new one. Here are three issues of legislative relevance that should not needlessly cram the parliamentary schedule.

For example, enforcement of the Noise Pollution Control Rules under the Environmental Management Act, more diligent enforcement of the “public nuisance” feature of the Summary Offences Act, and resurrection of the Explosives (Prohibition of Scratch Bombs) Order 2018 can tell us you are serious about addressing harmful, disruptive noise.

What is needed here is stringent application of existing laws and regulations. Yes, there can be some tweaking here and there, but we really have enough ammo to deal with this.

This would leave space for addressing touchier issues such as the striking anomaly of equal opportunity legislation which okays discrimination against people based on “sexual preference or orientation.” Employers, landlords, schools, and service providers cannot be prosecuted and punished on such grounds under this law.

It is my understanding that a suitable amendment is already available, and groups such as CAISO, Pride TT and others have people with the knowledge and expertise to lend a hand in this matter. So, easy-peasy, little time and effort is needed to get this one done.

Then comes the more vexing, complicated issue of mismanagement in the handling of immigration matters. Hopefully, minister Alexander has busied himself with the minute details regarding administrative tardiness in this hugely important area, and the attorney general is aware of the relevant international human rights landscape.

For example, what could possibly take decades to manage residency petitions?  Why has the processing of asylum-seekers here not been guided by proper refugee policy and is not fully compliant with international law?

On the latter point, the UNC has had much to say in recent times, following early ill-advised resistance. Hopefully, we will not follow the example of others who have chosen to openly ignore some basic principles of international law associated with accommodating people claiming to escape oppressive conditions in their home countries.

Of the 37,906 refugees and asylum-seekers registered by the UNHCR in T&T, more than 86% are from Venezuela. The other 14%, from over 38 countries over the years, also require attention. Let’s not forget them.

The figure of 100,000 undocumented immigrants - snatched out of thin, speculative air by numerous commentators and even some learned researchers - may or may not be accurate. Not all arrivals have registered. But it has become fashionable to promote negative narratives regarding the ubiquitous presence of Venezuelans here by employing such guesstimates and the consequential reality of an “invasion” or unmanageable “influx.”

There is also the fact that close to 1,400 children have been born to registered asylum-seekers and refugees in T&T since 2018/2019. As far as I am aware, we are one of those countries in which unconditional “birthright citizenship” (jus soli) is observed.  The reluctance to integrate these children into our school system has been one of the gross injustices of recent years.

Last year, the parents of only 148 children applied to attend public school and just 60 were accommodated. This is one campaign promise a la minifesto - “the integration of Venezuelan migrants” - that also does not require too much parliamentary time to implement.

It is, however, a multifaceted imperative that sees several arms of government becoming simultaneously engaged.

This includes immigration, health, education, social services and others. For those with “jus soli” status, our clever legal fraternity must surely be engaged in preparing pathways for application of the rights of these children, if not under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

There are also thousands of adult Venezuelans currently in nervous possession of expired permits hoping to benefit from a new, more enlightened, regulatory regime.

These are only three of the burning issues that can be addressed within a relatively short period of time and are mostly in keeping with the spirit of election campaign promises/declarations.

While the public wish list is much longer than these three areas, the advantage of newness should be applied to get them out of the way quickly.

Friday, 16 May 2025

The governments we want

First published in the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian on May 16, 2018

Having covered and observed Caribbean elections over several decades (and even participated in one 37 years ago as a Tapia candidate), I must say I have always wondered why so many political contestants are eventually proven to either be wholly incompetent or hopelessly dishonest and corrupt.

Don’t get me wrong. I will never suggest that there aren’t many honourable, decent and skillful people who offer themselves for political office … and win. In fact, I have often wondered what it would have been like to have brought some of our finest office-holders together under national unity administrations throughout the Caribbean to help fix our broken societies.

I would even risk the prima facie naïve suggestion that the best our political parties have had to offer over the years could have collectively head-off some of the mess we are now faced with.

But then, politics is all about the calibration of power dynamics. There need to be wholesome forces competing against each other to bring about a sense of balance and restraint against excesses – sometimes even when the contestation is illusory.

I suppose the social scientists would argue that this is the nature of so-called “western democratic values” and why totalitarian experiments have all failed – as indeed they have – because the political space required to pit ideas against each other is a requirement of societies that crave democracy and the freedom it portends.

Only last year, a paper written by Josh Halberstam, Richard Öhberg, Daniele Paserman, Mikael Persson, Martín Rossi and Juan Vargas for the US National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) attempted to answer the question: Who becomes a politician?

You know, I can’t remember what led to the search that unearthed the paper, but what I found – albeit in an almost completely different context, since they used Sweden as the political laboratory – was that there are real questions Caribbean people need to seek answers to if we are to rise above chronically poor political performance.

For example. Can our democracies attract competent leaders, while attaining broad representation? The writers of the NBER paper point to economic models which suggest that “free-riding incentives and lower opportunity costs give the less competent a comparative advantage at entering political life.”

In T&T, we would perhaps call this the “eat-ah-food” phenomenon – otherwise unaccomplished individuals with no real skills or abilities to talk about, catapulted onto the national stage with huge assignments and responsibilities, and encouraged to play the part because of the perks of office. In the wrestling ring of politics, it could perhaps be identified as “a reverse Maslow.”

Then comes the assertion that if the better endowed (intellectually and financially) “validating” elites - to abuse Lloyd Best’s unavoidable expression - are selected on the basis of perceived competence and absence of the “eat-ah-food” complex, there is more likely than not to be unevenness in the actual representation of the population.

In our context, though, it is also conceivable that both the intellectually and financially well-endowed and positioned may prove to be entirely incompetent. In T&T and among our Caribbean neighbours there are enough examples of where this has turned out to be the case.

This is why though we may wish not to give expression to this conundrum constitutionally, there perhaps needs to be, in the fashioning of our political organisations, more studious examination of the process of political selection. Such a re-examination would consider the balancing of the concept of “broad” representation against the requirement to have the best human resources at the wheel.

One huge component of all of this, of course, is the requirement of greater political education - a task none of our current political organisations has been able to sustain and one the formal education system has failed to effectively deliver.

Because our political parties are mainly dedicated campaign outfits, there appears to be little will or ability to expand their functionality in this important area.

So, while we wait, we not only get the governments we deserve, we sometimes regretfully get the ones we want.

Wednesday, 14 May 2025

Urgent business

Take it from me. Post-election shenanigans, tribal conflict, internecine warfare, boastfulness, regret, grossly dishonest promises, jockeying for position and favour, and acts of shamelessly unveiled partisanship by clever pretenders will all eventually end or subside considerably.

Getting down to business, as we have learned over the years, is best realised sooner rather than later and such awareness has grown, albeit slowly, to become a part of our evolving political culture.

You see, there have been times when extreme urgency, following encroaching complacency, abruptly entered the picture to dampen overflowing, but fleeting exuberance.

In 1981, George Chambers declared the fete over and it was time to get back to work. Five years later, financial stringency entered the routine lexicon of governance forever. Through the years, declarations on the state of treasury holdings have accordingly become a mandatory feature of newness.

Today, urgency associated with national well-being has offered up fiscal menus associated with overdrafts, borrowings, raids on rainy-day savings, dampers on state and private spending, and the dreadful thought that there might be assets suitable for disposal.

“Fixing” denotes a now familiar refrain of disrepair – in our case chronic and systemic – and the stuff of joint enterprise. Yep, “all ah we”, suggesting serious challenges against hope. Because I pay close attention to our youth, I can tell you that hope is a quality in short, as opposed to abundant, supply.

It also provides little comfort that the embrace of new solutions to address a deficit in confidence has not been meaningfully prescribed. This space has harped on just one area of forsaken opportunity (and there are many) – the digital reality.

Our young people, as digital natives, have recognised the negligence. And this is not only about generative AI which is essentially a tool made available by the timeless, spaceless character of digital spaces, no more than the way hammers and screwdrivers are critical to activities at a construction site.

What is even more important is the proposed architecture and its relationship with lived and natural environments. There are real experts in this sort of thing who can extend the metaphor.

That T&T lags behind so many, of like developmental status, on this question suggests that the same urgency attached to diagnoses of poor economic conditions is not being assigned to key components of serious solutions.

We shall see, in due course, whether this point is being understood. For instance, it is built into the question of remote work (currently lost in puerile public discourse), together with concerns about things like the “ease of doing business” and the conduct of routine citizen transactions.

Mind you, there is messaging in this not only for state systems but in the way the private sector also does its business. True, personal experience does not the entire story tell, but poll friends and family and colleagues and listen for yourself.

We have simply not been getting this right. And I am concerned that there is a level of demotivation that’s happening among our young people born into the digital age. And they are protesting through withdrawal as they, and the tools they use, are presented as problems and not as solutions.

“How does it feel to be a problem” W.E.B. Du Bois once memorably asked.

I have contended here before that while the more seasoned folk ought to be there to provide context and memory, the drive to achieve “digital transformation” should be in the hands of the under-40s.

There are numerous indicators of success or failure in our five-year tranches, but I propose to maintain vigilance over this one. Yes, there are urgent, immediate needs that require rather rare, enlightened engagement, but I know that I am not alone in keeping an eye on this.

The last time I left this country, I was asked to complete a silly little form with an additional, forgotten field I wrote by hand, in crapaud foot, at the back. When I returned, there was no room on the other form for the full name of my country. I lost yet another pen to a fellow traveler, and half the flight forgot to sign the back of the same form for customs.

I once asked an officer what eventually happens to these forms. Yes, I’m done here. I gone oui.

 

Wednesday, 7 May 2025

Election Money

Among the noteworthy developments arising out of last week’s General Election, and the run-up to it, is the fact that despite the prior fuss over the need for independent, international monitoring of the process, very little has since been said about the work of two observer missions in the country.

Such a shortcoming has been observable across the political spectrum in the post-election phase. Instead, “we won” and “we lost” have been the two dominant narratives signified by cheers and tears for which first-past-the-post electoral arrangements are widely known.

The numerous passionate public appeals, correspondence, memoranda, and meetings to ensure external monitoring now seem like distant echoes in a fast-flowing tributary of public commentary and contemplation.

First, the frantic calls met by the open resistance of those in charge, then acceptance and muted surrender, to public slander on the presumed primordial instincts of a Caribbean team.

Then emerged the support of the 56-member Commonwealth – still, to some, not representative of “international” scrutiny, as if a team from Malta, Dominica, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Maldives, and Guyana, with support from a UK-based Secretariat had not met the basic features of geographical spread.

A larger 12-member Caricom group comprising electoral officials and experts from eight countries did concurrent work. And, by the way, the government of T&T was not responsible for financing these activities.

The focus post-election, so far, has been almost exclusively on the constituting of a new political administration, attending to internal convulsions, and the challenge of making good on extravagant promises.

In the process, barely concealed partisan posturing has turned to both open revulsion and gratuitous applause - the agenda for change consequently located along a spectrum of the impossible and the eminently possible.

Thankfully, there are now independent experts, with no distinguishable dogs in the recently completed race, to dissect the details with data and evidence.

Meanwhile, as has been the case in the past, international observers have come, they’re seen, and they have reported (at least preliminarily) with some reminders and guidance on getting things right the next time around.

I need to remind us of at least three issues placed on the table for consideration by the Caricom Observer team of 2020 which closely align with the observations of the Commonwealth team of 2015, and again in 2025.

These include campaign finance reform, digital transformation in matters related to elections, and accessibility issues regarding the elderly and disabled.

It should not have taken COG Chair, Evarist Bartolo of Malta to remind us of the 10-year-old recommendation to “prioritise this process” of electoral campaign finance reform.

For, even at that time, the issue was nothing new to us. The first report of a Joint Select Committee (JSC) appointed in November 2014 to “propose a legislative framework to govern the financing of election campaigns … ” had already been submitted in 2015.

Three elected MPs of 2025, on both sides of the House, are among the signatories to that 10-year-old report which proposed, among other things: “limits on private campaign financing of political parties and candidates in order to promote fair competition during elections and reduce incentives for corruption and undue influence in politics.”

The issue gained traction for some time, including consideration of an appropriate “independent and professional regulatory body” to monitor and consider sanctions for breaches.

The EBC was favourably considered by the JSC, and an amendment to the Representation of the People Act was tabled in parliament for debate in 2020. It included the idea of a National Election Campaign Fund, in part to address the question of private funding and the potential for the negative impacts identified by the 2015 JSC report.

It was suggested that most major actors were supportive of the kinds of reforms that would not currently have us in a state of confusion regarding the identities of “financiers” of a brief but intense election campaign with visible spend in the millions and millions of dollars.

I have suggested in the past that the main beneficiaries of campaign spend should also be among the entities for which mandatory disclosure is a requirement. These include both private and state media – who almost all earn substantial revenues from electoral campaigns.

Meanwhile, we have political parties that built their campaigns around the notion of transparency and accountability – key attributes of responsible governance – and who now must give legislative teeth to their stated commitment to such values.

It should not require impartial international monitors to remind us of this. It should happen as a natural outcome of political intent expressed on the political platform. Let’s see how that goes.


Wednesday, 30 April 2025

Our Wounded Civilisations

The gracious pronouncements of party leaders Dr Keith Rowley and Kamla Persad-Bissessar in defeat and in victory respectively Monday night was a welcome, comforting experience at the end of a brief but bruising election campaign.

Even so, the injuries sustained, even by celebrants, will require that we pay much closer attention to the way we engage such contests in the future.

A few years ago, I met a woman during a Caribbean assignment. She was a divorcee with two adult children resulting from a particularly abusive marriage. She told me that several times after being attacked, she awoke in a hospital bed.

There were short-term and lasting physical and emotional injuries – some of them evident in the tone and manner of her narrative and behaviour, and in visible features of her physical appearance.

Throughout the period of abuse there was little to suggest that things had gone badly wrong. Everybody, including the attacker and child witnesses, were putting on a pretty good show.

The conversation I had with that person came to mind last week when a colleague said it appeared that every time we have an election in T&T a period of emotional “recovery” is required, even by the declared winners.

I used the word “convalescence.” Not the paralysing type that brings silence and inaction, but of the variety that generates a facade of normalcy. I thought, for example, of the numbness expected to greet racist remarks, insults, disinformation, defamation, and other forms of normalised verbal violence.

In other Caribbean territories I know well, emotional cover is also required against the threat and experience of actual physical violence. Instances of this are few and far between here, but there is professional guidance that does not make a sharp distinction between the body and the mind.

To reinforce this, my friend recommended I read The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk. It’s not my kind of reading so I reluctantly listened to one portion of the audio version.

The writer’s basic assertion is that “trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust.”

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) also appears to have collective, communal characteristics, in the sense that populations undergo processes of denial, guilt, and pain while putting on a splendid show in the face of internal convulsions – much like the wounded lady.

We occupy a Caribbean space in which the injured abound. For instance, psycho-social wounds persist over 40 years after the fall of the People’s Revolutionary Government in Grenada. Who can also deny that Jamaica’s political violence between 1970 and 1980 (more than 800 people were killed in the 1980 elections) has not left scars requiring continued treatment?

Guyana’s decades-long political trauma spanning the late 1950s and into the 1980s remains evident in the tenor of the political discourse and actions of 2025. There are open wounds left unattended after many years. Examine closely, for example, current convulsions in Tuschen and Georgetown. Any “recovery” clearly remains incomplete.

In T&T, we can begin the comparisons years before 1970 and 1990, but much has already been said about the hangovers from those dramatic events that remain today.

We have not had the death and physical traumas of some of our neighbours, but our minds and therefore our bodies, have kept the score. At election time, some politicians and their supporters ensure the scoreboard keeps ticking.

Head of the Council for Responsible Political Behaviour, Dr Bishnu Ragoonath recently reported on  “racially charged and derogatory language, character attacks, excessive negative campaigning, and the removal or defacement of opponents’ campaign materials” when he described breaches of its code during campaign 2025.

This is the limit of the Council’s responsibilities, much like the requirements of the Sixth Schedule to the Representation of the People’s Act which prescribes a Code of Conduct for Political Parties to “regulate the behaviour of members and office holders of political parties, aspiring candidates, candidates and their supporters, promote good governance and eradicate political malpractices.”

It is not within the scope of either the Council, which operates as an institutional check on political behaviour, or the Code to monitor psycho-social impacts. That’s our brief as citizens.

It is however the responsibility of the main political actors who provide the ammunition and triggers that routinely take us to the A&E each time we are required to engage electoral decision-making. This year has been no exception. We must endeavour to put an end to this. Monday night signalled some promise – through both cheers and tears.

Friday, 25 April 2025

The Media Challenge

Last Wednesday, the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) convened a virtual “conversation” on regional media coverage of elections. The panellists included Dr Steve Surujbally, a former chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) who has served on election observer missions all over the world.

Alongside Dr Surujbally was decorated Jamaican journalist, elections observer and former Editor-in-Chief of the Jamaica Gleaner, Wyvolyn Gager. Then there was T&T-based Saint Lucian journalist, Peter Richards, who has covered numerous Caribbean elections.

The background to this exercise was the fact that this year as many as ten elections are likely to be held in full and associate Caricom member states. Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) was the first to go to the polls on Feb 7 and the Progressive National Party (PNP) maintained its hold on power there.

Next up, on February 26, was Anguilla where the Anguilla United Front (AUF) under now first-time female premier, Cora Richardson-Hodge, turned the tables on the incumbent Anguilla Progressive Movement (APM).

Curaçao, where there is proportional representation (PR), held its elections on March 21 and Gilmar Pisas was returned as prime minister. On the immediate horizon are T&T on April 28 and Suriname (PR) on May 25. Not far behind are Guyana (PR), Jamaica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and we do not know what will happen in Haiti.

Such a backdrop was useful to declare since there are unique, interesting features of each country’s electoral system and practice requiring clinical dissection, and lessons to be learned regarding media coverage of encounters there.

Though media performance was the main focus, we spent some valuable time fleshing out the view that there are systemic issues associated with our electoral systems that do not do not always produce outcomes of the greatest democratic value. I will explain what I mean by that in a while.

Relatedly, it was argued that “voter apathy” had become a recurring fixture of elections, in part because of a lack of confidence in the ability of the process to reflect collectively fashioned views on our countries’ developmental paths.

Accounting in part for this is the fact that our political parties have been efficient at identifying symptoms of our dysfunction and not always focused on key structural, causative factors.

Additionally, there does not exist a perfect electoral system and informed national discussions focused on fixing key elements are needed.

Yes, this is not a new concern, though we generally operate pretty tight systems with high levels of institutional accountability and responsibility in most instances.

The political organisations that mobilise for electoral contests should find ways of integrating the prospects for change, if required, as part of their platform talk.

Moreso, journalists should better acquaint themselves with such matters so as to expand the coverage of campaigns and the entire elections process beyond routinised claims and counterclaims and outlandish promises.

For journalists, elections should also increasingly be recognised as a process and not as a singular event confined to campaigns comprising claims and counterclaims, gratuitous doses of defamation and character-assassination, spectacularly contrived defections, and the disingenuous insertion of personal taste and views into expert and reportorial narratives.

There is a concern that while there is abundant focus on some discrete components of the electoral cycle that begin and end with announcement of an election date and declaration of a result, there are important features of what happens between elections often ignored or inadequately addressed.

Additionally, with voter education being a key output of election reporting, there are parts of the process that are too often neglected or under-reported outside of isolated fiascos associated with them.

Focusing on these areas requires critical and knowledgeable journalistic attention to existing electoral and representative systems and their impact on the sustenance of democratic conditions.

For example, does the first-past-the-post constituency system produce outcomes truly representative of “the will of the people?” What becomes of the 39% or 42%, or even the 10% or 15% of the electorate that did not support the victorious politicians?

Every time the T&T constitution is being discussed, this comes up in the context of the PR option – too often minus thoughts on the desired version of the system. Guyana and Suriname offer different approaches next door and there are others elsewhere.

No time for all this now though. In under one week from now, we shall see where slick and shabby campaigns, and predictable narratives have taken us. The journalists who have contained their personal enthusiasm have played their important parts, but hopefully in the knowledge that much, much more is expected.

Wednesday, 16 April 2025

Some important differences

Let’s face it: Most of us simply want the things around us to work properly – nature, people, machines, institutions, systems. To the extent that we can speak about an “average citizen”, we can safely conclude that such a cohort would rather get on with life, its joys and its challenges, and to do so safely, in good health, and with as few inconveniences as possible.

There should also be the means to participate in society devoid of significant need when it comes to shelter and other economic, social, and cultural rights.

It is therefore totally understandable that a country’s power arrangements, in all their manifestations, enter the equation at critical points of such aspirations. It is also natural, that in the cut and thrust of election campaigning these matters would dominate the public discourse. Mind you, we are not alone in this.

In the Caribbean, this year for example, there are likely to be as many as nine national elections, including the scheduled but highly unlikely encounter in Haiti. In every instance, the meeting of basic needs dominates the public discourse, as it should.

Pay close attention, as I have, to those just past and to the others to come, including ours, and you will recognise vast areas of common concern, together with all the familiar assets and liabilities of our heritage of political culture and practice.

We can discuss at another time, if you wish, the colonial legacy and the extent to which we ought to be able to begin taking responsibility for ourselves as citizens and as polities.

Even so, there is a declining yet significant number of people in our countries for whom solutions and progress are viewed solely within the context of what the political institutions of their own durable private/tribal choice or taste can achieve. Alternatives are pre-emptively discarded as unrealistic options.

This is also despite the fact that in most instances there is little to separate the prescriptions of competing parties. There is no fundamental philosophy to distinguish them from each other.

Everywhere, there is the lure of the theocratic state, for example, leaving unfinished business when it comes to key areas of human rights. It is amazing the harmony on LGBT+ rights, capital punishment, the subservience of the state under the powers of the Church, among others.

There is, as well, psycho-social reliance on authoritarian behaviours both by the ruled and the rulers. Hence, non-resolution of important rules of the governance game including the separation of powers, and the degree to which post-colonial thought remains entrenched in our constitutions in the letter of savings clauses or after the spirit of unchallenged power.

This makes solutions-driven decision-making declarations rather illusory - “fixing” things expressed purely as abstruse and deceptive expressions of essentially immovable personal or collective preference. It’s more difficult to conceal such a condition nowadays – that fixing things is an exclusive tribal preserve.

That said, there remains a lot to be done, and a long history of shortcomings. Digital transformation in both the private and public sectors is sluggish and insufficiently deep.

There is, understandably, a lot of emphasis on public service developments because people simply do not have the options that are otherwise available within private enterprise.

But tell me the difference at the counter of a bank or insurance company and the one facing you at any state agency. Be honest.

Burdensome business processes in the private sector easily match inefficiencies in the state domain. Serious people routinely recognise the digital facades. Make no mistake about it, these two areas of concern –  the digital lag and archaic business processes - are evident across the board.

We can all also speak about depravities in private health, whatever the undoubted and tragic deficiencies in our system of socialised medicine. There is however little in the public domain to distinguish differences in approaches to fixing these things by those who claim superior credentials.

That said, and back to the politics, there are behaviours that ought to determine important, albeit narrow distinctions. Actions executed and things said at times of deepest, darkest societal need, for instance. The resort to ad hominem attack over reasoned argument. And, of course, a notion of the genetic superiority of one group over another.

These are the things, even above the transactional aches, that should make a difference in the end. When choices need to be made.

 

Our crowded agenda

Though Friday’s ceremonial opening of parliament simply sounds the opening whistle to signal the start of a new session, there is every indi...