Thru Novel Lenses! New Vision New Perspectives New Ideas New Directions For the New World! Futuring Sustainable Development in the Post Pandemic Planet From Pre School to Policy Making
This is not light festival reading, but brutal political post morten. It doing what I set out to do, to shine the spotlight on Rules-Based Order in practice under the merciless sunkissed tropical sky, resuscitating academia through a pop-culture.
This Carnival post motem joins Machel in turning mas into a masterpiece for my MultiMedia MicroEpic. In this segment, Demokrissy dives headlong into the KPI Kulture Performance Illusion that transforms knowledge production industry into a high-speed marketplace spectacle for show: circling around visibility, velocity, virility and virality.
Through Ministerial high pulpits, morphing metrics, AI subjugation, archival horror storms, and digital afterlives ....
Excerpt:
While the Chaos spreading, front stage, where millionnaire troll$$ belong, Demokrissy notice something else a-brewing backstage, where falling stars are reborn!
She find it in clues hidden in the crevices the Commission of Enquiry in the Construction missed, blind as bat justices, as usual.
In she dizzing rotational trance, she had slipped and fallen into the cracks between stage and backstage of the North-South Performance Arts Theatre built with bobol that born from scandalous co-minglings of Sunways imported from China to supplement the defuelled oil refinery and diversify the economy with sweet and juicy low hanging culture fruits.
Is from In/There, munching on a rotten seed, she hungry nah, she notice how one Ministry trying to out-perform the next, in the vibrant new spiritof a“leading-from-the-front” theologyunleashed on the inert nation!
football
and well-played alcohol will break down every social wall
From WM Herbert, Handmade (for the World
Summit of Arts and Culture, Newcastle UK
June 2006)
Dear Ken, Sir,
So a decade
after we fo-rum together - because you know for sure we share more than the
same initials and on the same programme at the World Summit of Arts and Culture
in Newcastle when you got a taste of the stuff Trini creativity is made of -
you coming for more, eh? On my home turf? Ah
drinking babash, cause dey…
Sir Ken boy, ah
hear they importing you to we soil – ‘cause nothing cyar hide in we choonkey
lil island. Although we have no grapevine and grow no grapes, news, especially
if iz some cochoor, spread like crop season bushfire. The bacchanal and cankalang alone could drive
ah woman to drink. Ah drinking babash,
cause dey…
From the fire in
meh wire ah hear they bringing you and some other boys, just like they bringing
the IMF, to tell we about creativity and what to do with we education and how
to do creative business and about creative enterprise. As if we don’t know how
to do creative business.
Ah drinking
babash, cause dey…
Sir Ken boy, you
think we Trinis don’t know creative business? You really don’t know how
creative we could get with we rum! We could take next people rum and bottle it
and say is we rum yes. A label over a label and look papaya - is your rum! That
is how creative we could get, here, Sir Ken boy. You might want to use that in
one of your speeches.
Ah drinking babash,
cause dey…
We have we own
kind of creative economy too and creative accounting and management that is
what they lorn in dem Institutes for higher, or hire, learning - I not sure which.
They growing creative managers and we still hoping they go ripen into some leaders.
Where else, eh, billions of dollars flowing in from oil, dey say, and all them
oil business in billions of dollars debt and they not thinking bout diversifying they still waiting for the next
oil boom, just like how as soon as Carnival done, they cyar wait fuh the next
one. Is like dat. That sounds like some creative sense to you? Oil tabanca to
fill a tabantruck. And the lil artist and writer still balancing a budget and
living without debt eh, so is tax and tax and tax we into debt and drink. Ah drinking babash, cause dey…
Sr Ken, I know
you like to talk about enterprise. I could tell you about Enterprise. In fact I
will show you, when you come. In
Enterprise dem boys know creative pursuits eh. Guns, drugs, murder and mayhem. Dey
learn well. Wild wild west style just like in the movies they cyar practice
they trigger-happiness in, cause we doh have ah movie industry. So is practice on
the streets, day and night: bang! bang! Live movie action. Ah drinking babash, cause dey…
Sir Ken, remember
the couple nail biting hours we shared watching the 2006 World Cup qualifiers in
front of that screen in the Newcastle/Gateshead caterpillar they call the arts
centre – we have one now too, we own arts centre that not only look like a
caterpillar, it have caterpillars and other termites crawling all over too, right smack in front
the Range as if to say is a bigger saga boy than the natural beauty of the Northern
Range. Crumbling like all them institutions law, parliament, education, all crumbling at the beams from termites and parasites 'cause the centre cannot hold. It open in 2009, three years after I return from the Summit, talk about cultural transference. You will see it when you come, if
you get time to step out of the higher-at place they keeping you nah, I could take you on an eye-opening LiTTour - a Journey Through the Landscapes of Fiction - although it staring you in your face is all fiction eh, no truth in that at all at all.
Ah drinking babash, cause
dey…
Sir Ken, boy,
your visit really send me down memory lane. When we was watching that football match
World Cup Qualifiers T&T vs UK 2006. I nearly chew-out the top
of all meh fingers after that first goal, hoping that we boys would at least
score one peeny-weeny goal against ye old Brits so I could ah tell the fo-rum the
next day when I presenting on MAS Culture what mas do fuh we! Well-qualified to
tell how we boys had some good babash that’s why they lick all-yuh good. Ah drinking babash, cause dey…
But just how they rig the match and give we
poor boys dat coonoomoonoo kindda liquor the Scots call ‘water of life’ ooskie,
so the boys played like coonoomoonoos. Is no different nah, is just so they rig
my presentation and I come with the best powerpoint with motion video of the
winning 2006 most colourful wining Carnival girls inserted in powerpoint even
before powerpoint had invented the movie insert feature – but the first world
didn’t have the new software to run it, at least that is what they say, as if I
could believe that the first world didn’t have the software and me from me from
a teeny weeny backward banana boat island have this technology. Ah drinking babash, cause dey …
Good thing I had
a back-up plan and walk with me rum for the fo-rum in the NewCastle caterpillar,
eh Sir Ken, boy. Because between you and me you never know how them boys would
perform. But we could export real creative ways of managing football funds eh –
arkse Jack, ah warn you, it go blow yuh mind. We creative fuh so. Ah drinking babash ‘cause dey…
That day at the
summit when you and your boys stumbled out of the room, with two goals and well
at least I scored with some ‘well-played alcohol’ – ask WM Herbert who made
that poem for and on our fo-rum at the World Arts Summit where that line came
from.
football and well-played alcohol will break down every social wall
From WM Herbert, Handmade (for the World Summit of Arts and Culture, Newcastle UK June 2006)
Is we Trini rum
he talking ‘bout! It is true we didn’t win the world football qualifying match,
but we won the World Summit fete! Ah could tell you that because I had the
creative intelligence to pack meh bottle ah rum for the fo-rum! You have to
agree, that was pure genius to break down them social walls if not the glass
ceiling, eh! And it look like I help T&T qualify too cause at last now we
have you, Sir, come here and grace we with your knightly presence! After all
the times I have to go to talk to fo-rums in all yuh first world, tho not here,
eh, not here! But exchange is no robbery where creative enterprise is concerned
eh. Now you understand?
Ah drinking
babash, cause dey…
Sir Ken boy, to
tell you the truth, I really thought when I see the invitation from the World
Summit on Arts and Culture to talk, and me name list next to yours on the
programme, I thought that is why I was invited you know, to bring some Trini
rum for the fo-rum, so is the first thing I pack. And 9/11 rules didn’t kick in
yet so I could walk through immigration with it so bold face holding it in
front me, waving it like the national flag and all them immigration and customs
people through the Brit airport nodding and smiling maybe hoping for a sip.
Ah drinking babash cause dey…
I couldn’t bring
babash though. It was not just because of the airline rules and ye olde
mercantilist impulse to make everything indigenous like we own way of making we
own rum illegal. It is really because as a true daughter of the soil - eating
dirt, as they say, cause breaking that glass ceiling tough boy - I holding on
to me secret knowledge of babash-making because we like to keep we real
creative stuff hidden in the backyard nah. Ah
drinking babash ‘cause dey…
They importing
you and the boys to tell them how to be creative without a mind about parting
with their creatively-earned foreign exchange – easy come easy go.
Ah drinking babash ‘cause dey…
Who knows more
than me about how they killing creativity, eh, about passion eh, about living
yuh talent, about multiple intelligences eh? Ah drinking babash ‘cause dey…
Now we boys don’t
have not even a peeny eeny bit of curiosity to know the secret knowledge of
creating babash, after they kill the industry dead dead to feed a few pipers to
play some foreign tune for them. Those who have a lil curiosity want to know for
free, ask Spree, and still they wouldn’t listen. Ah drinking babash ‘cause dey…
If you want to
know how to kill Trini creativity – Sir Ken boy – I know that is yur pet
subject and you want some local insights, I sharing, for free because in
T&T the arts is a freeco thing, only to laugh for an evening comedy show,
not to use to make education and law and social reengineering and to mean something
to we in we own image. Nah. We have to
hide it and practice it in secret – like drinking babash.
Is not just the
education system, nah, is how they stomp out we homemade rum and make it
illegal – the same way they make we marriage traditions and drum beating
traditions illegal, and plenty plenty thing that good for the grass roots – if yuh catch me drift – everything
grass roots illegal here, even grass. Dat’s why nobody take on the law. It
illegal to get married, it illegal to have sex, it illegal to smoke weed and
still everybody doing it. Just like we have laws against murders, laws against
incest, laws against violence and child abuse, laws against thiefing, and laws
against all kinds ah thing – and that eh stop nobody! Ah drinking babash, ‘cause dey…
Maybe they think
that as a daughter I shudda be tie up and tie de knot not realizing that is one
old law – and who take on the law here anyway eh – get married at 12, 14, 16 - not
me. I keep my focus on the instructions to go forth and multiply which I really
thought mean go fly off on this trip and dat trip and multiply intelligence,
with this idea and that idea, and follow this dream and that dream to teach
people about creativity and cultural industries and how to reengineer education
for self-esteem and to think for themselves and to value what they know and
what they have and appreciate they multiple intelligences – I really
thought that is what that meant yes: go forth and multiply. Ah
drinking babash, ‘cause dey…
I fly out because
I didn’t want to be stripped of me self-respect, left wandering in the street
like the lil ex-Mayor of Chaguanas, nah. We filling them lil girls head with
ambition that a Woman’s Place is in the House of Parliament and some of the
women we put in the top there only want your head cause they head filled with
being part of the old boys’ club. Sisterhood dead dead. That is what happen
when you put yourself up for public office here. You could turn into a raving
lunatic if you don’t have a stash ah babash, yes arkse ex-Mayor Natasha.
Ah drinking babash, ‘cause dey…
As she find out
too, it turns out, I was wrong and I should ah stay home and mind baby and leave
them ambitions to the boys, like you, who they importing through the creative
cultural foreign stock exchange and stick with me home made backyard country
brew.
Ah drinking babash, ‘cause dey…
Although I not
from the Caroni, like everybody else who come here by boat my ancestors get rum
before they get pay, so this fo-rum thing in meh blood and I still could knock
back a good few like any of the boys at any fo-rum, mano-y-mano, shatter the
glass bottles if not the glass ceiling – you want a list ah the fo-rums in
which I scored fo-rum after fo-rum: Newcastle, South Africa, India, Malaysia, France,
Costa Rica, Brazil, Argentina, Belize, Jamaica, Colombia, Mexico, Barcelona,
Scotland, Montreal … It reading like the World Cup qualifying list eh?
Ah
qualify for sure, drinking babash, ‘cause
dey…
When you come ah
go show you, Sir Ken, here at home we know where to find the real stuff. Is a
small island, nah. Everybody know where to find babash or guns or drugs, or who
kidnapping who for ransom and who planning to do for who, who doing prayers on
who head, who is the boys dealing, and trading and stacking organs and orange
juice in freezers – everybody and they lawyer know, but not the law – we call
it creative blindness because if you know yuh could get you light out, just so
just so. Ah drinking babash, ‘cause dey…
Sir Ken, you
will find out for yourself, eh. Here, everybody done know everything ahready.
All we want is a lil laugh and that’s why they invite you, so they could laugh
a lil bit. They done know that culture is a song and a dance and a comedy show
so everybody with a lil bit a creativity try to get into comedy because they
have to eat. Plain and simple. Culture is not about intelligences and policy
and curriculum development and conscience building, and social stability and
inclusion and management, and business. You mad or what? And is best they hear
it from you who doh really know dem so it could sound nice and distant and
theoretical and academic. You would be fine. Dey wouldn’t cut the mike on you
because you from foreign, as they do to me for talking the naked truth. Ah drinking Babash cause dey…
Sir Ken, you
would have a great time. You go come; you go go back home and say what a nice
people, who laugh plenty at all you jokes and make some ah they own jokes too,
and the rum flow like water and the babash hiding in the back room and you get a nice bit a foreign exchange people here
cyar even get to send they children who away to school. Ah drinking babash ‘cause dey…
When you leave
we could go back to blaming the old Brits for the mess we in although the Brits
using we creativity to teach creativity, and we with we own independent
institutions in we own self-determining nation – well is not we is dem to blame. Ah drinking babash, cause they…
If you want some
fresh material, for Port of Spain or even for them TED Talks you know where to find me, eh Sir Ken, boy, and say how-do-you-do-to-me girl Lizzie eh, and me famalee, the royalings, and if you have luggage space take these letters I have for she, please 'cause ah cyar afford the postage stamps. Ah drinking
babash, cause they…
If you want to
know the rest of the refrain, arkse that Rumbunctious Rumraj.
World
Summit repositions arts & culture
Clear
role in governance and sustainability defined
By Dr
Kris Rampersad
football and well-played alcohol
will break down every social wall.
From WM Herbert, Handmade
(For the World Summit of Arts and Culture, June 2006)
If culture is to be defined as the product of human
interactions,
the place of the human in a world traumatised by diminishing
social, environmental, political and equitable economic relations was at the
core of the World Summit on Arts and Culture.
Held in Newcastle/Gateshead, England from June 14 to 18, 2006
through sponsorship by the International Federation of Arts Councils and
Culture Agencies, the Arts Council of England and the Commonwealth Foundation,
the Summit saw arts and culture practitioners and activists in dialogue with
policy makers, planners and supporters.
In keeping with the theme “transforming people, transforming
lives,” some 500 Summit participants grappled with challenges of helping
Governments and decision makers to recognise the position of culture and the
arts in regenerating societies’ physical and social environments and economies.
Effectively, they invited revision in conceptualisation, approaches, and
methods that have so far dominated decision-making, which, in the general
division of labour functions and responsibilities, have left regeneration and
sustenance to the sciences, economics, politics and the hard-core world of
doers - not dreamers.
Skepticism that the arts has a place in this isn’t altogether
unfounded, given that artistic development has traditionally leaned on
philanthropy, the generosity of supporters, donors, endowments, and other the
like - polar opposites, surely, to, notions of sustainability.
But some 30 presenters outlined working examples of how, when
well-directed, the cultural industries can sustain societies: from use of
architecture to reduce delinquency in a district in Houston, to development of
a district in Ethiopia by indigenous craft, to how the Carnival festival from
Trinidad and Tobago has evolved to global proportions represented in some 150
countries around the world and involving a range of artistic talents and
skills. Participants were also exposed
to the UK’s Creative Partnerships that effected regeneration through art,
architecture, music, design, theatre and film. In Kielder, for example, art and
architecture such as the Belvedere and Skyspace combine with the local
landscape, riverscape and skyscape to bring the natural environment into
sharper human focus, while encouraging environmental protection and reviving
the district’s tourist economy.
From
an unchallenged premise that more people participate in culture, than vote, the
Summit asserted the potential of culture and the arts in providing for basic
human needs of food, shelter and clothing, while retaining its traditional role
in nourishing minds. In its easy capacity to support co-existence and
accommodate divergent views, polar opposites, diversity and difference through
its metaphors and similes, borrowings and samplings, and general artistry, arts
and culture were seen to hold key solutions to minimizing the negative impact
of the conflicts between economic development and sustainability, technological
advancement and traditional practices, nature and nurture that result in social
and economic inequalities, disempowerment, and ethnic strife.
The exchange of project and ideas for processes of execution, as
well as methods of quantifying input and outputs from arts and culture-based
projects were stimulating and inspiring. NewcastleGateshead proved the ideal
incubator for this global mishmash of thinkers and doers. De-hyphenated and brought together to create
one of the world’s most successful stories of the potential of arts and culture
for not only economic regeneration but social cohesion of “rival districts”,
these districts are now joined by the hip, as it were, in the Sage Centre where
the Summit was located. In all of this, participants found time to create a
World Choir and a Summit Song, A Poem - an extract from which is cited above -
a drama; share nail-biting moments of the FIFA World Cup, and take a sneak peak
into Hollywood’s Hogsworth, through the hospitality of the Duchess of
Northumberland at Alnwick Castle where parts of the JK Rowling’s Harry Potter
movies were filmed.
Death threats to journalists?
Is Trinidad and Tobago, the media, and related organisations just waking up this foreday morning?
Mark Bassant, forced to flee from death threats, as the reports say, is not an isolated case and did not surface overnight as I am sure his superiors and colleagues and others in various media and other institutions may well know. (See related article below. Pls note date of publication.)
This blinkered shortsightedness must be Ash Wednesday syndrome in Carnival city.
The current climate of unease and unrest did not start with last week's murder or drug haul.
That journalists, who dare to go beyond the boundaries of 'he said she said" or soapbox reporting are intimidated, threatened, face withdrawal of support, and even chased out of town in one way or the other, not just by some external third parties, but very much also from within the jurisdictions within which they function is not the new nine-day wonder.
That some must battle daily with their conscience on the personal price of their professional pursuit, without any support, systematic or otherwise, is not the new wonder drug in town. Guarding democracy could be a very lonely place even in a place clamouring for guards to guard t he guards and there is no where to turn, except grit one's teeth and bite the bullet, literally, as in the case of #DanaSeetahalAssassination.
This Ash Wednesday syndrome surrounding Bassant's plight only point to the degree to which even the media, and watchdog institutions are so mired in admiring their own reflection in the limelight as defenders of democracy that they fail or just plainly refuse to see or admit the presence of the shadows hanging over their colleagues in danger; some even taking great delight in feeding the climate of unease and unrest in the interest of a great sound bite or headline or to poke some political ire - until the next one takes the limelight.
The long sleep-perchance-to-dream state of the body politic and now this Ash Wednesday reawakening until the next band rolls along has our democratic institutions - the media, the judiciary, the executive and the legislature - on the sapotay soil that we now seem to find ourselves, and not altogether not of their own making(double negative intended). If only we would subject ourselves to some serious self analysis and self scrutiny and acceptance of responsibility and ownership, which surely must, like charity, start at home.
We must be one of the few countries in the world where the free media does more to censure itself, if by default, inaction or uninformed, ill informed or incredibly blinkered actions, than anywhere else I can think of, offsprings of the chicken and egg paraducks. (clarified below)
Do media institutions provide a facilitatory environment for journalists to function and also to voice complaints?
Does the media fraternity provide a safety net and support system for their colleagues who may feel threatened, outside of the driven need to sensationalise such cases in the interest of a soundbite, headline, the next day's news; the impulse to stir unease and unrest for ratings or pander to some political interest or the other?
If we were to think of a correlation between the rise of crime news, for instance and the crime statistics we may want to ask which come's first, wouldn't we? The proverbial 'chicken and egg paraducks'. (See article below. Note date of publication).
So seduced by our Carnival mentality, we have so lapsed in developing and strengthening healthy mechanisms for exhalation of the social toxins.
If we cant cultivate a society that appreciates independent thought and action, debates, transparency and challenge, should we be surprised that attempts at contradiction seem to stimulate trigger happy responses in spouses, in the police, and from those in whom we ought to be able to place our trust.
Come on my friends, colleagues. countrymen! Wake up, my people!
Or wake me up when 'tis all over.
This would be news.
A radio talk show was asking callers last week who was responsible – the people or the politicians – for the problems of Laventille, manifested most recently in increased killings in that area. It might as well have been asking the proverbial impossible question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The implied paradox in that brain teaser has been that one must have eggs to hatch chickens. At the same time, any poultry farmer with commonsense knows it is the chicken, in the first instance, that lay the eggs that hatch into chickens. So, is it the politicians who have nurtured the culture of violence in Laventille? Politicians of the PNM can cockily profess Laventille’s rebellious spirit predates the PNM, and anyone with even a layman’s sense of the evolution of Trinidadian society and politics knows that to be fact. And every school child knows, too, that it was from among Laventille’s gangs came the divinity of steel pan music, for instance. And then came the PNM/politicians. (Now that may imply the PNM/politician is chicken; the people of Laventille, egg – something that certain MPs may want to roll up sleeves and tear off jackets to scuffle over, but in the interest of completing this evolution theory, can we not just ignore that, and obliviously take a line out of the Prime Minister’s book and pacify ourselves, if for the moment, that that question does not arise?) If the PNM did not create Laventille, then Laventille must accept responsibility for the politicians/(community) leaders it has spawned. Those who called in with that view reasoned the district voted for, hence created, its politicians. A contentious thought, but support for this view can be had in scientists’ attempt to crack the question: Chicken leads to egg; or egg to chicken. The answer actually proves wrong all poultry farmers, and similarly others who pride themselves on their commonsense, like politicians, Ministers etc (see “Virgin Births” inset). They conclude since a zygote (a non-chicken) must first split into cells that form the whole chicken, the egg must come first. If the scientists are to be believed, then it must be that “core” and “grassroot” supporters who egg on political parties/leaders in districts like Laventille (and in the case of the UNC, Caroni) are responsible for hatching their own problems – politicians. Their unflinching support “…no matter what; ’til ah dead,” is really a licence to their leaders to do as the leaders damn well please. And they do. It can hardly be in the politician’s interest to make his supporters less dependent financially or ideologically upon him. It must be in the chicken’s interest to make the egg believe without chicken, egg would not have been laid. The politician’s stable guarantee of core support – that is born out of their supporter’s ignorance and deprivation – may be upset when supports’ conditions improve. DEWD, URP, CEPEP ensure temporary appeasement, and permanent dependency, hence loyal support. Better education, greater income security may increase voters’ desire to choose leaders on the basis of criterion they set for themselves, rather than what is set by the leaders. All this implies, of course, that the country’s political situation – the inability of government to pass legislation it wants – is essentially not in Parliament or with the politicians at all, but rather rests with the grassroots, like Laventille and Caroni, where, assured of support no matter what, politicians have no real reason to effect change. If the egg knew it did not need the chicken to be, it has already turned the power tables on the chicken. If, then, as with the virgin growth, the eggs are made to know (or tricked into) a different method of hatching its leaders – a way of fertilisation that would produce disease-free cells – from the many good people of Laventille – that would multiply to create disease-free organisms, wouldn’t we have found a cure for the lesions on the body politic? For, certainly, if scientists believe that by using good eggs, they can produce good chickens, can’t one infer that it is the rotten eggs that are hatching such rotten politicians?
Published:
Friday, May 23, 2014
Bassant has since left the country.
In a video clip on the TV6 news on Wednesday night Bassant said on May 7 he got a call from an underworld source to say certain criminal elements wanted to harm him because of stories he wrote recently. “I made a report on it. The next day I was liaising with certain police officers involved in a specific investigation, only to later learn from other trusted sources that these same officers who I had spoken to earlier were leaking information about me and what I knew to the said individuals who organised for my demise,” Bassant claimed.
He said he then informed a high-ranking intelligence source and another trusted senior intelligence officer. The senior officer, Bassant added, later told him his name was on a hit list, together with others. “In fact, he told me they had already been given the order to engage the targets, including me, and that the hit against me was starting at $20,000,” Bassant added. He said the incident had left him angry, especially since journalists, who work for the people, could easily be threatened. Contacted yesterday, TV6’s head of news Dominic Kalipersad said when the threat was reported to Griffith he said the suspect was “ruthless.”
Griffith also assured the police were monitoring the situation closely. Kalipersad described Bassant as a strong and committed journalist who would not want to be put in a position which prevented him from performing his calling in a fair manner. Acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams yesterday promised the police were doing all they could to ensure the matter was properly investigated and said Supt Kenrick Edwards, head of the Criminal Intelligence Gang Unit, was leading the probe.
Media groups concerned
The Media Association of T&T (MATT) also has expressed concern and urged the police to move swiftly. In a press release yesterday the association said if the allegations were proven to be true, law enforcement officers must bring the perpetrators to justice, adding that a free and fair press was important to the country’s democracy. “A free and fair press is crucial to the functioning of all institutions and right-thinking members of the society should also condemn any threat or attack on members of the media. “These threats can result in a journalist operating under fear which weakens the role of the fourth estate as a watchdog,” the association added. On its Facebook page the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM) said the fact that Bassant had been forced to flee the country underscored the seriousness with which both his media institution and the State’s security forces were treating the matter. “We join with the Media Association of T&T in calling for urgent action to get to the bottom of this situation. “Our international partners are similarly concerned and we all look forward to a thorough and expeditious investigation and the prosecution of anyone found to be behind this threat,” the ACM added.
Former President Professor Maxwell Richards joins his predecessors RIP even as process underway to select new President to succeed President Anthony Carmona. She would be named as Justice Paula Mae Weekes, the first female president of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
I have had some incredible collaborations with Prof Richards in my literary campaigns involving Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott with the Year of Derek Walcott and staging of his play Steel and more recently with his wife Dr Jean Richards in our Tea with the First Lady in our LiTTribute to the Republic and launch of my book LiTTscapes- Landscapes of Fiction and LiTTours.
Presidents Past.
The passing of other former Presidents Sir Ellis Clarke and President and Prime Minister ANR Robinson provoke these reminisces on former heads of States, now passed, whom I met, knew and with whom I was fortunate to have shared thoughts and ideas on the state of Caribbean development.
Among those passed were the country's First President, Sir Ellis Clarke; its second, Noor Hassanali and Mr Robinson, the third. I have also known the Fourth President, Max Richards, as Principal of the UWI when I was a student there, but later too as Presiden. And his wife, the First Lady Jean Richards partnered with me in my LiTTribute to the Republic on the special publication on the 50th Anniversary of the Independence of Trinidad and Tobago through my book LiTTscapes - Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago on the 50th Anniversary of Independence - and in the premier of the play Steel by Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott and our commemmorative Year of Derek Walcott.
My first live encounter with Sir Ellis was when I was about ten, holder of a pichakaree filled with colourful abeer liquid one sunny Phagwa/Holi harvest festival day. I couldn't resist breaking ranks against official warning to only gentilly spray abeer on his garments, especially as his bald head seemed in need of liquid relief from the stinging Trini sunshine. He entertained the wetting goodnaturedly, as anyone from Carnival country (you cyar play mas' and 'fraid powder) will, whipping out his pristine white handkerchief to mop up the colourful liquid rolling down his face.
I reminded him of the incident many moons later, and just a few months before his passing as he poured me a cup of tea while we discussed the issue of the need for constitutional reform and his chuckle almost caused him to spill over the teacup. He was in the midst of his own controversial virtual one-man redraft of the Constitution and my own interest in public processes and the role of our leaders in this, took me to his home. Sir Ellis could always be looked to for good humour, good conversation, good manners, supreme diplomacy and indeed impeccable teatime manners.
Noor too, could also always be counted on for good conversation and dry humour over a pot of tea, usually facilitated by Mrs Hassanali. My first encounter with him was as a cub reporter when he paused in the midst of his keynote address, looking directly at me, to ask rhetorically if the newspaper where I was then employed as a cub reporter was encouraging child labour - a comment on my then petite size. My last meeting with him was also a few months before he passed, as we sat down to tea at his home and his jovial reminisces on his boyhood exploits in courting the minute but statuesque woman from South Trinidad who would become the country's second First Lady, Zalayhar.
His Presidential inauguration was one of the most heartwarming occasions in public pomp and ceremony I can recall and to which I had front row seats in coverage, as with the inauguration of Tobago's Castara kid who became Chairman of the Tobago House of Assembly, and leader of the Democratic Action Congress that paved his way for elevation to first Prime Ministership and later President - Arthur NR Robinson.
But Robinson was altogether a different cup of tea, and not given to sharing or engaging in tea sipping, or not to my knowledge. Our encounters were less sociable and more socially or politically motivated as I was launching my journalism career covering what is still seen as the most historic of Trinidad and Tobago elections in 1986 and his subsequent political mobility. The National Alliance for Reconstruction which he led became the forerunner of coalition party politics that inspired the People's Partnership of the current +Kamla Persad Bissessar's regime - and she herself has admitted to being politically birthed through germination in the NAR's political incubator of social and political ideals that ANR's NAR inspired.
I have always viewed the almost mirror-like resonance of the acronyms in the above as deliberate in its egotistic reverberations and in every way the bad pun it might seem to be, as is the title of his 1986 compilation of speeches, Caribbean Man .
Robinson's entire public career has been a mixed pot of tea, mired as his political life was in controversies of various kind. He stands out at the centerpiece in a number of significant national occurrences - including his breaking of ranks with Dr Eric Williams' PNM Government in the 1970s, the break-up of the NAR in 1988; the attempted coup of 1990, the collapse of the UNC, the ensuing political deadlocks and the various constitutional challenges that showed up the growing irrelevance of our hand-me-down national Constitution.
He was also a figure who impacted the international arena, foremost among which was in his initiation of moves towards establishing the International Criminal Court as I discussed his passing with colleagues on the UNESCO Executive Board.
The mixed reactions to his death is therefore no surprise, and reminds me of the barrage of historical and social bile that I encountered as they resurfaced in the UK last year on the passing of Britain's Prime Minister for the legendary iron lady Margaret Thatcher - resonance over unpopular social reform measures that took her out of office in Britain.
As Robinson's life is celebrated this week and in light of the focus on praise on his good deeds, his interment ought to be followed by retrospection of his true impact as our societies also try to make good of our experiences and the contributions or failures of those who have been charged to lead us.
Humility might not be one of the descriptions one may use in relation to Arthur NR Robinson, but if anything, his life, and the lives of those who went before him should serve as a humble reminder to our leaders of today of the one unchanging reality of power holders - their mortality; and that their immortalisation rests with their mortal actions - what they might have done to break up, or build up, the spaces that accommodated them will linger long after they are gone, and even colour the tone of mourning them. RIP Arthur NR Robinson, Sir Ellis Clarke, Noor Hassanali.
Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had the rounds of consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of direction that will drive ...
Choosing the Emperor's New Troops. The dilemma of choice. Voting is supposed to be an ... Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. Posted by Kris Rampersad at 10:36 AM ...
This Demokrissy series, The Emperor's New Tools, continues and builds on the analysis of evolution in our governance, begun in the introduction to my book, Through the Political Glass Ceiling (2010): The Clash of Political ...
This Demokrissy series, The Emperor's New Tools, continues and builds on the analysis of evolution in our governance, begun in the introduction to my book, Through the Political Glass Ceiling (2010): The Clash of Political ...
It is placing increasing pressure for erasure of barriers of geography, age, ethnicity, gender, cultures and other sectoral interests, and in utilising the tools placed at our disposal to access our accumulate knowledge and technologies towards eroding these superficial barriers. In this context, we believe that the work of UNESCO remains significant and relevant and that UNESCO is indeed the institution best positioned to consolidate the ..... The Emperor's New Tools ...
The Emperor's New Tools. Loading... AddThis. Bookmark and Share. Loading... Follow by Email. About Me. My Photo · Kris Rampersad. Media, Cultural and Literary Consultant, Facilitator, Educator and Practitioner. View my ...
The Triumph of Gollum in the Land of Shut Up Suicide of the
Fellowship of Partnerships Book 11. A Sequel Futuring the Agenda Forward https://goo.gl/HU3rp3
Celebrating Jamettry The Sacred and the Sacriligious
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increasing incident of violence and extremism in schools emerged as a core
concern of educators, parents, religious, community and cultural heads
identified the sense of alienation by migrant and first generations and
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concerns were raised during the LiTTributes to ToronTTo...see link: https://goo.gl/K7zxry
