Trinidad and Tobago - Articles - Zimbio

Somet'ing SAUTT to pass in mih [my] mout’

Thu, 10 Oct 2008 17:52:00 GMT

posted by gdtrinweb
Now that we are in the month of October, the Christmas preparation in Trinidad and Tobago begins as this month brings the start of the Parang season. For the wider ‘Net audience, parang is a local word derived from the Spanish parranda, meaning 'to make merry' or 'to party.' Parang is a Hispanic styled music played in Trinidad and Tobago around Christmas time.

Traditionally, the themes of this musical genre centered on the nativity but over the years these have come to include more secular and Carnival type themes, which led to the development of a derivative known as parangsoca, soca (soca being a derivative of traditional Calypso or Kaiso music) combined with parang. And more recently another, derivative, chutneyparang, parang combined with chutney, chutney being the name given to creolized festive East Indian music popular at our Hindu weddings and other celebrations.

All this is well and good, as it has shown the development of the music and its incorporation with the other musical idioms in the country. However, some parang purists have lamented these developments given a trend that seems to totally ignore the traditional or 'true' parang as it was known and performed: its integrity and value becoming completely sidelined and disrespected.

This brings me too, to the title of this posting which, as the locals would recognize, is a takeoff of what can be termed a classic Christmas calypso penned my the Mighty Chalkdust or Chalkie as he is affectionately known. The famous refrain in the calypso “Somet’ing soyt [salt] to pass in mih mout,” has long been used by locals as a plea for the serving of ham when they go visiting at Christmas time. The salty, savoury ham is seen as the centerpiece of Christmas fare: the pièce de résistance, without which somehow the integrity of the Christmas menu has been brought into contempt, despite whatever else has been served.

The question of integrity with respect to the government was again recently raised in parliament when independent senator Dana Seetahal referred to SAUTT (Special Anti-crime Unit of Trinidad and Tobago) as the most likely resource that would have been used by the Prime Minister to monitor whether MP Kamla Persad Bissessar had a mole in the Integrity Commission. The irony of this situation as the senator had pointed out was related to several reasons:

(Perhaps the most pertinent one being) SAUTT is as yet to be lawfully constituted.
If SAUTT was indeed the instructed agency in question, as a policing unit it cannot or should not be taking instructions from political officials.
Given that SAUTT is as yet to be lawfully constituted it consequently answers to no one and as such is a law unto itself.

A digest - if it is all digestible -of all this is a conundrum whereby a law enforcing agency not lawfully constituted or not having legal integrity was supposedly used by a political official to determine if another political official had managed to subvert the integrity another agency, an agency which curiously, was established ensure the integrity of all the players involved. That agency, The Integrity Commission of Trinidad and Tobago, on its Web site, states that it is:

“mandated under the Constitution to ensure that persons in public life and persons exercising a public function comply with the laws governing integrity in the fulfillment of their duties and responsibilities to the people they serve.”

The above political-SAUTT-Integrity Commission muddle is sure to make anyone’s head spin and seems akin to the goings on at a Mad Hatter’s integri -tea party where similarly to the Carrollian chaos, answerless riddles and arbitrariness seem to rule the order of the day. It is notable that on the Integrity Commission’s Web site Community page, in an article titled What is Integrity, it quotes the famed playwright and former Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel:

“public officials live in a world of half-truth which saps the soul and integrity of any person.…Only responsible individuals of integrity risking the moral dangers of politics and persisting in their quest for a better public life can make a difference in the world.”

Havel as we see, notes that in public life there are inherent moral dangers and undeniably one factor which gives rise to such, stems from the Actonian admonition of what power and absolute power do to us.

But this fallout of possessing power also applies in many relationships e.g. adults abusing power over children, one spouse’s abuse over the other, senior workers abuse over junior staff.

And yet, unfortunately for some too, integrity means doing all that is integral to their own advancement regardless of the expense to others. In other words, their 'integrity' is only to ensure that their me-ism remains intact: lies by omission, half-truths, deceit and cheating bear no unrest upon their conscience so long as their desires are sated. In the book Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, by Swedish writer Sissela Bok, she writes:

“Imagine a society, no matter how ideal in other respects, where word and gesture could never be counted upon. Questions asked, answers given, information exchanged –all would be worthless. Were all statements randomly truthful or deceptive, action and choice would be undermined from the outset. There must be a minimal degree of trust in communication for language and action to be more than stabs in the dark. This is why some level of truthfulness has always been seen as essential to human society, no matter how deficient the observance of other moral principles.”

One can see that the 'worthlessness' Bok warns of here is also not unlike the situation in Lewis Caroll's Mad Hatter’s tea party.

Christmas is a time when we traditionally become more sincere toward and more caring of our family, friends and anyone we encounter in general. Yet while the integrity that we see lacking from those in authority is abhorrent and should not be tolerated, let us nevertheless, ensure to maintain our own integrity so that in all our actions and in whatever service we provide our fellow humankind, our 'menu' contains and conveys the soyt [salt] of our true good selves.

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Trinbago to de Bone: Two Islands One Nation

Thu, 2 Nov 2007 02:46:00 GMT

posted by gdtrinweb

One of the main reasons why I gave this blog the name I did, was to make sure to incorporate the complete name of the country Trinidad and Tobago (pronounced toh-bay-go). For those of you who still do not know, where to find us, see the red rectangle to the top left of the map of South America above (taken from the World CIA Factbook) with a clear view of the country in the map below. The country is just off the coast of Venezuela.

I once lived in Washington State (not Washington D.C.) in a town called Bellingham, on the US Pacific Northwest -a most beautiful part of the US, very scenic, very nice, civic-minded, welcoming people- where, when I applied for my driver’s license, for “Place of Birth” I, of course, filled in "Trinidad and Tobago." At my turn at the counter, the clerk said to me,-“Which is it? Make up your mind. You can’t be from two places.” Whereupon, I explained to him that that, was the name of the country and I went on to provide some brief local and Caribbean information. He then smiled broadly and thanked me for the quick geography lesson, saying he’d always dreamed of traveling to the Caribbean but never did.

The US northwest, unlike the US east coast, does not have large populations of Caribbean people. Indeed, there are Trinbagonians and other Caribbean people living out in the US Pacific Northwest as you find us scattered anywhere, but there we are much fewer and farther between. And so, knowledge of our part of the world is less known to people in that part of the US, unless perhaps they frequent Vancouver Canada, where there is a huge Caribbean population and an annual summer Carnival put on by the Trinidad and Tobago Cultural Society of British Columbia.

My point still though, is to always keep in mind that we are two islands but one nation and this is a point I think that some of us fail to present or remind ourselves and non-nationals about. I guess this is typical where you have two distinct regions within a country, one larger than the next with the larger having more infrastructure and is also the seat of government. Whereas for many people in Trinidad, Tobago comes to mind as a place to go for the long Easter weekend, the Heritage or Jazz festivals, I believe many people in Trinidad forget that many people in Tobago need to come over to Trinidad to purchase goods, obtain specialised healthcare, conduct business etc. So there is, I believe, a general marked difference in perception of how people from the two islands look at each other.

My last posting dealt a bit with constitutional matters. Here, let us follow-up a bit with putting Tobago into some focus. For our constitution, there is, in a matter of sorts, two major aspects to consider. One, is the overarching constitution, as it relates to all the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago. The other is the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Act 1996 (with the latest amendment enacted in 2006 increasing the number of departmental secretaries from five to seven), which stipulates how the governing body of Tobago, the THA, governs that island and its relation to the central government in Port of Spain. For years, there have been public fora and discussion in the media about the administrative relationship between the two islands. One recurrent theme in relation to this has been the granting of more autonomy to Tobago, or what is more commonly know as the Tobago internal self-government movement.

A major proponent of this movement has been Mr. Arthur Robinson, who was born on the island and is a former Prime Minster and President of Trinidad and Tobago and the leading architect of THA 1996 Act. Even with the current election hustings, the question of preserving the autonomy has been broached again. In a Newsday report ("Sinister Plan for the THA," Friday Nov, 2, 2007), Dr. Jeff Davidson, a member of the Tobago United Front/Democratic Action Congress (TUF/DAC) Steering Committee, was said to have raised the issue at a public meeting in east Tobago, last Saturday. According to the Newsday report, Dr. Davidson stated that the question was relevant, given the recent establishment of an office of the Ministry of Local Government at Plymouth, Tobago.

Despite all these efforts by those in Tobago for consolidating their autonomy, what we typically have in Trinidad and Tobago is always a movement of power remaining and being pulled toward the centre. This is evidenced in what passes for local government in our country, where local candidates are typically proxies for the major parties and the elected MPs from the general election. Similar to Tobago in the region, is Nevis in the unitary state of St. Kitts and Nevis, which also has long been seeking greater autonomy. The extreme end of these arrangements in these situations is, of course, secession and the middle ground and more widely proposed suggestion being some sort of federal arrangement as exists, say, in the United states and Canada (Canada, people should remember, still continues to deal with a similar situation with Quebec).

Dr, Ralph Premdass, Profesor of Public Polcy at the Univesrity of the West Indies (U.W.I.) St. Augustine in a paper titled "Self-Determination and Decentralisation in the Caribbean: Tobago and Nevis, " (July 3, 2000) writes that:

"The claim to sovereign autonomy in a separate state runs into a series of doctrines which both affirm and deny that right. The United Nations Charter seems to do exactly this. The self-determination principle has become firmly enshrined in Article 1 of the United Nations Charter: "All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development"."

In further explaining, Dr. Premdass goes on to inform us that:

"While part of the UN Charter seems to legitimize the right of a people for statehood, another part, Article 6, argues for the preservation of the territorial integrity of the state: "Any attempt aimed at a partial or whole disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations". The matter of defining precisely what is a people, homogenous or diversified, in a particular territory, small or large, with or without economic self-sufficiency and viability, had been a source of much debate historically."

Whatever is the ultimate solution in all this, remains to be seen. As a people though, we do need to start raising and discussing these matters with more regularity rather than, if at all we do, every five years. Moreover, such exposure to such matters of local civics, should have its inception in our schools and youth clubs.

Questions relating to the configuration of our nation are far too important to be repeatedly set aside, for it goes at the very heart of who and what we are: to ourselves and to the world. http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/dGTB

Ready to Read: Ready for the World

Fri, 20 Oct 2007 07:43:00 GMT

posted by gdtrinweb
"He that loves reading has everything within his reach."

William Godwin, English novelist, philosopher and writer(1756 - 1836)

I am a bit of a bibliophile (although I find myself not reading much of late) and thought to at least make mention of a few recently published history and political economy books on Trinidad and Tobago. The presence of these books here is essentially for informational purposes and do not reflect any endorsement on the part of the author of this blog. - Clicking on a book cover image will take you to its Amazon listing.

History of Tobago by H.I. Woodcock (2007)

La Magdalena: The Story of Tobago 1498-1898 by David Phillips (2004)

The Mechanics of Independence: Patterns of Political and economic Transformation in Trinidad and Tobago
by A.N.R. Robinson and Dennis Pantin (2002)

Trinidad and Tobago: Ethnic Conflict, Inequality and Public Sector Governance by Ralph Premdas (2007)

Politics in a Half Made Society: Trinidad and Tobago 1925-2001
by Kirk Meighoo (2004)

I have always wondered whether we are a nation big on reading, whether there are any or many book clubs etc. dotting the country. My suspicion is though, that we are all so busy trying to improve ourselves in other ways or just otherwise caught up in so much other more ‘necessary’ activities, that we generally see reading as a luxury of time which relatively few of us seem able to afford. With the absence of conducting any surveys or having statistics from NALIS (National Library and Information System Authority of Trinidad and Tobago) on circulation or book sale figures I at least decided to check the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) Human Development Report 2006 for Adult Literacy in Trinidad and Tobago.

Under the heading Adult Literacy Rate (% ages 15 and older)
Trinidad and Tobago is ranked at number 57 out of 177 countries (Norway is at number 1 and Niger completes the list).

Countries in the region that came out ahead of us included:

Barbados (31)

Costa Rica (48)

Cuba (50)

St. Kitts Nevis (51)

Bahamas (52)

Mexico (53)

The ranking of regional countries coming after us included:

Antigua and Barbuda (59)

Dominica (68)

St. Lucia (71)

Venezuela (72)

Grenada (85)

St. Vincenet and the Grenadines (88)

Suriname (89)

Dominican Republic (94)

Guyana (103)

Jamaica (104)

If interested in finding out anymore about literacy in Trinidad and Tobago, you think you might know of someone in need of bringing his/her literacy up to a considered acceptable level, or you wish to become a volunteer reading tutor, then ALTA (Adult Literacy Tutors Association of Trinidad and Tobago) is one organistion that you might think of visiting.

Read on my people!

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Blog Action Day: Environment Trinbago

Sun, 15 Oct 2007 04:25:00 GMT

posted by gdtrinweb

Today, Monday October 15th, I am publishing this post in solidarity with over 15,000 blogs worldwide, commemorating this day being denoted as Blog Action Day. This is an inaugural event and the chosen theme for this first Blog Action Day is the environment. The environment has had much global media coverage of late, particularly with all the concerns of global warming. Additionally, there has been the impact of the film An Inconvenient Truth, the corollary of former US Vice President Al Gore’s environmental crusade, for which he recently received the Nobel Peace Prize, sharing it with a United Nations network of scientists known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Blog Action Day and its environmental theme has the endorsement of UNEP, the United Nations Environment Programme.

Coincidentally though, one aspect of Trinidad and Tobago which I believe does not get much coverage or is not given enough consideration by the public at large, is the environment. Some notable environmentalists/journalists who have done well to make the populace more environmentally aware are Dr. Julian Kenny, Eden Shand and Anne Hilton (please forgive me for omissions of other notable personages, which I am sure I have committed here).

Trinidad and Tobago along with the rest of the Caribbean islands have traditionally been heralded for their natural beauty. Yet somehow, in our developing status, we seem or are somehow forced to think much more of what might be deemed as more serious concerns, on issues such as economic development, crime and serious health issues like HIV/AIDS. While addressing these concerns are indeed critical and necessary, our environment, the very earth upon which we walk, air we breathe and water we drink, if ignored, we undoubtedly do at our own peril.

While admittedly there are environmental organizations and efforts in the country which are to be lauded, regrettably I do not see a widespread infrastructural approach to environmental issues and management in operation locally. For instance, while SWMCOL (the Solid Waste Management Company) boasts of its recycling programme, the average household in the country throws out all trash at home. Are our citizens in possession of any recycling bins for sorting bottles, plastics, paper etc? Walk through Port-of-Spain, go to any public or private agency or even at U.W.I. (University of the West Indies) and there are no receptacles for sorted trash.

A few years ago I remember going to Toco with a group of friends on the day after an extended holiday weekend and was sickened at the extensive and gross amount of trash that was strewn all over the beach. Hordes had enjoyed themselves at the beach and just left it in a disgusting state. The long and still ongoing battle between environmentalists and the government’s plans to build aluminium smelter plants in this country shows at least that we do not have a dormant or docile environmentalist movement.

Given the relatively sheer small size of Trinidad and Tobago and the other Caribbean islands, one might assume that we should more easily be able to manage our environment. Yet, our small size also merits that we should be even moreso conscious of protecting it.

Kudos to all the community organizations and individuals that help to promote awareness, action and protect the environment of our precious Trinbago. We who are here now and generations to come, are in your debt.

Short List of Community-based Environmental Organisations in Trinidad and Tobago

Asa Wright Nature Centre
Environment Tobago
Pointe-a-Pierre Wildfowl Trust
The Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists’ Club http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/dGTB

TNT in TnT: Web 2.0 for Trinbago Development

Sun, 22 Oct 2007 16:20:00 GMT

posted by gdtrinweb
As a newbie blogger, my awareness of the amount of Trinidad and Tobago online content has been increasing, particularly so, of course, with respect to blogs. Incidentally, the first TNT in this posting title is not an abbreviation for ‘dynamite’ but my own abbreviation for ‘The New Technologies’ and their attendant applications -or apps, as techies refer to them. Such apps and activities include web site feeds, wikis, podcasting, blogging (albeit blogging has been around for some time but has grown in extent and influence in the past few years) and the use of social network sites like Facebook, MySpace and Second Life. Of course, there has been an explosive global growth of such technologies and activities within recent years, so perhaps my TNT abbreviation is right on the mark.

All such technologies fall into what has been coined as Web 2.0. This term refers to, and is inclusive of, all the aforementioned technologies and applications that facilitate greater personalisation and collaboration among web users. The ‘2.0’ descriptor is reflective of this development as a perceived second generation or evolutionary phase of Internet development, emergent after the success of the dot.com companies came to their demise via the tech bubble bust in the early 2000s.

One trait that has long been applied to the Internet is its ability or potential to be a societal leveler: to increase the possibilities of everyone with access to an Internet connection by increasing their ability to acquire and share ideas and knowledge, express opinion, and facilitate the formation of social networks and participation in collaborative projects. One notable book greatly endorsing this Internet leveling theory is The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman.

Many people, global organizations such as the UN (United Nations) and its satellite agencies, governments and notable individuals such as Nichloas Negroponte the co-founder of MIT’s (Massachusett's Institute of Technology) Media Lab, who has launched the global initiative of One Laptop per Child (OPLC), have accepted or acknowledged this power of the Internet and have sought ways to facilitate and keep track of its growth.

One such measure is the ITU’s (International Telecommunication Union) DOI (Digital Opportunity Index) which measures countries' information technology and telephony access for their citizens. The DOI 2005/6 report saw South Korea leading the rest of the world (181 countries were surveyed) as the most ‘wired’ nation, where about 94% of its internet users have access to broadband: a result of the government of South Korea’s determined effort of using technology as a development strategy for the country. Trinidad and Tobago ranked 59th on the report.

If Web 2.0 can live up to its touted benefits from social networking, its usage among our citizens could conceivably have some positive effects on our social conditions. If in addition to exchanging photos and posting video of friends and relatives or of de lime at de fete on YouTube and Flickr, more of us can exchange and collaborate to come up with solutions or ideas to address some community needs or aspirations, we could perhaps better see and enjoy the beauty in empowering ourselves.

An increasing number and diversity of local bloggers and podcasters is an increased potential of citizen journalists that can provide more news, information and opinion on issues. Increased possibilities and abilities via technology should probably and logically lead to more citizen action with more pressure and increased official and unofficial stratagems for rating accountability in the public and private sector.

Like South Korea however, we still need to rely on the government to provide or facilitate the improvement of our info-telecom infrastructure. Government too, should provide improved and increased e-services through the various ministries, which would be a virtual decentralisation of government services that should somewhat alleviate -but not remove-the need for the long ignored calls for the actual physical decentralisation of such services from Port of Spain. The government can take example of all the mas camp web sites, where people can purchase Carnival costumes from anywhere in the world, long in advance of their arrival for the national fete.

One key aspect about development and people’s faith of achieving success in their own country is the actual or perceived level of opportunities or possibilities. When people see or perceive these as existing, increased or increasing for themselves, they can and do begin to dream, with dreams increasing in size in direct proportion to the actual or perceived level of opportunities or possibilities. We must use Web 2.0 though to bolster and complement and not to supplant our actual face-to-face connections. Technology can be used not just as a means to widen our familial and social connections but also as a means to deepen them: to establish more understanding among us in our increasingly busy and distracted lives.

Technology is not just about 'a rise of the machines.' It is a rise of the people; but it is not a panacea. Nonetheless, the evidence is there that the information age has been and is a boon to the lives of many across the globe. Surely, this is no different for us in our country.

Let us ride this second tech wave, Web 2.0, toward a shore of our collective increased opportunities and benefits. As great as riding the waves at Maracas or Toco can be, they can never provide a chance of making our future look so good.

See my blogrolls and site links in the sidebar.

Allyuh.com, is a local online content blog. It also rates local blogs and maintains a listing of the top ten local blogs (I hope with time this blog will appear on that list).

Caribbean Connector A blog by a Trinbagonian librarian, is a good source for further information on Web 2.0. applications.

Learn more about computer technology and activity in Trnidad and Tobago at the TTCS (Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society) website (they also have a blog to click to on their site).

Mark Lyndersay’s BitDepth column in the Trinidad Guardian (Tuesdays), is also a good source for technology news and information. His columns can also be found on his web site at Lyndersay Digital.

Finally, there is the ICTS (Information and Communications Technology Society) of Trinidad and Tobago, which caters to professional development of IT professionals in the country. http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/dGTB