Sareta Ashraph

By SARETA ASHRAPH

This is part 4 in a series that looks at how Sierra Leone, once known as the “Athens of West Africa” and blessed with mineral resources, fell into a brutal civil war a mere 30 years after independence in 1961. The series began in the February edition of the T&T Review with a look at how thing began to fall apart.
The analysis continues with an attempt to eventually answer the question: are there lessons for Trinidad and Tobago from Sierra Leone?

Foday Sankoh died five months before I first walked into the Special Court’s detention facility. He had been transferred into the Court’s custody in March 2003 from the main local prison on nearby Pademba road and was in extremely poor health. In prison since his arrest in May 2000, he appeared to have suffered several strokes which had gone untreated; it was also possible that he had been beaten while in prison. Though it was not being said publicly, it was unlikely he would ever be in a fit state to stand trial.
Though I never met him, he was present in almost every interview I conducted. The ex-fighters deified him; many were still loyal to him and what they saw as his revolution, stating that the atrocities were committed by fighters who turned away from Sankoh’s vision. His fighters called him ‘Pa’ and in return, he had referred to him to them as ‘his boys’.
A Temne with roots in Tonkolili district, Sankoh was not well-educated and made his living as a soldier and photographer in the Sierra Leone Army. Sankoh was relatively unknown in 1991; in fact, for the first few months of the war, Freetown’s newspapers speculated that Sankoh was simply a pseudonym under which Charles Taylor operated. Sankoh, however, would become synonymous with the conflict in Sierra Leone.
In 1971, Sankoh played a smaller role in Sierra Leone’s history when he, along with several other members of the armed forces, was arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting a plot by the military to overthrow Siaka Stevens’ government. Sankoh was imprisoned for 4 years in Pademba Road prison. On his release in 1975, he attempted to return to the army but was rejected on account of his conviction. Little is known of what Sankoh did between the time of his release and the late 1980s. He is said to have eked out a living as a photographer in Bo and Kenema districts. What is more certain however is that in the decade which followed his release he became interested in the left-leaning discussion groups that were furtively sprouting up all over the country. It was there that Sankoh was to receive his own ideological training.
The philosophy of Pan-Africanism, which called for a politically united Africa and which railed against neo-colonialism, found fertile ground in these discussion groups. In 1975, Colonel Ghaddafi, a fervent Pan-Africanist, published the first of his three volumes of political philosophy, also known as the ‘Green Book’. Ghaddafi’s brand of Islamic socialism was not accepted in its entirety: Sierra Leone’s Muslim, Christian animist communities got along too well for that. Still, the idea of a socialist government, capable of redirecting the flow of wealth away from foreign companies and self-enriching politicians and chiefs and providing a functioning welfare state, found favour in the increasingly radicalised underground discussion groups.

It was members of the Fourah Bay College (FBC) Student Union who first made contact with representatives of the Libyan government. Initially, student politicians were funded to attend conferences in Libya which discussed Green Book-inspired socialist philosophies.  In March 1985, following a student strike, the APC government expelled more than 40 members of the students’ union as well as a few teachers from the university. Shortly after their expulsion, a delegation led by the student union president Alie Kabbah, went to Tripoli. It was on this trip that Kabba made a request for commando training from the Libyan government. 
Groups from Sierra Leone started to travel to the Benghazi training base in Libya. According to the Truth and Reconciliation report, published in 2004, the first group of four Sierra Leoneans travelled to Libya in August 1987. Of the four people, one was Rashid Mansaray who was destined to become the RUF first Battlefield Commander.
Another one of the four, Victor Reider, today the SLPP spokesman, is credited with recruiting Sankoh into the Libyan training programme. Sankoh is said to have travelled to Libya for training with 3 others in April 1998. In Libya, the Sierra Leonean recruits met nascent revolutionaries from other parts of the world, including Liberia and the Ivory Coast. Although Charles Taylor, in his ongoing trial in the Hague, has denied any pre-war connection with Sankoh, it is widely believed that it was in Benghazi training base in 1988 that the friendship between the two was born.
Taylor’s route to Libya was more circuitous. While Sankoh was in prison in Sierra Leone in the 1970s, Charles Taylor was an economics student in Waltham, Massacchusetts. Taylor returned to Liberia in 1979 and supported the April 1980 coup which saw the murder of then President Tolbert, who was disemboweled in his bed by the coup leader Samuel Doe. Doe then took the reins as President of Liberia. Taylor was appointed as an officer in the General Services of Liberia but was fired in May 1983 for allegedly embezzling approximately one million dollars which was wired to a US bank account. He fled Liberia soon after and was arrested in Massachusetts in May 1984. His lawyer was Ramsey Clark, who was later to become US Attorney General.
In September 1985, while imprisoned in Massachusetts, Taylor and 4 other inmates staged a prison break. All the other inmates were recaptured and Taylor’s wife and sister-in-law were arrested for driving the get-away car. Taylor, however, was not apprehended and managed to travel out of the United States to an unknown destination, which may have been Libya or a West African state such as Ghana or Côte d’Ivoire.
In October 1987, the President of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, was murdered by one of his chief aides, Blaise Compaoré who then took up the Presidency. Taylor was rumoured to have assisted Compaoré and it was said that it was through Compaoré that a connection was made with Libya. In any event, when Charles Taylor met Foday Sankoh in Libya in 1988, Taylor was by far the more respected ‘revolutionary’: he was already well-known by several African heads of state and was likely to have been able to count on now President Compaoré’s support of his own revolution in Liberia. 

By this time, Sankoh had become a leader of the Sierra Leonean contingent in Libya following a split between Sankoh and Alie Kabba. Unlike Kabba or Rashid Mansaray, Sankoh was not an academic and, in confidential interviews with the TRC, some of Kabba’s circle described Sankoh’s grasp on ideology as being weak. Nevertheless it is clear that Sankoh was both a gifted orator and a strategist capable of gaining the support of backers for the future Sierra Leonean revolution. Some commentators believe that it was in Libya that Taylor and Sankoh reached an agreement: Sankoh and the men loyal to him would assist Taylor’s launching of the revolution in Liberia and once Taylor was in a position to do so, he would support Sankoh’s own revolution in Sierra Leone. In truth, there may never have been such an agreement: Taylor had both sufficient funds and the support to launch his own revolution while Sankoh did not. Attaching himself to Taylor may have the only viable option to Sankoh and would have provided him training bases for his men and a country bordering Sierra Leone from which to launch his war.
Sareta Ashraph was Defence Counsel at the Special Court for Sierra Leone from 2003-2009. She can be reached at saretaa@gclaw.co.uk. She thanks Daniel Eyre for his comments.

In Guyana, reciprocated animosity has not even come close to plumbing the awful depths which exist in so many other countries and, God willing, such hideous animosity never will prevail. But the endless political and racial suspicions and outspoken antagonisms, the endless jockeying for position in purely partisan causes, the endless threats of trouble to come, the endless refusals to compromise, the continual putting of party before country, the ingrained and knee-jerk demonstrations of incivility in the dialogue between the principal parties – all this is immeasurably frustrating, morale-depressing and wearying. One yearns for an end to it, one yearns for a large patriotism to include all of us, one yearns for an uplifting sense of greater vision, one yearns for mutual civility, one yearns for peace. And I read Yehuda Amichai’s poem and I know what he means.

I, MAY I REST IN PEACE

I, may I rest in peace – I, who am still living, say,
May I have peace in the rest of my life?
I want peace right now while I’m still alive.
I don’t want to wait like that pious man who wished for one leg of the golden chair of Paradise, I want a four-legged chair right here, a plain wooden chair. I want the rest of my peace now.
I have lived out my life in wars of every kind: battles without and within, close combat, face-to-face, the faces always my own, my lover-face, my enemy face.
Wars with the old weapons – sticks and stones, blunt axe, words, dull ripping knife, love and hate,
and wars with newfangled weapons – machine gun, missile, words, land mines exploding, love and hate.
I don’t want to fulfill my parents’ prophecy that life is war.
I want peace with all my body and all my soul.
Rest me in peace.

As I get older, and the older I get the faster I seem to get older, I find myself regretting all the wonders and miraculous developments I will miss as time goes on beyond my passing. Every day brings a series of reports on something new in the world, some prospect promising extraordinary, fresh insights into how the universe works and how man will master all he surveys. A recent Scientific American has a series of fascinating articles on “12 events that will change everything” – for example, synthetic life, self-aware machines, the discovery of alien intelligence, extra dimensions, fusion energy and polar meltdown. I find myself yearning to be there still when all this happens.

By GREGORY McGUIRE

The wait is all but over. On Wednesday Sept 08, 2010, the Dream Team of key sectoral partners assembled under the People’s Partnership Government delivers the financial plan that will reveal its blueprint for breaking with the past and laying the framework for the promised future.
Unlike many of the years of the last Manning regime, Budget 2011 faces serious revenue constraints, which, as the old adage goes, offers opportunity for real invention on the basis of necessity. For these old colonies of the Caribbean, the courage to invent is the only route to transformation, economic and otherwise. On Wednesday, when Minister Dookeran delivers his budget, we will know whether the Persad-Bissessar administration has the required courage to finally face the challenge of transformation head-on or whether it will settle at the political line of least resistance.

THE ECONOMIC CONTEXT
The current economic context does not portend good news for fiscal 2011. While oil prices have remained in the mid 70-dollar range, gas has barely moved beyond $4.50/mmbtu. Moreover, crude oil production is at its lowest level in fifty years and continues to slip further away. The decision to halt work on the Aluminum smelter means that no new plants are under construction or on the horizon. The Central Bank’s recently published index suggests that the manufacturing sector was operating at only 63 per cent capacity for the first quarter of 2010. These trends have contributed to lower export earnings resulting in a current account deficit in the last three quarters of 2009, the first for over a decade. The Central Bank forecasts economic growth of one per cent in 2010 improving in 2011. However, the policy inertia and ambiguity experienced since May 25th may have served to further weaken business confidence along with prospects for an early recovery. In the context of the short term economic outlook, it is unlikely that the government will be able to raise more revenue than it did in the last fiscal year. It is perhaps the most powerful sign yet that a brand new approach to economic management is the imperative of the times.

ECONOMY AS A COMPLEX SYSTEM
Government’s economic planning and budgeting must recognize the economy as a complex and whole economic system Under the PNM, the economy was viewed as a simple system in which the energy sector (offshore) attracted investment and generated rents for redistribution onshore. New capital investments generated onshore were incidental and a bonus. This approach has led to the re-inforcement of our energy dependency and a loss of competitiveness in other sectors. However, it is equally inappropriate to think about the economy system as being exclusively onshore, leaving the energy sector to fend for itself. One gets the sense that the current occupiers of the Finance tower are glued to the view that “the longer term solution is to restructure the onshore economy”, with the energy sector not warranting attention and support.
Both approaches are extreme and deficient because they fail to recognize the economy as a complex and integrated system. The energy bias of the PNM resulted in an adhoc approach to all else and lip-service to a wide range of production possibilities as manifested in a predilection for quick fixes. Serious problems were avoided by simply voting more money to appease discontent or establishing parallel agencies and institutions in a strategy that could only be described as expensive avoidance.
This approach by the Manning administration led us into the financial black hole of special purpose companies such as NIDCO, RDC, CISL, EFDC, to name a few, almost all of which were dreamed up as overnight solutions to the problem of non-delivery in the Public Service. Having failed to achieve the much-touted Public Service Reform and Transformation on which so many hundreds of millions of dollars were spent by successive regimes, Manning opted to avoid the challenges altogether by creating a parallel system answerable to only himself, thereby laying the groundwork for the charges of corruption and waste that threw him out of office. Perhaps now,  having been rescued from the pressures of having to perform and deliver, he can better appreciate the dangers of such tempting and expedient shortcuts.
It’s a lesson that should temper the instincts of  the Persad-Bissessar administration which is already devising shortcuts of its own to intractable problems that require structural and systemic solutions. As popular as he may be, the hangman won’t solve crime and as soothing as it sounds, the Children’s Life Fund is not a solution to a snarled health system that costs lives, including the lives of children.
Going back to the onshore sector- it would, however, be a mistake for the PP government to counter the Manning strategy of over-reliance on energy by an over-emphasis on the onshore sector at the expense of the energy sector. To do so would be to throw away the valuable competitive strengths built up over a century of hydrocarbon development and to sacrifice the quickest option we have for boosting revenue.
What is required is a way of looking at the economy in all its complexity and relationships so that the impact of fiscal decisions can be traced throughout the system. A systems approach to budgeting would provide a useful means for prioritizing expenditure by determining the sectors, programmes, projects and initiatives with the greatest economic and social value-added per dollar of expenditure. For example, capital expenditure on an irrigation project in Diego Martin is likely to yield less benefits per dollar spent than a similar project in Caparo.
Mr  Dookeran has had the benefit of three months to  design his budget. Commendably, he engaged the national community in the process through a series of stakeholder meetings. Notwithstanding the puzzling last-minute meetings that occurred after the PM’s return from New York, one hopes that he has been able to distill the broad range of public inputs and hopes into the budget that can lay the framework for fundamental transformation of the economy. For the future, one hopes he will take the lead in weaning the population off the last-minute wish list through a more permanent, ongoing and structured form of public participation. 

BUDGET IMPERATIVES 2011
When the systems approach is applied to the budgetary process it becomes evident that the system is out of balance. The nation’s productive capacity and capability is misaligned with its patterns of consumption and requirements for foreign exchange. The over-arching Budget strategy, therefore, should be one of targeting fiscal measures towards boosting output across a range of productive sectors of the economy. The emphasis should be on stimulating production rather than subsidizing consumption. Building productive capacity generates new jobs, incomes, foreign exchange and a better quality of life for all. Given the high probability of lower revenue, it is imperative that the Minister looks at widening the tax net and improving the efficiency of tax collection.
Within recent years the C-efficiency ratio i.e. the measure of VAT revenue to consumption, has been falling due in part to the inclusion of new items on the zero-rated list as well as the non inclusion of the major sector of the economy in VAT. Improvement in tax collection by more efficient administration can contribute to improvement in the overall non-energy tax take. In seeking to meet the objective of increased efficiency of the taxation system, the Government may have to revisit its position on tax administration. The following key initiatives stand out in the main productive sectors of the economy:

ENERGY SECTOR
The most pressing issues in the energy sector are to stem and/or reverse the decline in oil production and to boost natural gas reserves. The obvious solution is to stimulate exploratory and development drilling, both onshore and offshore. This calls for a revision of the Petroleum Taxes Act to provide a system of targeted incentives to promote the desired change in investments. In this regard, resuscitating mature land fields is perhaps more important than stimulating deep water exploration. Moreover, land operations provide greater opportunities for local companies than offshore. With respect to gas, the situation is a little more complex. The most powerful incentive for new exploration activity in a gas province is availability of new markets. Unlike oil which can readily be produced and traded in the international market, the harsh reality is that gas requires the existence of new markets. The goal of boosting reserves must be complemented with an open market-oriented approach to new gas-based development. Therefore, the Government will have to articulate an unambiguous policy position on energy sector expansion. This, more than any other provision, is what will determine the appetite of prospective investors upstream and downstream.

PETROLEUM FUELS SUBSIDY
While the energy sector has contributed most to the economic prosperity of Trinidad and Tobago for over a century, it has also been the source of pain. The petroleum fuels subsidy has escalated to over $1.5 billion. As oil prices climb higher, this subsidy absorbs a greater proportion of the national pie. The government therefore needs to place a limit on its commitment to the petroleum fuels subsidy. One mechanism for doing so is to freeze the subsidy at US$ 80/bbl price level. When oil prices go above that level the burden should be borne by the motoring public. Ultimately, the government needs to move expeditiously to implement a comprehensive CNG policy, the framework for which has already been designed under the Manning administration.

AGRICULTURE
There is a compelling case for the Budget to place heavy priority on Agriculture. Apart from the obvious desirability of feeding ourselves, food prices have been the largest single contributor to inflation over the last six years. In addition, agriculture and food production offer tremendous linkage effects on tourism, food processing industries, health and education. Policy initiatives in this sector should pay particular attention to resolving age-old problems of inadequate irrigation, praedial larceny, access roads and farm subsidies. However, in keeping with the overall strategy of increasing production, special effort is required to support farmers in upgrading to modern farming practices.
The PSC Nitrogen Model farm reports yields of 5 to 8 times more than is produced by traditional methods. The application of these methods by farmers could help boost production. Like gas, agriculture strives best when a secure market exists for the farming output. New policy initiatives should be implemented to boost demand for local farm produce. In this regard the School Feeding Programme and the work of the Trinidad and Tobago Agri-Business Association (TTABA) offer great starting points for re-fashioning this sector. 
Greater effort is required to cement the linkages between agriculture and other sectors including the commercial food sector- hotel, restaurants and fast foods subsector-; education; trade etc. Equally important is a local content policy for Agriculture. Indeed, the government would do well to consider what guidelines might be borrowed from the energy sector to boost the development of Agricultural and other sectors.

MANUFACTURING SECTOR
The local non-energy manufacturing sector is one of the pillars of the onshore economy. At 62 percent capacity utilization, there is room for more growth. But its principal markets in Caricom are depressed and unlikely to recover in the immediate future. At this stage of our development, this sector’s long term development and viability is a function of business expansion, innovation and market penetration. The fiscal policy mix therefore needs to place emphasis on these three broad strategies. The Manning administration had targeted several new sectors for expansion including Film, Entertainment, Seafoods, Ship Building and Repair, Yachting, Plastics Paper and Packaging. The rationale for the selection of some of these sectors have been questioned in some quarters primarily because of the poor resource capacity and capability that currently exists. An alternative approach to identifying sectors for expansion is to examine what currently exists on the ground to match the projected needs of target markets. Our greatest hope seems to lie in the capacity to create unique products. This requires, from the start, the identification of the multiplicity of small and micro enterprises - what Lloyd Best called the maroon firms, companies that are currently doing good business but which lack the capital and/or know-how to expand. Who they are? Where there are? What do they produce? What are the limitations to their growth? These are some critical questions that must be answered in formulating fiscal policy to support the growth of this key sector.
A culture of innovation is necessary for long term sustainability at the level of the firm or country. This has been a favourite theme of Planning Minister Mary King on the question of economic development. Here now is her chance to put her ideas on the national innovation system into action. Consideration, however, needs to be given to promoting innovation first and foremost at the level of the firm and in research institutions. One aspect of market penetration requires systematic approach involving trade missions, private sector bodies and trade agreements. But the tendency to blame the government has become endemic with Business complacency with the returns to be made within the local and Caricom markets.

TOURISM AND CULTURE
Many are convinced that the combination of Tourism and Culture presents Trinidad and Tobago with a potent formula for economic development and expansion. Yet every government has failed to grasp the opportunity. This mix of sectors brings together our most abundant natural resources and talents; inputs are largely indigenous while outputs have a proven demand in both the local and foreign markets. The potential for net foreign exchange earnings, revenue and employment are attractive. Harnessing the resources and building these industries require a conscious and deliberate policy direction similar to that used in building the energy sector. This suggests the need for enabling legislation, seed capital, institutional and infrastructure development- and the strength to resist the easy tokenism that has marked government policy to this day.

INFRASTRUCTURE
The development of national infrastructure is one of the ongoing imperatives for a nation in rapid development mode like Trinidad and Tobago. It is obvious that infrastructure development has lagged behind requirements in several areas: highways, roads, bridges, and institutions. It might also be the case that priorities were skewed. One example is the concentration of Government in the capital city and the implications for traffic in and out of Port of Spain on a daily basis.
A serious commitment to decentralization in Budget 2011 will set the stage for a re-design of the national grid that will re-channel capital expenditure and human energy towards a more productive use of our resources, both financial and human. In such a scenario, expensive solutions to the self-inflicted problems of bad policy- such as the rapid rail project- will simply render themselves redundant.
Budget 2011 will also need to pay attention to satisfying basic human needs. It is in these areas that the Government faces the sternest test from the electorate. Conscious effort must continue with respect to meeting the demand for water and housing. In the provision of social services of health , education and sport, we need to see how the root causes of poor administration and misalignment with the broader goals of national development, are to be tackled.
And then there is the hot potato that’s boiling over on the front burner: Crime.
The evidence so far is that it remains a political football with huge energy now being expended on building a political base around the hangman’s noose.  Hopefully, in last week’s retreat, sanity returned to suggest that the PPG should resist the lure of the easy headline and get down to the task of constructing the integrated national framework on which real security of person, property and State can be built on some enduring basis. Anything else is mere distraction.

Carole Boyce-Davies

The Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies (LBIWI) will host a panel discussion on “The Black Woman’s Agenda” as a curtain raiser to the International Conference on Black Power at the St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies.
The Institute’s discussion takes place on Thursday September 16, 2010 at its  premises at 91C Tunapuna Road, Tunapuna. It starts at 6.30 p.m.
The UWI conference on Black Power runs from Sept 18th-19th, 2010 during which several of the world’s leading academics in the field of Black Studies are scheduled to participate.
The Conference is an initiative of the Department of History, UWI, St Augustine to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the 1970 Black Power Revolution and to trace the progress which has been made since then.
Presenting at the “Black Woman’s Agenda” at the Lloyd Best Institute will be:
• Sheila Radford-Hill, Luther College of Diversity - “Massa Ain’t Finish: Women, Black Power and Post-Colonialism”

Sheila Radford-Hill

• Ferne Louane Regis, Dept. of Liberal Arts, UWI, St Augustine- “Integration, Neutrality or Separate Identity: 1970 and the Dougla”
• Carole Boyce-Davies, Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University - “Panafricanism and Transnational Black Feminism: Challenging Padmore’s “Or” in Ideological and Political Orientations”.
*Nicole Johnson, Education and Research Officer, Oilfields Workers Trade Union-”Women in the Vanguard of the Labour Movement of Trinidad and Tobago”.

Tony Cozier

A surprising three-part exchange was witnessed in the pages of the Express last month. It involved two persons associated with West Indies cricket, respected journalist Tony Cozier and Cave Hill Principal Sir Hilary Beckles, who enjoy very high profiles in the region. Truth be told, neither of them did himself particularly proud in the exchange, momentarily descending to ad hominem references that, one hopes, will have seemed intemperate in the cold light of the following morning.
The exchange began on Sunday August 1 with Cozier’s commentary on the then recently concluded WICB regional T20 championship. The acknowledged dean of West Indian cricket writers expressed general satisfaction with the organization and running of the tournament but suggested that the Board “needs to consider an adjustment to the format and a time-frame outside the rainy season.” Having dismissed Canada as being “not up to scratch,” Cozier goes on to comment that the Combined Colleges and Campuses side “more than held their own but it would be a general boost if they were confined to their first-class status and their best players were freed up for their native teams in the shorter versions.”
One week later, that seemingly innocuous comment provoked a fiery response from Beckles, who is also Director of the CLR James Centre for Cricket Research which is located at Cave Hill. In a piece entitled “In defence of CCC” in the Express of Monday August 9, Beckles trains his high-calibre guns on the outspoken journalist. Taking dead aim at the writer’s reputation, the university don fires his first volley in his opening sentence: “…Cozier’s written cricket commentaries for some time have fallen short of what West Indies cricket now needs, that is, analytical clarity, attention to detail, and perceptive judgment.” Before adding that “The late Tim Hector is sorely missed,” Beckles has this to say: “…a young cadre of promising writers is emerging across the region and the articles by Vaneisa Baksh constitute the new standard.” One is entitled to wonder about the implied comparison between Cozier’s massive portfolio and Baksh’s still fledging career as writer and one is hard-pressed to avoid the conclusion that there is more in this mortar than just the CCC pestle.

Sir Hilary Beckles

But Beckles’ gunfire is not done. Describing Cozier as “consistent in his general opposition to UWI’s cricket intervention” and “negative”, he notes that the commentator’s reaction to the performance of the CCC team in “the most dramatic T20 match ever played” was not what it should have been. Cozier, he claims, “did not respond with critical commentary but with facile negativity that reveals ignorance of the facts and an absence of a development mind as far as West Indies cricket is concerned.”
“But the orgy of negativity with which Cozier seeks to seduce a suffering unsuspecting public will only serve to suck us to colder depths,” he adds in a final salvo. “It might sell papers but not cricket tickets.”
Since when, one is entitled to wonder, is selling cricket tickets the journalist’s responsibility? What gives the administrator the right to expect the writer to be or to act as a part of the marketing machinery of the Board? But it is not my intention to pursue that line of questioning here since that might mean ignoring the core issue, which is whether, all things being equal, the CCC should continue to be given a place in the regional tournaments. Cozier’s answer is an emphatic no. In a measured response to Beckles’ article in the Express of the next day, he makes clear what is his objection to maintaining the status quo: “What West Indies cricket doesn’t need now is a virtual Barbados second team parading under some other name in its major tournaments.” 
“And it can certainly do without the nepotism and self-glorification,” he ends, “for which so many of those in prominent positions of power use the game.”
I want to leave the two antagonists there for a moment and turn my attention to the erstwhile chief cook and bottle-washer of the Secondary Schools’ Cricket League (SSCL), Forbes Persaud. For many, many years, he served the League as Secretary and then President before being elected Secretary of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board and eventually succeeding his old rival Alloy Lequay, the TTCB CEO. In so far as cricket was concerned, Persaud’s pet peeve was precisely the way in which “those in prominent positions of power use the game.” He was determined to use his office to at least expose - if not eradicate - corruption in that form; it might well be that that crusading zeal is the real reason why he was unceremoniously removed from office shortly after the Friends of Cricket group was replaced at the helm of national cricket last year.
Be that as it may, like so many of us who were born in the decade before Joe Solomon broke the stumps from square-leg to tie the First Test at Melbourne in December 1960, Persaud adored Frank Worrell. I am willing to bet, though, that he knew little or nothing about the details of what Beckles calls “what Sir Frank had envisioned decades ago”. That has not prevented him – and scores of other nameless, faceless heroes like him in T&T and across the region, likewise ignorant of the articulated Frank Worrell vision – from being a true servant of Trinidad and Tobago and, by extension, West Indies cricket.
As Secretary, Persaud argued incessantly, in public and private fora, for recognition of the fact that the SSCL’s major responsibility was not development but exposure of the available talent; the responsibility for its development, he insisted, belonged to the national organization. The talented little boys who play in the SSCL typically devote countless hours of their time to practising and playing cricket, day in, day out. Persaud has long been haunted by the idea that clerical cock-ups, administrative bungling or systemic inefficiencies might somehow prevent these youngsters from eventually securing a deserved place on the regional team. He felt that, with UWI having no consistent participation in national cricket at any serious level, many good players were lost to the game once they entered university. It is primarily his vision that spawned the SSCL’s award of an annual scholarship – does the name Tishan Maraj ring a bell? - to an outstanding cricketer who combines his sporting prowess with academic excellence.
Which brings us back to Cozier and Beckles. “CCC,” Beckles notes, “is more than the 11 players on the field. (…) It is an enormous development programme.” The professor appears to be saying that the university, too, must be seen to be a part of the development nexus and to have a role to play in developing talent for the regional and international arena. From my reading of his commentary, I do not get the impression that Cozier demurs; he shares the view, I am certain, that the university has a role to play in developing national talent. His objection is, therefore, not to the inclusion of the CCC unit in the competition but to the composition of the units that have been taking the field; they should be genuinely representative of the region and not simply of any one country.
“Fine,” I imagine Cozier responding, “but develop the players on the campus away from the demanding gaze of the paying spectator and let a team be selected from among the best of them to take the field only when they are deemed ready for the challenge of coping with the best players in the region.”
So Beckles’ claim that Cozier’s “coat of negativity about the origins, presence and performance of student cricketers makes sense only to the undiscerning mind” does not, in my view, stand scrutiny. If Cozier condemns the current arrangement, it is precisely because he does discern the ways in which it “seeks to seduce a suffering, unsuspecting public.” And I, for one, - and I am willing to bet that Persaud makes three – am completely in support of his position.
West Indies Players’ Association President Dinanath Ramnarine complained recently that Cozier had failed to seek his organisation’s side of a story before going into print. The issue was related to a standoff between the Guyana Cricket Board and WIPA over Guyana’s participation in the 2010 Airtel Tournament and Cozier’s story had accused WIPA of indulging in “brinksmanship.” Let me state clearly here for the record that I too have had my difficulties with Cozier, who turned 70 last July with little indication that the quantum of his copious output is about to be seriously reduced. I seem to remember that he once came out in zealous public support of Desmond Haynes for the West Indian captaincy in a way that smacked of insularity, a word I had never previously associated with this most West Indian of West Indians.
Well do I remember, though, his public recommendation that Brian Lara, as ready as he would ever be for the glare of the Test arena, be left at home to develop his game in the regional competition instead of being sent out to Australia for the 1990/91 series. The eventual multiple world record holder’s double century at Sydney soon put that piece of advice in proper perspective. Cozier, some claim, has never quite been the same since that major unforced error. And who can forget how he indefensibly came down on the side of his boycotting countrymen when that Barbadian fast-bowler whose name most of us have (deliberately?) erased from our minds was passed over in favour of Kenny Benjamin for a 1990 Test against South Africa? But I have absolutely no doubt that none of that makes Mr Cozier deserving of the cavalier treatment Beckles metes out to him in his column.
Tony Cozier, Lloyd Best joked – half-joked! –when he was asked to select a West Indies all-time best side, is the first man he would pick. If the game in the region is to survive, Best argued, what Cozier brings to the game from off the field is arguably at least as important as the on-the-field performances on which he has been reporting and commenting. I remember thinking then that it was only a matter of time before UWI acknowledged with an honorary doctorate the immensity of his contribution. That was over a decade ago and most would agree, I think, that the game in the region has not survived, certainly not in the sense that Best meant it.
“As cricket performances continue to fall so too, it seems, has the quality of his writing,” says Beckles in the opening paragraph of his article. I am tempted to agree. It is highly probable, even likely that the drop in the quality of the on-the-field production did affect the quality of the analysis beyond the boundary, especially from a man who has been to the mountaintop with the unbeatable world champion teams of Clive Lloyd and Vivian Richards. Who among us has not occasionally been tempted to settle for less than a 100% effort when faced with the comparison between Brian Lara’s troops, say, and Lloyd’s world-whipping cavaliers? Still, the question arises: is not the body of work Cozier produced in the nearly three decades between his beginnings in 1965 and the start of the West Indian cricketing decline substantial enough to earn Mr Cozier his doctorate?
Or will he be required to continue satisfying the good Doctor - as Ms Baksh and the younger ones are clearly doing - before the three well-deserved letters are added to his name?

With all the attention being paid to laptops as the new school year starts, the more important pedagogical issues have been sidelined. In the eyes of those who support this initiative, the laptops have already become symbolic of a progressive nation. This is because it is an article of faith among virtually everyone that formal education is the key to achieving sustainable development: but, as a full-fledged atheist, I am automatically suspicious of all articles of faith.
So the first question to ask is whether it is true that education is the foundation of development. There is a strong correlation between education and development, but the correlation is not a simple one. The so-called Asian miracle, whereby countries like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore went from underdeveloped to developed status in 30 years has been attributed in large part to their investment in health care and education. But former World Bank economist William Easterly notes in his book The Elusive Quest for Growth that the median growth rate of African countries has fallen over time and this drop happened at the same time as the massive education expansion.
Easterly argues that initial schooling is positively correlated with productivity growth, but the effect doesn’t last for more than 20 years.
 “The investment in human capital should not be taken as necessarily formal schooling, which  does a poor job of explaining growth,” he says. “Human capital is much broader, including  knowledge gained from friends, family, and co-workers, skill learned on the job, and worker  training. We have a hard time measuring this broader definition of human capital but do know  how to increase it: create incentives to invest in the future.”
The economist and philosopher Amartya Sen, who won the Economics Nobel Prize in 1998, makes the same point in reference to China and India. China turned to marketisation in 1979, but already had basic education and widespread health care. When India did the same in 1991, it had a half-literate adult population, and the situation is not much better today. In Development as Freedom Sen says,
“The social backwardness of India, with its elitist concentration on higher education and  massive  negligence of school education, and its substantial neglect of health care, left that country  poorly prepared for a widely shared economic expansion.”
My view is that cultural reasons explain why China and India had different approaches. China’s culture has been shaped by Confucianism, which is essentially a philosophy of social responsibility. India’s culture was shaped by the Brahminism, which is an elitist and authoritarian system. Sen, in another book, argues that governments should measure poverty differently. Instead of income, they should look at what he calls “capability deprivation”. Basically, this involves not merely looking at what opportunities are provided, but looking at whether people can take advantage of these opportunities.
The last Prime Minister in a Budget speech complained, “Too many of our young people are not participating in the numerous opportunities for education and training, sport and culture, provided by this administration.” Exactly. But then he added that these young people are “choosing instead to be involved in self-destructive criminal activity”. But are they really choosing? If we adopt Sen’s capability deprivation approach, we might learn that they are, for various reasons, unable to take advantage of those opportunities. The reasons may range from psychological to cultural but, until they are identified, it would be a very difficult task to prevent the most deprived individuals, often simplistically categorised as the most depraved, from choosing the criminal lifestyle.
So let’s start with a basic question: Why do some children not learn in school? If we look at the statistics (outlined in Table 1) we see that one third of children in primary school and more than half in secondary schools are not learning. We can be certain this is not the children’s fault.
Sources MORI 2006, CSO, CSEC Report 2008

American psychologist Barry Schwartz, a social choice theorist, has an interesting book called The Costs of Living, which is about how the market philosophy undermines social stability and personal happiness. He observes that most kindergarten and first-year teachers will tell you that motivating small children to take part in school activities is not a problem. The problem, if anything, is to restrain their enthusiasm so large groups can learn the same thing together.
 “As schooling proceeds, much of this early energy and enthusiasm disappears… It’s possible  that natural curiosity and enthusiasm for learning diminishes, but unlikely. Children who  come to regard school as a boring, irrelevant chore somehow become alert, inventive, and  intellectually alive in the streets after school…. Children are taught in school that learning is  work, not play, and they are further taught that the kind of learning that does go on in school –  book learning – is reserved exclusively for school. Kids learn that there’s  school and there’s life  and what goes on in one place has nothing to do with what goes on in the other.”
Schwartz also cites some experiments to prove his points. In a kindergarten school, the children were given rewards for reading books. These children read more, but they preferred books of shorter length, with large print. And this reward effect is true of adults, too. In another experiment, people were given puzzles to solve. Some were paid five dollars, some not. Later, when given similar puzzles, those who had been given a $5 reward liked the task less and were less likely to work on other puzzles.
So a utilitarian approach has the effect of making students study only material that will come on tests, and to psyche out what the teacher usually asks, getting by doing as little work as possible. In T&T, where intellectual work is viewed with, at best, tolerant contempt, teachers know this phenomenon only too well. An article titled “When Stupid is Smarter than We Are” by Mihnea Moldoveau & Ellen Langer (in a collection of essays called Why Smart People can be so Stupid) explains why this is so. The authors note that the self may be no more than a collection of social roles that are selectively activated by different social environments. According to this theory, we follow scripts as we interact with others in particular social roles. So what is the teacher’s script?
1. The basics must be learned so well that they become second nature.
2. Paying attention means staying focused on one thing at a time.
3. Delaying gratification is important.
4. Rote memorization is necessary to education.
5. Forgetting is a problem.
6. Intelligence is knowing what’s “out there”.
7. There are right and wrong answers.
“Having figured out the teacher’s script, the student proceeds to game it quite beautifully, by producing behaviour targeted at reinforcing that script in order to achieve maximum results,” the authors observe. “The student’s script calls for behaviour designed not necessarily to produce the greatest amount of knowledge, skill, or wisdom for the student, but the most favourable impression on the teacher.”
Five principles from the student’s script are:
1. Do not question the basic assumptions of the teacher’s argument, lest the teacher hate you and punish you for disrupting the show.
2. Demonstrate focus in your work and attitude, and hide from the teacher your many interests.
3. Show the teacher how much you are working on his class material; refer to the material as difficult or demanding.
4. Memorise the teacher’s precise words when talking about a problem relevant to the class.
5. Do not bring up any subject from the class that you have forgotten.
Moldoveau and Langer cite the following problem given to students: There are 17 sheep and 16 goats on a boat. What is the age of the captain? Most students answer 33. Or this one: Mary is 12 and likes to read Harry Potter. Her brother John is 9 and likes to play video games. Do John and Mary live in a house or an apartment?
Most students chose one. This may seem stupid, but the students are following a script: “Don’t question basic assumptions, the teacher is stupid, has previously given silly and confusing questions that make no sense, so assume this is an addition problem with a right and wrong answer, or that there is some connection between Mary’s and John’s activities and where they live.”
In order to change the script, say Moldoveau and Langer, teachers should 1. Make a conditional presentation of information. 2. Vary focus of attention. 3. Mix work and play. 4. Present information in a disorganized way. 5. Introduce uncertainty in the presentation of information.
If teachers adopt this approach, children will learn the specific subject-matter more effectively and they will also be better trained to teach themselves later on. But making such a change is not easy. It requires both personal choice and institutional support. “People want work that is interesting, challenging, and socially valued. They want work with people they like. And they want work in organisations that treat them with respect,” Schwartz notes.
In this former slave society, however, there are few persons dedicated to learning, and fewer organisations which meet any of these criteria: and nearly all the teachers in nearly all our schools certainly don’t.

By LEONARD BERNSTEIN 

In any given population, Trinidad included, 15 per cent of the population has some sort of learning disability (LD), the severity of which can be further defined on a bell-shaped curve. Those at one end of the curve with high intellectual capabilities and good social support are often able to self-correct for their disabilities. For example, many “captains of industry” have written about overcoming their disabilities, allowing them to go on to productive and successful lives. Meanwhile, others further down on the curve need professional help: when this is provided they can move on to become productive members of society. Unfortunately, there are those whose disabilities are such that they have to be supported by the greater society.
How does this 15 per cent relate to crime, statistics on crime, and to those who are most likely to be perpetrators? First, crime is a default career choice when it is the only way to make a living in a skill-based competitive environment. Not surprisingly then, individuals without skills are the ones most likely to enter into crime as a source of income. Such individuals are not typically productive citizens, but rather a burden on society, the cost of which in terms of money and tragedy has to be borne by this same society. Clearly then, anything society does to reduce the number of its citizens who lack skills is going to reduce the option of crime as a career choice. This is, of course, the job of the education system.
There are many reasons why an individual might not receive, be able to receive, or be afforded the opportunity to receive an education. Nonetheless, a lack of education usually indicates a lack of literacy—that may result from a lack of opportunity to acquire skills, ineffective teaching of skills, and/or learning disabilities. It can be inferred that such minimally literate individuals are more likely to pursue crime as a career choice. Importantly however, to the question as to whether there are strategies available that will intercept and divert this possible career choice and lead these individuals to a path to become productive members of society, the answer is an overwhelming and positive yes.
Data from many countries show that a high proportion of prison inmates cannot read or write, in many cases because an underlying learning disability was not recognized and not remediated. As children, they were not recognized as such by parents, health professionals and teachers, especially teachers. The teachers are not wholly responsible here as, in Trinidad and Tobago, the teachers are not trained to recognize children with LD. Subsequently, these children are ignored in school, labeled as either lazy or incapable, and cannot keep up with their learning peers. Not surprisingly, they fall behind, are kept back in school or inappropriately promoted on to other teachers in subsequent grades, and, drop out of school. So, there they are out in society; they have no vocationally-useful skills: thus, crime as a career choice becomes obvious and makes sense!
In countries like the USA or the UK, children with LD are generally recognized early on and receive some remedial services that allow them to get through school and become productive members of society. Unlike the situation in T&T, teachers are trained to recognize LD early on and, in many cases, referrals can be made on a timely basis to the relevant professionals to provide remedial services. Ergo, lower crime rates, at least from this segment of society.
Here in T&T, most LD remedial services are available on a private basis. Public sector remedial services for the LD child are very limited; the history of why this is so is one of lost opportunities. The first person to call for a child development programme in T&T was Dr. Isahak Mohammed, a paediatrician in San Fernando, and that was back in 1965. Think for a moment on how many opportunities have been lost since then, think on how many lives would have been changed, think on how many less people would have been incarcerated, think about how much money could have been saved in not prosecuting and prison-supporting these people, and think about how much societal tragedy could have been averted, how many less robberies would have resulted, and how many less murders would have been committed. It is not too late to start changing this equation!
Over the past few years, there have been a number of people in T&T who have been working to change this equation, who have been assiduously working to provide services and to establish in T&T what has come to be called the Collaborative Child Development Programme (CCDP), a programme to provide what is available in the private sector to those in the public sector.

The names foremost in this effort are Mrs. Ivis Gibson, well-known for her commitment to families and children from the NGO she established, Families In Action, and Dr. David Bratt, a local paediatrician, along with Dr. Natalie Dick, a developmental and behavioural paediatrician at Mt. Hope. This group, aided by many other local citizens and some foreign volunteer consultants, has been working to establish this programme, initially as a private/public partnership. Other groups have been and are working to supply services to the LD population. Many individuals have helped in this process, as well as NGOs such as United Way, foundations such as the Fernandes Foundation, and corporations such as BP and Republic Bank.
To establish these services takes the commitment and involvement of many people and many sectors, including the participation of three ministries in government, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of the People and Social Development. However, the effort encounters impediments which slow progress. Each time there is a change of government, each time there is a change of ministers, and a new learning curve has to take place to educate these individuals to the nature of the issues. Ergo, more lost opportunities!
A grassroots push by T&T citizens to demand services would greatly help but it takes commitment, time, and money. Further, getting programmes started operates quite differently in a command, top down, cabinet style parliamentary system as in T&T wherein decisions are made at the top and filtered down through the bureaucracy for implementation. In the USA, for example, the situation is quite different: the electorate generally makes their wishes known from the bottom up to their representatives who then establish the organizational structure for the bureaucracy to follow. In T&T, the bureaucracy may respond slowly or even not at all whereas in the USA, legislative and public watch dogs often apply needed pressure for action to see that the grassroots demands are implemented.
For the CCDP programme in particular, the money will have to come from the private sector, individuals, foundations, businesses, and from government. Adequate funding from government is especially difficult as politicians may be willing to respond to societal demands, but mostly respond with funds that will produce immediate results, a failing common to both governmental systems. So it’s a case of: reduce crime:- buy a helicopter; reduce crime: buy a blimp; reduce crime: hire foreign consultants; reduce crime: hire more police; reduce crime: let the military make arrests; reduce crime: more hangings; etc., etc., etc.—all short-term “fixes” that don’t fix! A long vision is necessary, one that sees many years down the line; unfortunately, it’s a vision that politicians are short on.
A whole other dimension in the discussion of long-term educational programmes to reduce crime involves child development from birth to age 3. Consider the following. In a large US study (Hart & Risley, 1995), by age 3, children from low income families had a vocabulary of about 350 words; children from a middle income group about double that; and children from the high income group about three times that. (Indeed, by age 4, the children in the high income group had a larger vocabulary than many parents in the low income group.) Not surprisingly perhaps, the children’s vocabulary knowledge was directly related to the number of words spoken to them. Low income parents used many fewer words than parents in higher income groups. They not only used fewer words, however, but they also used different kinds of words: lower income parents were much more likely to use prohibitions (“don’t”; “no”; “stop that”; “come away”) than higher income parents who used many more encouragements. The number of words used and also the kind of words used predicted not only language knowledge, but also the development of cognitive skills and the acquisition of reading skills. Unfortunately, once this pattern is established, it all too often persists; and, contrary to general assumptions, more education later does not change the equation.

The relationship between literacy and a child’s environment was further highlighted in a study by Lesaux et al. (2007). These authors “examined the relationship between early literacy rates, developmental health of the population, and demographics in 23 school communities. The results showed that school-level literacy scores were related to the physical, social, and emotional maturity of the kindergarten population, as well as community demographics, including the proportion of families in each school catchment area living below the low income cutoff, the proportion of single-parent families, and the community 5-year mobility rate. Furthermore, the proportion of children at risk for literacy difficulties varied systematically by school, ranging from 0% to 44%; this risk was strongly related to developmental health and to demographics of the school community.”
It is not my goal here to suggest specific remedial programmes. But simple exposure to reading activities pays dividends. One intervention model that has been used successfully by higher income groups is simply reading and telling stories to their children, an action facilitated by higher education levels and more time available from the struggle to survive. For those working
parents who are forced to drop their children off at school well before the schools open, would not regular reading activities also work? Would it not prove beneficial, for example, to gather these children together at school before classes start and simply read stories to them? Would it not be beneficial for an organization such as the Trinidad and Tobago Association of Responsible (Retired) persons, TTARP, to form a cadre of surrogate grandparents to simply read stories to these children? It should prove to be a win-win situation for both. NALIS already offers a model in providing story telling sessions to groups of young children. This is a programme that perhaps could be replicated in other locales.
Clearly, to promote successful development in young children, interventions must start early so that disadvantages do not take hold. This means that interventions cannot only be directed at the children but must also support parents and enrich parents’ own skills. Parents cannot be expected to inculcate in their children skills that they themselves do not possess. Such parent-focused interventions are critical to stop the patterns of disadvantage going on down the generations as children go on to have children of their own. Without an investment in parents, yet more lost opportunities!
CONTINUED NEXT MONTH

The Parliament of Catalonia recently voted in favour of declaring bullfighting illegal in the Catalan territory that lies within the borders of Spain.
A great deal of thought has to go in to wording the objective fact just presented. That opening sentence contains many of the contentious issues and concepts with which one is always advised to tread carefully in Spain. Should one say Catalonia, or the Catalan territory that lies within Spain? Should one say The Catalan Parliament, or the Parliament of the part of Catalonia that lies within Spain? Should one say Spain, the Spanish nation, or the Spanish State? All of that before even getting to the issue of bullfighting. They are interrogations that reflect a whole host of unresolved issues within the very complex reality of Spain.
Let us start with The Parliament of Catalonia. Simply put, it is one of the seventeen Parliaments of the seventeen autonomous regions that make up the Spanish state. To qualify Catalonia as a “region” of Spain would no doubt land me in trouble with staunch Catalan nationalists. For them it is insulting to say that Catalonia is a region of Spain. They consider Catalonia a nation, with its own culture, identity, language, et cetera. For them, inclusion within Spain, and being branded as another region (in the way Madrid, Castille-La Mancha, Andalusia, Galicia, Aragon, Extremadura, or Castille-Leon are) is but the culmination of an intolerable reality that was foisted upon Catalonia some time ago.
Strong feelings for Catalan-ness have always been a reality. They were only exacerbated throughout the almost forty years of the Franco dictatorship, from 1939 to 1975, after the triumph of Franco’s troops brought an end to the Spanish Civil War in 1939. In the early eighties, less than a decade after the death of Franco, with the return of democracy, a new map of “the Spain of Autonomous Regions” was drawn up in. 17 Regions (Madrid, Catalonia, Andalusia, The Basque Country, Galicia, Murcia, Aragon, Valencia, Extremadura, Castille-Leon, Castille-La Mancha, Asturias, Cantabria, The Balearic Islands, The Canary Islands, Navarre and La Rioja) were granted autonomous governments within a centrally administered state. Each autonomous region had its own parliament, with responsibilities for the running of many different domains of its affairs. Each had its own president, with his/her cabinet and ministries, just like any government of any full-fledged country. It is an arrangement that sits easily with most - except, notably, The Basque Country and Catalonia.
Strong feelings for Basque and Catalan nationhood and independence are rooted in historical misgivings. There has always existed in The Basque Country and Catalonia a significant portion of Basques and Catalans who see themselves as being a different people, a country, a nation. They are strongly resentful of having had obligatory belonging to Spain delivered upon them, at different times and with varying degrees of intensity. The Franco regime imposed the speaking of Spanish, to the detriment of Catalan and Basque. Offenders were severely dealt with. There is no shortage of stories of such offenders being killed or imprisoned during the years of the Franco regime.
The Basque Country and Catalonia include territory that extends into the borders of France. It is common to talk of The French Basque Country and French Catalonia. In the 35 years of the new Spanish democracy since the death of Franco death, many attempts at appeasing nationalist feelings in the Spanish part of Catalonia and The Basque Country have been made. It is fair to say after this time that the autonomous arrangement, with varying degrees of self-government within the Spanish state, has not satisfied the staunchest Basque or Catalan nationalists in Spain. Throughout the rest of Spain, feelings against the most extreme manifestations of Catalan and Basque nationalism have grown in recent times.

The nationalist parties of Catalonia and The Basque country have become crucial brokers in the Spanish National Parliament. After the years of absolute majorities won by the socialists in the 1980s and early 1990s, then by the Conservatives People’s Party in 2000, absolute majorities have become a thing of the past. The Socialists, in power since 2004, have often had to negotiate parliamentary and governing agreements with Basque and Catalan nationalists, as did the conservative People’s Party during its first tenure in power between 1996 and 2000. Socialists and Conservatives alike have often had to cede to their demands though the Aznar Conservative government, with its absolute majority between 2000 and 2004, took a particularly hard line, giving rise to even greater Basque and Catalan nationalist feelings and to greater electoral success of both nationalist parties at the 2004 elections.
Maintaining a satisfactory equilibrium is a difficult task for any government, whether socialist or conservative. The Basque Country and Catalonia together account for about a quarter of the population of Spain. Catalonia has seven and a half million people and The Basque Country about two and a half - eleven million in a country of 45 million. The Nationalist Parties are usually quite close to absolute majorities in autonomous elections. The last such elections, in 2007 in Catalonia, and in 2009 in The Basque Country, were the first since the autonomous system of government came into being in the early 80s in which they didn’t. For hard-lined believers in the notion of the Spanish nation, Basques and Catalans must simply accept that Catalonia and The Basque Country are peripheral realities that must go along with the majority will of the other 34 million Spaniards around them.
Basque and Catalan Nationalists consider this an intolerable and oppressive obligation since being part of Spain is a reality that was foisted upon them some time ago. They see themselves as being powerless to do anything about it since only Constitutional change, duly desired by a majority of 45 million Spaniards, can give them the kind of self-determination or independence many wish for. It is a state of things considered to be fundamentally flawed by many Basque and Catalan Nationalists. For them, Spanish democracy is a fraud since their fate is left to the majority will of a country that is not theirs. They consider themselves trapped since the Spanish State begins by never granting such a status to Catalonia and The Basque Country. Their only country, they will tell you, are Catalonia and The Basque Country, which extends beyond the borders of Spain and France. Countries defined in terms of conveniently delineated borders with little regard for true nations. As a Valencian friend of mine says: “Spanish centralism simply doesn’t understand how Basque and Catalan nationalists really feel and what they rightly want for their nations. We are not a peripheral reality subordinate to Spain or France. We are nations and countries in ourselves.”
A particularly thorny issue in recent months has been the demand for a New Statute for Catalonia, basically a new legal framework for greater self-rule for Catalonia in many key areas, an initiative that was brought to the country by the Catalan Nationalist parties immediately after the return of the Socialists to power in 2004. The New Statute went through all the stipulated avenues: referendum approval in Catalonia, approval by the Parliament of Catalonia, and approval by the National Parliament of Spain. The approval of this New Statute and the swift implementation of many of its provisions were seen as too much by the conservative opposition, which decided to take the issue to the Supreme Court of Spain (each Autonomy has its own Supreme Court). After three years of legal wrangling between conservative and progressive judges in the National Supreme Court, the conservative majority had its way last June, and it was ruled that the New Statute for Catalonia was unconstitutional on many counts.

This is the context, many feel, in which the Catalan Parliament, shortly after the National Supreme Court ruling against the New Statute for Catalonia, voted in favour of making bullfighting, the national sport of Spain, illegal in the part of the territory of Catalonia that lies within the borders of Spain. A barbaric convention passing as art, delighting in animal torture, which has been going on for centuries! We want no part of such Spanish barbarity. Many see it as a riposte to the kick in the face from hard-lined centralist thinking across the rest of Spain and the ruling of a conservative National Supreme Court. It is also seen by many, deep down, as a weighted response to a kind of thinking that has never wished to entertain, let alone give any regard, to the notion of Catalonia as a nation, with its culture, identity and language, historically and legally trapped in the reality of being forced to be part of Spain.
The bullfighting debate has surfaced again in Spain with some vigour, unfortunately with more political overtones than with a substantial examination of the humanitarian issue. In the middle of all this, and of a gruelling economic crisis, came a sweet World Cup victory.
The Spanish football team is as domestically cosmopolitan as can possibly be. Ironically, the nucleus of the Spanish team that won the World Cup is the great Barcelona team. Of Xavi Hernández, Pujol, Pusquets, Piqué, Pedro and Iniesta, only the latter is not Catalan born and bred. The other five have Catalan, not Spanish, as their mother tongue. They learnt Spanish at school. Indeed, whenever Barcelona celebrates any major national or continental triumph (and they have had quite a few in recent years) and the Camp Nou stadium is opened to followers and ticket season holders, the players always address their adoring fans in Catalan. Never in Spanish! The foreign stars that become part of the Barcelona football machinery are always careful to learn key phrases in Catalan, which are delivered at the right moment. Consciously or subconsciously, any Barcelona Football Club triumph usually becomes a grand occasion for the revindication of Catalanism.
The rest of the Spanish national team boasts talents from Andalusia, Madrid, The Basque Country, Valencia, etc. David Villa, Asturian born, proudly linked to the region of his birth, and Valencia’s main striker for the past few seasons, is now on his way to Barcelona; Iker Casillas, from a working class suburb of Madrid, has been the captain and grand symbol of La Roja for some time now; Sergio Ramos, from the deepest entrails of Andalusia, who plays for Real Madrid, is as loved in Madrid as he is in Cantabria, La Rioja, Extremadura, Andalusia or Catalonia; ditto for Fernando Llorente, who hails from the Basque highlands, Joan Capdevilla, who hails from Lérida, currently plays for the Villareal, from the Levantine coast, or Andrés Iniesta, from the heart of La Mancha, Don Quijote country. The Spanish team is a very potent expression of the country’s autonomous diversity. Pujol makes no bones about being as proud of his Catalan origins as he is of representing the Spanish nation at the highest level and conquering the world, or of leading Barcelona to national and continental triumphs. He sees being able to speak Catalan as well as he does Spanish as something beautiful and enriching, which he wishes for his children and grandchildren. All the players of the Spanish national team always steer clear of nationalist and independentist issues. They see themselves as powerful symbols of a country that is full of wonderfully diverse regions that manifest their essence with great pride and vigour, and which are condemned to making a proper fist of the task of getting along with each other, as they, as players, do within the confines of the dressing room of a team that has conquered the world.
As the bullfighting debate rages on, Catalonia is now seen by some as a pioneering region (it has always considered itself as such within the context of Spain) that has made the first step towards the eradication of a barbaric ritual, or by others as a region childishly peeving at not having its way with its New Statute. I personally see nothing uplifting, artistic or aesthetically beholding about bullfighting. At the end of the day, I find it difficult to see beyond a poor animal being goaded and tortured senseless, till its inevitable death, after much drawing of blood, while thousands around watch and enjoy the spectacle. That a movement of zealous Catalan nationalists might have used the issue for opportune political gain bothers me not in the slightest. It is not a bad thing that Spain is once again being forced to debate the issue of bullfighting.
To those who say it is art, I say I don’t care. It doesn’t take much to see that the bull isn’t exactly enjoying what is being done to it. To those who extol the virtues and bravery of the matador, I say he might show his bravery by combating falling trees in the Amazon or overcoming the cascading torrents of the Niagara. To those who talk about the defence of a tradition, I say, so what? It makes it no less barbaric. Like it or not, tradition or no tradition, a poor animal is being tortured, and a grand spectacle is being made of it. It is more than arrogant to think that we have a right to do so. To those who say we kill animals for food, so what’s the big deal and what’s the difference between an abattoir and a bullring, I simply say a line has to be drawn somewhere. We also destroy plants for food, without submitting them to torture in the name of a supposedly aesthetic spectacle. To those who argue that the species of bull that is sent to bullrings would not exist if bullfighting were done away with, and that the existence of bullfighting therefore guarantees the continued existence of a species I always tell a little story:
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn I remember a portion where one plantation owner writing to another lamenting the loss of property after particularly strong storms and flooding. “Everything is fine here, we only lost some cattle and a few niggers.” Niggers were viewed as simply fit for production, in the way cattle were.
The species had to be maintained for that. A few centuries later, we have moved on. The survival of a bull species can be assured for something more than providing a nice spectacle for man. By the time of Mark Twain, we had moved on from the gladiators. Mankind had evolved beyond cutting off human heads for joyous spectacle. In the same way that Bartolomé De las Casas had managed, a few centuries, earlier to convince many a conquistador that Indians found in America had a soul.
In centuries to come, humanity might look back upon its representatives of a time and not understand how in certain countries of the civilised world bullfighting was allowed to go on until well into the 21st century.

By FAYOLA BOSTIC

Pools of dispersed oil collect on a section of the public beach in Grand Isle, Louisiana. —Photo: Getty Images

“The energy business is very dangerous.” Most people who work in the energy sector readily agree with this declaration from BPTT CEO and chairman Robert Riley. Despite the risks, however, most of these people go to work fully expecting to return home after their shift. It is probably safe to assume that the eleven workers who died last April in the Deepwater Horizon platform explosion in the Gulf of Mexico shared this expectation. For those in the energy sector, Riley said that the disaster is a reminder of how easy it is for things to go wrong. Investigations into the root causes of the explosion are not complete, but according to Riley, “BP is going to change and it’s going to happen fast.”
Just what those changes will look like will have to be seen. HSSE Director of BPTT, Tyrone Kalpee said that the Deepwater Horizon event caused the company to question whether it was doing things right. BPTT leads BP Global in safety performance, but Kalpee said that there is a need to “keep in a state of restless unease.”
Both Kalpee and Riley admitted that this way of thinking was not always the norm at BPTT. Kalpee estimated that it took about ten years to change what he called the company’s safety leadership culture. “People think that safety is either more expense or more people,” Kalpee said, “but we can’t demand performance without ensuring that people leave safely.”
The balance between focus on performance and focus on safety is not one that BPTT always got right. One technician who has worked on BPTT platforms for over thirty years said, “Long time, you could get away with a lot of things. Oil had to come from the ground and they didn’t care how you got it out.”
People who tried to speak out against unsafe practices were often victimized. Riley, who noted that fear was the greatest enemy of transparency, spoke of a time when workers were dismissed for reporting safety issues. Kalpee added that today, leaders found themselves having to work against these anecdotes. “People feel leaders are afraid of bad news,” he said. Now, company leaders pay much more attention to how they react to incidence reports. According to Riley, workers are encouraged to report hazards and to even stop unsafe work. “I’m sure it’s not perfect,” he admitted, “but we are seven times safer today than ten years ago.”
BPTT, which outsources most of its maintenance work to Neal and Massy Woodgroup and other smaller companies, is also demanding more from their contractors when it comes to safety. Riley said that most injuries are due to contractors. “In the past we didn’t count contractor injuries [as part of our safety indicators]. Now we don’t make a distinction.”
By having to meet certain pre-qualification standards before winning contracts with BP, Riley said that he feels that safety standards were rising among contractors. He still felt, however, that more still needed to be done on a national scale to ensure that standards did not fall when these same companies worked with local firms.
The company’s safety record in the last ten years is an achievement that the CEO said that he is proud of. On the other hand, he added that he also feels shame from being a part of a company that was involved in an incident of the scale of the Gulf of Mexico spill. The spill is the largest marine oil spill in the history of the industry.
While oil has stopped flowing in the Gulf and BP struggles to restore its reputation, work continues on the platforms off the coast of Trinidad. For workers, the disaster is a reminder of the risks they face everyday. For their leaders, it is a reminder of the awesome responsibility that they have to ensure that those risks are minimized. One technician put it this way, “If you are a police and you hear that another officer get shoot, do you leave the police force? No, you just make sure you wear your bullet-proof vest.”