Gregory McGuire reviews Carnival 2009

Fay-Ann Lyons

The Merry Monarch has come and gone for another year, leaving behind memories of the good, bad and ugly.  Perhaps the most unforgettable moment was the “voice” of the unborn “Junior” singing a few bars in his mother’s hit song “Meet SuperBlue”, as Fay-Ann Lyons powered her way to the  international soca monarch title. It has been an historic year in which Fay-Ann—“the Lion Princess”—showed courage, professionalism, creativity, poise and excellent judgment on the way to copping four titles—including the Road March.  Suggestions that Fay- Ann exploited her pregnancy to win sympathy of masqueraders are baseless and envious. “Meet SuperBlue” was easily the most popular song for Carnival 2009.  Fay-Ann’s success may have surprised many but we saw it coming. In the corresponding post carnival column of 2008 we noted that “Fay-Ann is thinking deeply about the music and grappling with issues that affect the industry as well as the people involved in it, especially the women”. “….. this Road March winner is an intellectual and she certainly has the courage to raise the issues.”
 Success comes with its associated risks including the challenges posed by new found wealth and fame. We hope that the Bunji /Fay-Ann can find in themselves what it will take to rise to the challenge.
Several other aspects of Carnival 2009 scored well.  We were treated to a rich variety of soca and chutney soca music. The Soca Monarch competition, in general, was a good tight show. The decision by the promoters and sponsors to abandon the “drinks inclusive” concept contributed to a safer and much more enjoyable atmosphere. However, the promoters now need to seriously reconsider what appears to be the automatic qualification for the finals by some of the “soca monarchs” of other islands. The intent of the promoters to make the contest truly “International” is understandable; however some of the finalists were of questionable quality.  Although having a moderate year by his own high standards, Machel Montano continues to excite audiences—old, young and very young—with scintillating performances. But he, too, seems to sense the need for change. The signs are already evident in that ambivalent love-hate relationship that Trinidad tends to have with its highest profile sons and daughters. Machel is clearly an artiste in need of a bigger stage, a bigger mission. 
In the Calypso Monarch competition, Rowley/ Manning, Hart and Obama were the dominant and popular themes. It seems as though calypso had returned to its moorings as the voice of the people, at least for now.  The old veteran Chalkdust choked the competition with a new song (which we may never hear again) about Manning’s “heart”.  It was a Chalkie master class.  Government may ignore these early signs of mass discontent at its own peril.
 Silver Stars, new wine with an old label, copped the Panorama title for the first time to become only the 12th band to do so in the 46-year history of Panorama.  Today’s Silver Stars represent the legacy of one of the oldest steel bands in Trinidad.  In October 2008, Silver Stars celebrated its 60th Anniversary. The band has the distinction of being the first and only steel band to have ever won the Band of the Year title—with its portrayal of Gulliver’s Travels in 1963. After being virtually dormant for nearly thirty years, the band has been resurgent over the last eight  years. This year’s victory has been in the making for sometime.  Silver Stars took the Pan in the 21st Century titles in 2002 and 2007, won the medium band Panorama title in 2007 and placed fifth in the large band category in 2008. This year it became the first band to move from medium to large and win, thereby breaking the 8-year stranglehold of Phase 11, Exodus and Trinidad All Stars.   Silver Stars’ success is partly attributable to their youth programme, which targets schools in its immediate geographic area. It is another version of the panyard as community centre of excellence that is bearing fruit. 

A member of Silver Stars.

 Band of the Year winner, Brian McFarlane continues to provide options for more mature masqueraders and a reason for spectators to be in Port of Spain. on Carnival Tuesday. Mac Farlane’s “Africa” contained all the long admired features of “big mas” in terms of visual impact, clarity of theme, craftsmanship, authenticity, and presentation. Only a handful of the other bands on show could boast of meeting even some of these criteria as the bra, bikini, beads, bumpers and feathers (BBBBF) continued to dominate the streets. Meanwhile, large steel bands continued to make a valiant effort to stay on the road on Carnival days. Starlift, All Stars, Desperadoes and Renegades are all battling against the odds to keep tradition alive. It was also good to see many of the traditional mas characters roaming the streets of the capital.  One wonders if there might not be public interest in viewing a “shootout” between the midnight robbers and bands of minstrels, at a designated time and place during Carnival.
 The  ongoing “venue mess” receives top billing in the bad category.  The lack of adequate facilities has been a sore point for several years now.  That capacity problem was aggravated by the decision to demolish the Grand Stand. As a result, promoters in the state and private sector have had to utilize sporting facilities to keep  large Carnival shows.  In a reversal of its previous position, the Government permitted the use of the National Stadium for AC 7 and the International Soca Monarch events, the consequences of which will be seen in time.
Meanwhile, Panorama returned to the Savannah after two years in South Trinidad.  Unfortunately, the makeshift “Grand Stand” and “greens” were inadequate in terms of seating capacity, public conveniences, acoustics, dressing rooms etc.  What is worse is that in the current economic circumstances, hopes for the New National Carnival and Entertainment Centre, initially promised for delivery in 2010, are fading rapidly. 
The Centre was initially delayed as the Government declared that it was revising the designs in light of the “highly successful mas on the road”—an obfuscation perpetrated by the former Minister and NCC Chairman in 2007. That the national instrument and national festival—self-proclaimed “The Greatest Show on Earth”—could be so shabbily treated in 2009 is shameful enough. That the various Carnival stakeholders have not raised a whimper is beyond reprehensible .
Whatever efforts that were made to improve on the Dimanche Gras show were undermined by the controversy surrounding the tribute to the late Mighty Duke. The saga manifests our penchant for poor planning, lack of consultation with key stakeholders and last minute decision-making.

Machel Montano

There were at least two strands of questionable behaviour headlined in Carnival 2K9. One involves the talented Mr. Machel Montano, who was associated with a number of explosive incidents. Artistic anxiety or perilous perfectionism? Whichever, Mr Montano might wish to step back, take a deep breath and consider whether professional intervention is required. WARNING: The pressure cooker environment of the entertainment is dangerous to one’s health. The second source of concern is the intense infighting among the soca fraternity for the Road March title.   It is widely believed that competition promotes excellence.  In a competitive arena everyone is expected to push themselves harder to achieve personal and professional growth, win or lose.
There can also be unhealthy competition where the reaction to the success of others is negative, and where losing is associated with shame rather than the nobility of trying.   It is perhaps one cause of the public spat between Sugar Aloes and Cro Cro.
Listening to some of the Soca artistes in the run-up to Carnival, one got the distinct impression that elements of unhealthy competition were taking root.  Some artistes were literally begging for “ah road march please’, suggesting that others had already won a fair share of the pie. Dubious relationships between certain media-houses and DJs associated with some artistes merely exacerbates the problem.  Corrupting the people’s art could result in a spirit lash.

By MICKEY MATHEWS

Basdeo Panday

Some say the reason behind the current round of instability in the opposition is the impending local government elections- already twice overdue.  But while the opposition quarrels with an eye on winnable seats in a local election that could come in July, they may well be creating fertile conditions  for general elections in as little as thirty five days. 
Would Manning risk a snap election when he already has an eleven-seat majority which was won in hard fought elections just fifteen months ago?
Well, it depends.  Those fifteen months have been an eternity in terms of the confluence of crises marked by the spiraling murder rate, the Udecott commission of enquiry, the Clico bust and the international economic meltdown which is playing mas with budgetary expectations.   For the warring factions of the opposition, these conditions provide common ground for endeavour and vitiate the need for atonement.   For the man in the street, confidence in the future has been eroded, as is his faith in the ability of government and parliament to rise to the challenge.
Yet it is for these very reasons that Mr Manning might be tempted to go for a renewal of the mandate. Bold action is needed to arrest the slide which, as bad as it is, represents only the incipient danger and may therefore be the best time to avoid the worst of it-  which is what his colleague in Antigua, PM Baldwin Spencer, could be thinking in ringing the election bell.
There is also the little matter of Manning’s obsession with the formal trappings of an executive presidency for which he needs special majorities and which requires, if the Round Table is to be believed, a return to the crown colony arrangements of the independence constitution adding, dangerously, the immunity of the executive, to its centralization of power. The disarray in the opposition could not provide more propitious conditions.

Jack Warner

Of course, Manning will remember that it was the election he called when only three and a half year into the  life of the 1991 parliament which first brought the UNC to power, and that in spite of disunity in the ranks of the opposition in the 2007 elections, he was denied  those special majorities, albeit narrowly.
But there is a real difference between disunity and disarray and disarray is the operative word these days when dealing with the opposition, mirroring the confusion and lack of order in the wider society. The debility there is palpably graver and can lead to the kind of voter despair that led to the PNM securing all the seats in the 1971 general election, and control of all local government bodies in 1980.
Both of these landmark events constitute the nadir of opposition politics and must be remembered by Mr Panday if only because he featured prominently in them in conflicting ways. In one he was the beneficiary and in the other the benefactor.  It was in the aftermath of  the election boycott of 1971, the context in which voter apathy was expressed, that he first entered parliament. Roy Richardson crossed the floor, became the parliamentary opposition and appointed him one of its senators.
In the second, it was the disillusionment which accompanied the breakup of the 1976 coalition he had built with labour that led to the ignominious defeat of his forces.

Winston Dookeran

The population as a whole remembers them because they are the signature pieces of the thirty year PNM hegemony which drove the country onto the brink of revolutionary upheaval. The NAR party of parties ended the long night of PNM dominance in 1986 and although that coalition quickly broke up, the country has been turning over parliament every four years on the average ever since. We, however, missed the last turnover after the opposition fractured into two over the issue of Panday’s succession.
Not since 1981 and the ONR have there been such sharp divisions of perceptions and loyalty in the opposition. Many fear this fragmentation is not merely the result of a hiccup in the camp of the opposition or misjudgment on  the part of Dookeran ( for which he should be pilloried by Mr Panday) but a return of the chronic condition of what is euphemistically called opposition cussedness. Recent events have been revealing.
One can hardly imagine a more depressing scene than Basdeo Panday charging into Jack Warner. General and Lieutenant engaged in a mortal battle on grounds that are not clear. Even if it is over the right to tilt at windmills, as Panday has suggested it is, the horrifying spectacle is one of the folk hero turning into the source of his people’s pain. Had Mr Panday been the Prime Minister, Caricom might have been compelled to intervene but he is Leader of the Opposition and it is, therefore, the responsibility of the citizen body to intervene, which is just as well sinceit is only we who can have the appropriate insight into the peculiarities of our condition which can turn nice men into beast.
 We have seen the contagion spread to the other half of the opposition where these peculiarities are equally at play and where division is the likely outcome, whatever happens to Panday’s offer of senate representation as currently conceived. What we are staring at is the collapse of the entire opposition and our system of politics, adding to the paralysis of government and administration.
The architecture for the party of parties was designed to release the opposition from futility and although the NAR was badly constructed, the era of turnovers it ushered in provided an exciting and rhythmic renewal of hope without delivering governments capable of governing- either in time of scarcity or of plenty.  The anticipated eclipse of the period is considered a good and necessary thing in some quarters on the belief that something new could now be built on the ruins, but we will be lucky if such a chance comes without huge cost. What with the youth armed to the hilt with guns of every conceivable kind, not to mention Manning’s constitutional ambition.
Those who wish to avert catastrophe must be certain of its source.  After much talk about wanting to lead the opposition into government and the preparation of the UNC-A’s executive for the task, Mr Warner let it be known that he is never consulted on the vital issue pertaining to the party thereby confirming what we always suspected: at the heart of the crisis is the enduring presence of maximum leadership. It is the bane of the country and the cultural phenomenon which expresses itself as one man organizations in the communities and as untrammeled executive authority at the level of the state. Might we not now have some elements for the resolution of this issue within the ranks of the opposition?
Fortunately the country has been throwing up quite a few independent-minded aspirants to public office. Nowhere is that more so than in the UNC-A but the utterly ethnic basis on which political solidarity is achieved and the culture of maximum leadership have denied them the base on which this inclination could be anchored—as Maharaj and Sudama have learnt to their chagrin. Much of that independence is sustained by economics to the extent that it could be so sustained. (Rowley would have been a goner and Jack may never have been without their substance). Their true salvation lies on the thing that is anathema to this place: the practice of politics defined as the pursuit of public goals by private means, as Lloyd Best regularly reminded us.
The paradox is that these leaders are maximum leaders themselves and share its ethos. They feel that the ways and means of maximum leadership are the right way- except when they are on the receiving end of it—which is why they have no credible explanation of their beef with Manning or Panday. But the rub is that their beef is there, it will not go away and in fact, has crippled these parties. There is no way forward but  for these parties to negotiate new ways of conducting business. The citizen body should be there to help.

Photographs by Pablo Delano
Essays by Milla Cozart Riggio
Ian Randle Publishers
pp. 150

Pablo Delano’s 11-year  odyssey  in the southernmost Caribbean island  is offered in 120 images of life in Trinidad. Presented in the drama of black and white, Delano’s photos  elevate the routine and mundane to high art by capturing the extraordinary in the ordinary.
That Trinidad would become Pablo’s labour of love was a surprise, even to himself, he says. “Growing up in Puerto Rico, the island of Trinidad seemed to me far away and very different- not at all part of the Spanish-speaking world I knew as The Caribbean. But when I arrived in Trinidad for the first time in 1997, the place felt comfortable, familiar, yet also foreign,” says Delano in introducing his book of pictures.
Over the next ten years, however, he would discover that Trinidad was a place like home.
“I found within Trinidad, and in particular within Trinidadians, a parallel spirit echoing the resiliency, humour, patience, thoughtfulness, generosity, gentleness and kindness that one still finds in Puerto Rico, despite today’s  rampant materialism and the proliferation of drugs, crime and violence. And I found, in postcolonial Trinidad , that the act of artistic expression plays a central role in defining identity. I found an affirmation.”
In an accompanying essay, Milla Cozart Riggio draws on her own 17-year encounter with Trinidad to “evoke some of the essence” of the place, its people and its culture:
“Through it all, I have struggled to define the character- or perhaps I should say characters- of this contrary land that has become almost  my home. The people are the heart of the island.”
In the pages that follow, “the people” move centrestage, making music, making art, making lives.

By NORMAN GIRVAN

I must confess to being conflicted by the news that Schengen visa requirements are soon to be lifted for four Caricom countries (http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/news-14249–35-35–.html). 
Like many others who have had to apply for a Shengen visa for even the shortest of visits, I find the procedures onerous, intrusive and demeaning. So I cannot but be happy for those citizens of Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados and St. Kitts and Nevis who will henceforth not be required to endure them if they wish to travel to Schengen zone countries. 
One the other hand, I wonder whether the measure is not a further step towards the establishment of first and second class citizens, and even of first and second class countries, within Caricom. There is a sense in which such a situation already exists de jure with respect to Haiti (whose citiizens are required to have visas to visit many other Caricom states) and de facto with respect to Guyanese, who are regularly hassled when attempting to exercise their Treaty rights to travel freely within the region.
Notably, the four visa exemption countries are among the smallest and the richest members of Caricom. Their combined population of just over 750,000 is only 5 percent of Caricom’s total population (and about 0.15 percent that of the EU). And their average per capita income is three and half times the Caricom average ( $14,700 compared to $4,220, Purchasing Power Parity 2000 dollars). This puts the four well ahead of the EU’s poorest members-countries like Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria and Romania.
Poverty and unemployment in the four are also low-they are all probably net importers of labour. Clearly, there is no risk of the EU being ‘flooded’ by job-seekers from these islands.
In return, the four countries have lifted visa requirements for nationals of all EU states, including several of the EU’s newer members that are former Soviet bloc countries. The European Commission can now boast to these newer members that it has put them on a ‘level visa playing field’ with the older members. Good bonus, little onus.
The problem, of course,  is that this makes the playing field even more unbalanced for other Caricom countries. Ironically, by granting the exemption to a select few within Caricom, the EU is introducing the very kind of distinction within Caricom that it’s seeking to abolish within the EU itself.
Consider the following (hypothetical) example. Mrs. Brown, a lawyer from Dominica, has been living and working legally in Antigua for several years. She may have a work permit, or a Caricom Skills Certificate, or she may a legal resident-it doesn’t really matter.
Mrs Brown plans to take a vacation in the UK and, while there, hopes to take a side trip to Paris. To do so, she will have to obtain a Schengen visa. She will have to answer questions that ‘prove’ that she has a secure and well-paying job in Antigua, when she plans to arrive in France, by what means and in what port of entry, when she will leave, provide documentary evidence of her means of support while in France,  the name and address of her host or host company in Paris,  etc., etc.  (See visa application form at http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/IMG/pdf/visagb.pdf).

On top of that, she will be required to take out medical insurance to cover the duration of her stay-even if it’s only for a weekend.
However, all this will not apply to Mr. Jones, the Antiguan taxi driver who takes Mrs Brown to the airport. Mr Jones will be able to simply buy a ticket and spend up to three months legally in France without anybody asking him any questions.
As there are thousands of Caricom citizens living and working legally in Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, and St Kitts and Nevis,  this scenario can be multiplied several times and in countless variations and permutations (for example, where Mrs Brown is married to an Antiguan, and her children are Antiguan, etc.).  And of course, it applies en masse to the eleven other Cariforum countries which are not so favoured.  
From the point of view of EU immigration regulations, therefore, we can see the emergence of first class and second class Caricom/Cariforum citizens-and first class and second class Caricom/Cariforum countries.
If the UK joins the Schengen zone-as it is reported to be considering-the distinction will become even more real to the ordinary citizens of Caricom. The majority will be required to secure Schengen visas to visit the UK. A privileged few will not.
There is another side to this. When the pros and cons of the EPA were being debated last year, some of us pointed out that the right of Cariforum countries to export services to the EU-an alleged benefit of the Agreement-was significantly qualified by the visa and immigration restrictions that would still be maintained by EU member states.
Lifting of visa requirements for some countries will place their service providers at a distinct advantage vis-a-vis those from the eleven other  Cariforum states.
They will be able to make casual visits and to scout out opportunities for landing contracts to sell their services under the terms  of the EPA, without the hassle of getting a visa beforehand .
There will still be other barriers to be overcome-  like certification requirements, mutual recognition arrangements and the possibility of economic needs tests being applied by destination countries. Nonetheless, they will have a ‘foot in the door’.
The visa exemption agreement, in other words, strengthens the likelihood of establishing first class and second class ‘country beneficiaries’ as a result of the operation of the EPA.
Could this be a reason why some Caricom countries, with an interest in the export of services to the EU, were much more enthusiastic about signing the EPA than others? At the time that the EPA was being debated, the visa exemption negotiations were well advanced.
The EU, of course, will argue that it cannot afford to allow free travel access to the whole of Caricom/Cariforum, because of the wide differences in living standards between the two regions and the possibility of illegal stay-overs.
There is a glaring double standard, however, in the fact that the EPA will force the countries of the region to open the majority of their markets to imports of European goods, and to allow in employees of European firms, while Europe continues to maintain tight restrictions on the inflow of Caribbean labour and casual Caribbean visitors.
One may also ask why, after centuries of colonial rule, and of European investment in, and trade with, the Caribbean, wealth is so heavily concentrated on one side and poverty on the other.
Europe, I suppose, bears no responsibility for this state of affairs.
The EU will also point out that within Caricom/Cariforum, visa restrictions are maintained against Haitians and that the Bahamas is not a member of the CSME because it does not wish to subscribe to the free movement obligations.
True enough. And the discrimination that Haitians, Guyanese and other Caricom nationals suffer in other Caricom states should be energetically condemned and opposed wherever it raises its ugly head.
At the same time, there is world of difference between the absorptive capacity of a country of less than 300,000 people and that of a continent of 500 million.
At any rate, the claim of Vice-President Jacques Barrot, European Commissioner responsible for Justice, Liberty and Security,  that the agreement shows that Europe is sometimes unfairly called ‘Fortress Europe’, hardly seems to stand up to scrutiny.
Far from breaching the walls of Fortress Europe, the visa exemptions merely extend the perimeter of the fortress by a few centimetres to facilitate tourism. Limited access has been provided to six small, relatively prosperous island states with a combined population that is 0.6 percent of the EU total. (Mauritius, population 1.3 million  and the Seychelles, population 82,000, are also in the agreement.)
The barriers against the rest have, accordingly, been underlined.
In the evolving system of ‘Global Economic Apartheid’ (the term is Fidel Castro’s) the Schengen visa and their British, US, and Canadian versions have become the equivalent of the infamous ‘Pass’ that black South Africans were required to have in their possession when traveling to whites-only areas.
“Don’t leave home without it, kaffir, or you will be in big trouble”.
It was Bob Marley who longed for the time when “there are no longer first class and second class citizens of any nation”.  He could have been talking about the world community.
Until that day, Marley predicted, there will be “war”.

Eric Williams

Eric Williams. George Chambers. ANR Robinson. Patrick Manning. Basdeo Panday.
As we debate the failures of leadership, we must ask the question: Have these men failed us or have we failed them? Or, have we simply failed each other?
As we cast about for solutions to the endemic crisis of comprehensive under-performance by the blessed people of this blessed place, we should the humility to acknowledge that, chances are, no matter who we put, they’re going to fail.
Repeatedly, we witness the rise of  good and worthy men and women , only to see them stumble and fall with our dreams in their hands. The experience is so widespread, so all-encompassing and comprehensive that it should give pause to those of us who are inclined to judge and to think that somehow, we will succeed where everyone else has failed; that our individual brilliance will make the difference. 
The evident and persistent dysfunctionality in every sphere of Caribbean life requires that we break our addiction to drama and obsession with detail in order to better understand the forces at work in shaping current realities. We should want to understand, for example, why so brilliant an historian as Eric Williams could fail so completely in understanding the structural fundamentals  for building one nation of out of many people; or why a man so obviously in sync with the people as George Chambers was, could fail to gain their confidence in buying himself time; or why ANR Robinson, so brilliant in negotiating his way through a long guava season in rising to the top, could fail in negotiating the requirements for national reconstruction; or why Basdeo Panday could emerge from the bowels of the people and yet fail to recognise the demands of their history; or why Patrick Manning could pound pavement for five years and still fail to make the elemental connections required for representation.

George Chambers

Perhaps if we understand these things, we might understand how honourable people like Gordon Deane and his fellow commissioners could come to fail us in the Integrity Commission; how an intelligent woman like Kamla Persad-Bissessar could sacrifice the best years of her life on the ephemeral altar of a chameleon; how a logical man Keith Rowley could lay down his honour at the feet of the tortured logic of expediency.
In the face of such examples, who among us could be so arrogant as to think that if, put in similar circumstances, we might respond somehow differently?
So, if we could agree that the problem is not simply one of personal defect, then we must consider the wider framework within which individual behaviour is framed. In this context, the skeleton upon which all hangs is the Constitution.
As we begin yet another round of discussion and debate on yet another Draft Constitution, it is worth noting that unless we understand what we’re looking for, and why, our input will again yield nothing of value. Chances are that this is exactly what will come out of this current round of Constitutional debate. All sound and fury, signifying nothing. Stasis and stymie of both governed and government. For the Impotent, those people unable to see how they could change the terms of their lives through their own efforts, this is a strategy that works by inducing system-wide paralysis, which in turn, becomes a strategy for defence and survival in the face of an advancing enemy.

ANR Robinson

It was the subversion of the Impotent that carried us through the rigours of slavery and indentureship through the dark days of imperialism and into the light of freedom. Almost 50 years later, we are yet to learn new ways of survival and progress for this new world of Independence.   Instead, creeping decay, institutional obsolescence and a comprehensive absence of mandate choke our fledgling nation. Philosophers understand that even for things to stay the same, they have to change. When they don’t, collapse is all but written in the stars.
It is against this background that we need to break ourselves away from the parade of political soap operas that pass for politics and focus on the real issues that will determine the terms on which we wish to engage each other in shaping this society. Those terms are, in essence, what a nation’s Constitution is all about.
If anything, the looming economic dangers should help throw into sharp relief the inadequacy of  our Constitutional arrangements for self-governance. More than ever, we will need access to information regarding the state of our affairs and the power to influence the direction of policy and decision-making. Clearly, a political system that allows a leader to huff the assumed representatives of the people as his or her own, cannot work for us. The West Indian variant of the Westminster system, designed as an expression of colonial authority, is inadequate to the needs of a modern democratic society. It’s a lesson we learn everyday as we try to figure out how to tame rampaging political leaders.

Patrick Manning

The old accustomed order of autocratic leadership that hides inside the fig leaf of Westminster democracy, simply doesn’t cut it for a people who should be fully engaged in the process of building their nation. If we didn’t understand it before, we see clearly now that ours is a Constitution designed for colonial managers who need not consult with, or answer to anyone and which confuses dictatorship with leadership. Always, it is confident that it knows what’s best for us which, invariably, is what’s best for itself. Our political leaders are not alone in taking their cue from the colonial impulse to autocracy. All of us have been celebrants at our own funeral, to paraphrase the artist Leroy Clarke. Just observe how we treat with power, whether in exercising it, or in being the objects of its exercise.  Our very relationship with power, from the corporate to the intimate, from the political to the social, is compliant, subversive, defensive and untrusting. 
The result is that everywhere, the means by which participation oils the machinery of open and democratic engagement, are clogged and choked. We therefore exist in a state of permanent miscommunication, misunderstanding while remaining prey to easy manipulation. Zeppo, leaks, gossip and grapevine are, instead, the order of the day; information makes its way to us mostly through subversion, rising to the surface in forms unrecognizable even to its originators. How can we ever know the truth about anything, we wonder?
This latest Constitutional discussion is therefore to be welcomed as one more chance to have a go at hammer out a consensus on the terms by which we intend to live here together and build a nation worthy of supporting our dreams for a better, more fulfilled future.

There is some validity in connecting the events taking place in the international financial markets with the unfolding events in T&T with respect to the CL Financial Group and the intervention of Central Bank. This piece is an attempt to put them into a framework for the purpose of analysis, giving context to the events as they’ve unfolded.
 
 TWO CRISES
 

Cyril Duprey

It started out as a “meltdown” in the subprime mortgage market. Essentially, the US housing boom which began in the late 1990s, began to falter by the middle of 2005. The government had no mechanism in place to head off the slump. However, the big firms on Wall Street found an avenue to profit from it. They created private offerings worth trillions of dollars by “securitizing” these subprime mortgage loans and Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs), christening them Collateralised Debt Obligations or CDOs with no government regulator whatsoever scrutinising them.
CDOs became the hottest thing since sliced bread and they were gobbled up by unsuspecting investors as well as banking institutions all over the world. Not only did no government agency or official try to stop these “deals” as they were selling, but Washington cheered this new market because it expanded home ownership…at least until the defaults started piling up. Some firms were selling as much as US$30 billion worth of CDOs in a single month! But as the toxic chain began to take form, cracks appeared that soon became gaping holes despite their AAA ratings from S&P and Moodys. It is the collapse of the CDO market that has triggered everything that has transpired in the international financial markets up to today.
 When the high level of default rates threw the CDO market into disarray, problems began to surface in the credit markets sparking off a financial crisis. However, given the “contagion” effect that’s now inevitable in our “globalised” financial markets, a full blown economic crisis ensued. The result is that the US is forecasting negative GDP growth between -0.5% and -1.3% for this year. Japan is experiencing its worst downturn in 35 years. The UK, its worst in 30 years and Germany, its worst in 20 years. There is a complete collapse in global demand; whether in manufacturing, construction, financial services or retail. The mere fact that a financial crisis and an economic crisis are both running rampant concurrently suggests that we are indeed witnessing the first Great Depression of this new century.

 THE CLF MODEL
 
Over 50 years ago, Cyril Duprey founded Colonial Life Insurance Company (CLICO). It is rumoured that Dr. Williams suggested to him that he change the name after the country attained independence and he stubbornly refused. His nephew, Lawrence, took over the reins at a time when CLICO was writing insurance and managing a few pension plans with funds under management standing at a few hundred million TT dollars. Lawrence Duprey has transformed this “little” company into a conglomerate with over 200,000 depositors and policyholders operating in more than 30 countries, employing over 10,000 people, writing insurance business and holding investments in real estate, spirits, methanol, ammonia,  banking, non-banking and brokerage operations valued in excess of TT$100 billion. How did he do it?
Duprey took over at CLICO during the Reagan/Thatcher era of dominance, a part of which was overseen by the not-so-watchful eyes of the maestro, Alan Greenspan. The prevailing buzzwords were “liberalisation” and “globalisation” while fiscal and monetary policy combined on the premise that unlimited prosperity can be created by the unlimited expansion of credit with a little guidance from Adam Smith’s “invisible” hand. Duprey grasped both the mood and the machinations of the times by travelling extensively and observing the ways of the world. He probably has more “flying” hours than most seasoned pilots.
In 1989, he purchased the 44 per cent of Republic Bank owned by Barclays Bank, via a loan from the same Barclays Bank, at $2.00 per share. At the time of writing, the share price is $86.00. He invested in methanol at a time when its price on the commodity markets was at an historic low. People in the know predicted then that it was going to be the final undoing of CLICO. When production began, the price of methanol soared to unprecedented highs. He went on to invest in real estate, buying out Home Construction. He got into spirits, buying a large chunk of Angostura, and proceeded to establish the CL World Brands platform in Scotland with a slew of alcoholic beverages. Of course, not everything he touched turned into gold. He invested in the Caribbean Tyre Company in Point Fortin which went bust. He bought over British American Insurance which is now the subject of a Central Bank’s intervention that has come years too late.
He couldn’t accomplish all this without a vision. Clearly, he’s the quintessential dreamer; no doubt with empire creation uppermost in his mind. But dreams have to be financed. Therefore, we need to look at these huge investment undertakings in the context of a grossly underdeveloped capital market in T&T that lacks both breadth and depth. Enter the EFPA, acronym for the Executive Flexible Premium Annuity, which was a product created at CLICO due to some loophole(s) in the Insurance Act. This product possessed the nomenclature of insurance but in reality it operated as a simple fixed deposit. The EFPA began selling like hot cakes and CLICO’s army of agents were being handsomely rewarded.
This generated a pool of funds large enough to finance the dreams. Naturally, problems would arise since the funds were being placed for short periods (up to 5 years, I think) and were being invested in projects with much longer gestation periods. The solution to this was to set the agents bigger and bigger targets every year and, of course, increase their commissions. While the agents did deliver in large measure, this also had the adverse effect of increasing the company’s cost of funds. Thus they had to keep on increasing the EFPA rates (to the point where they were way above market rates) to counteract the mismatch in maturing liabilities and assets. Incidentally, this is similar to the events of the 1980s when the Finance Houses began to crash, one by one, with their liquidity issues.
However, markets have elastic limits too. Thus one could argue that the sales of EFPAs began to fall off because of market saturation rather than any risk metrics being employed by investors.  The simultaneous collapse of methanol and ammonia prices served to worsen the situation.  Once the cash cows stopped delivering, liquidity problems were bound to surface. Thus,  unable to met  depositors’ claims , Mr. Duprey approached the Central Bank for liquidity support, apparently not realising that there’s no way the Central Bank would even contemplate such an action without taking full possession of the Group’s assets; which is exactly what it did.
 
THE WAY FORWARD
 
That the Central Bank did the right thing is beyond question. However, when Governor

By CARY FRASER

The inauguaration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States was an extraordinary moment of pomp and circumstance televised around the world as a symbol of the workings of American democracy.   Despite the festive atmosphere and the distinct sense that Obama’s inauguration was a watershed in American and world history, and given its promise of an American renewal, Obama’s inauguration address was a sombre recognition of  the challenges that his administration and the country were facing:

US President Barack Obama

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.
Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.
Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.

In these spare brush strokes Obama was able to convey to his audience both his intellectual depth and the clarity of his vision that the most important challenge that the US would face in the immediate future is the recognition of its responsibility to redeem itself from the political, diplomatic, and military blunders and the economic tsunami that were the legacies of the Bush-Cheney administration.
In an address that underplayed the stirring rhetoric which has defined much of Obama’s political career, one of the most significant statements was undoubtedly: “We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.” It was a brilliant use of Biblical wisdom to repudiate the Christian theological sophistry that had informed his predecessor’s style and substance of governance. However, he was also signalling his recognition that his own inauguration as the first African American President was a sign of American political maturity and the transiton to new era in American political, economic, and cultural life. Just as important, Obama was serving a reminder that his presidential campaign rhetoric calling for a politics of inclusion and change was going to be translated into reality.
This was a speech by a political leader who had been witness to the political paralysis that had overtaken the Clinton presidency during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and the consequences of the political polarization that the Bush-Cheney administration pursued after the destruction of the World Trade center on September 11, 2001.
Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008 had consciously sought to project the idea of a “new politics” that would overcome the intellectual sterility in Washington and restore effective government through a search for consensus across the political spectrum. His inaugural address provided further testimony to his recognition that the national crisis of economic and diplomatic bankruptcy would require a willingness to engage all stakeholders.
By offering a politics of inclusion, Obama was daring his opponents to exclude themselves from the search for a new social contract - and those opponents would pay the price of irrelevance should they prove unable to rise above the preference for paralysis.
It has become increasingly evident that Obam’s charisma and his unflappable demeanour masks a very shrewd political strategist who has shown a willingness to both reshape the political terrain and the rules of the game in contemporary American politics. That sense of strategy was evident throughout the campaign as he invoked Martin Luther King Jr.’s - “the fierce urgency of now” - to persuade audiences that a time for change had arrived.
That strategic sense is paired with a tactical shrewdness that allowed him to finesse the politics of confrontation in both the Democratic primaries and the general election - thus enhancing his image as a leader open to views from all sides. In effect, by evading conflict he has projected an image of inclusiveness and conciliation as keys to effective governance. 
This electoral strategy of finessing political conflict has continued after his inauguration. His willingness to consult with the Republican leadership on the stimulus package, his appointment of Republicans as members of his Cabinet - including the retention of the Bush administration’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates - and his very systematic and public courtship of the Evangelical Christians who have been largely identified with the Republican party,  have burnished his appeal to the wider population even as these initiatives have painted his opponents as petulant and excessively partisan.

The opportunity costs for political paralysis have thus risen in Washington at a time of profound crisis. For the Republican party that had effectively harnessed that paralysis as the basis for their search for control over the federal government from 1994 onward, the Obama election and Democratic control over both the House of Representatives and the Senate has left them marooned - unless its leadership can demonstrate a level of political pragmatism that opens space to work with the Democrats in the national interest. For some Republicans, the idea of co-operation and seeking consensus within a context of Democratic ascendancy constitutes a politics of compromise from a position of weakness.
However, even as some Republicans remain trapped by their ideological paralysis and viscerally opposed to the symbol of transformation that Obama represents, the larger Republican party’s recognition of the need for a new politics of its own led to the election in late January 2009 of the first African American chairman of the party in its history.
For the party that had been led by Abraham Lincoln who issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves during the American Civil War, change has been a long time coming and it promises to be a painful gestation process for the current generation of Republican leaders. Since Obama has co-opted the legacies of Lincoln as both an inclusive leader and one committed to national reconciliation, the contemporary Republican party finds itself in a quandary when it seeks a confrontation with him - in whose name and historical legacy can “the party of Lincoln” offer a challenge to Obama?
The reinvention of the Republican party will also require the party to rethink its commitment to the privilege of capital at the expense of the working and middle classes in American life. It is obvious that the Bush tax cuts that benefited the wealthiest Americans helped to fuel the speculative activity that has led to the crisis within the American banking sector.
The recklessness of Wall Street, and the failure of the Bush administration to exercise oversight and enforce accountability in Wall Street’s operations, have resulted in the catastrophe which has led the government’s increasing role in stabilizing and recapitalizing the banking sector.
For the wags, the Republican party has managed the fastest “transition to socialism” in history using the high priests of finance capital and state intervention in the economy. At a more serious level, just as the Soviet model failed in the 1980s leading to the

From Page 15

collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, the US model of the market economy championed by the Republican party over the last thirty years has been exposed as fundamentally flawed and increasingly unworkable. 
 The Republican party today faces the re-emergence of the reputation that had haunted it for much of the twentieth century. It was the party which was driven into the political wilderness by the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the subsequent onset of the Great Depression which revealed the bankruptcy of the bankers and the party’s political leaders. Seven decades later the revelation of Wall Street’s folly and penury during the closing months of the Bush-Cheney era has again highlighted the intellectual irrelevance of the Republican party in both national and global politics.
If the Bush-Cheney administration and its grandiose claims to “full-spectrum dominance” over the international order helped to provoke the international alienation from America that emerged after 2001, Wall Street has become in the eyes of the wider world the symbol of an overweening American arrogance that must now sip from the poisoned chalice that its high priests of finance used to serve communion to the faithful.
The Republican party has rendered hollow American claims to political and economic leadership of the international order and it will be left to the Obama administration to re-establish for the United States a constructive role in the international system.  A constructive role for the Obama administration would be based upon a rhetorical appeal to partnership with the other major economic and miltary powers and a strategy of engagment in restoring an effective multilateral system of management of the international order. “Partnership” and “engagement” may be more effective than claims to leadership that would serve as a constant reminder of the Bush-Cheney failures that have defined America in recent years.
If the overwhelming evidence of ideological bankruptcy, incompetence in economic policy, and failed international leadership has not been sufficiently damning to the Republican party, the efforts by the Bush-Cheney administration to expand the power of the Presidency has stained the party’s image as a champion of democratic government and as defenders of the Constitution.
The obvious irrelevance of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney during the transition between Obama’s election and his inauguration spoke volumes about the disrepute into which the Republicans had stumbled. The stunning public silence that greeted the claims of the departing President and Vice President  to positive legacies in American life was testimony that, as in economic matters, the Republican party will have to offer a new vision of the party’s role in shaping American constitutional doctrine and practice. In effect, the party will have to develop a new political agenda and reconstitute its political base in order to escape the  nostalgia for pre-1929 America that has informed its national strategy since the Reagan era. Change of this scope and significance inevitably will require a new generation of leaders and the task has just begun.
It is within this context that Obama’s strategy of inclusive governance and his search for consensus across the political divide must be seen. By embracing Abraham Lincoln’s legacy, Obama is offering an olive branch to the Republican party. It is a strategy that will offer moderate Republican leaders who have no desire to repudiate Lincoln to find common ground with Democrats. It also offers those moderate Republicans an opportunity to demonstrate that by putting country before party, they are serious leaders who recognize that the national crisis has not rendered the Republican party intellectually destitute. In sum, Obama’s vision of governance as articulated in his inaugural address recognizes the need to sustain  a functioning democracy in which the Republican party is offered an opportunity to shape decisions in the national interest and to create the space for a new generation of leaders.  Obama shows a remarkable generosity of spirit in his strategy for governance. It is a testament to his inclusive vision and to his commitment to the revitalization and revival of American democracy after its recent travails under the Bush-Cheney era Republican party.
In a little noticed nod of deference to his spiritual mentor and predecessor, Martin Luther King  Jr., Obama’s Inaugural address echoed the call to religious inclusiveness that King articulated in 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial. King had closed his speech that day by recognizing that invoking a time of freedom “when all of God’s children - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants - will be able to join hands …”. Obama went beyond King in his acknowledgment of religious diversity in saying: “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.”  As King had recognized in his 1961 speech at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania:
“All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutality; tied in a single garment of destiny. … This is the way the world is made. I didn’t make it that way, but this is the interrelated structure of reality.  John Donne caught it a few centuries ago and could cry out, No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main … any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. If we are to realize the American dream we must cultivate this world perspective.”
Obama’s inauguration address was a remarkable example of the redemptive power of African American rhetoric in its offering of a vision of democracy and inclusiveness  to America and the wider world. It was a measure of the man and of his rootedness in an America shaped by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cary Fraser is the North American editor of the Trinidad and Tobago Review. He is Associate Professor of African and African American Studies and History at Pennsylvania State University, USA.  
cff2@psu.edu

By CLYDE McKENZIE

Movado

Well I have certainly lost count of the number of radio and television programmes in Jamaica to which I have been invited to give my views on how we should regulate the distribution of entertainment content in the public space.  I believe that the debate prompted by the principal  of Ardenne High School, Mrs. Esther Tyson’s  public reaction to the “Ramping Shop”and the subsequent move by the Jamaica Broadcasting Commission to address the airing of certain types of problematic content is a most important one.
 Already two of the leading voices in Jamaican popular culture, Vybz Kartel and Mavado, have reacted to the move by the regulators in the way they know best: musically.
  In “A nuh my music” Kartel questions the legitimacy of the Commission noting “how yu fi reach inna public office without any election?”
  Kartel seems to suggest  that popular election is the only route to political legitimacy.  Kartel should be reminded that one of the most important parts of our governance structure is our judiciary.  It is important for him to recognise that our judges are  not elected and this is perhaps a significant  reason why the judiciary might be the most trusted branch of our system of governance.The fact that the judges  are not elected means that their primary concern is the interpretation of the law. This is not to say that the judiciary is unmindful of popular sentiments . In fact one of the arguments for a Caribbean Court of last resort is that the judges from the region are more conversant with the social structure in which they are required to pass judgment than are their counterparts on the Privy Council in London. What is more, is that the members of the Jamaica Broadcasting Commission, like the judiciary, are appointed directly or indirectly by the representatives of  elected branches of government in Jamaica.
  We have been given  many horrendous examples of judges having to  face elections in the United States being  swayed by partisan political concerns rather than rational  legal considerations. Maybe we should be happy that we do not elect our judges.
  It is important to note that the members of the Supreme Court and the federal courts  in the United States are appointed and not elected.  The fact that the members of the  Broadcasting Commission are appointed and are insulated from partisan political meddling through provisions for their security of tenure lends itself to greater impartiality among the regulators.
  It must also be noted that if the objective of protecting our children from harmful entertainment content  is to be met it cannot be done without the collaboration of other agencies of the State. The Broadcasting Commission cannot go it alone.

Vybz Kartel

This will, however, have to be done with a proper evaluation of the economic and social consequences of some of the efforts to regulate the public square.  I recall a debate raging in the scholarly journal Foreign Affairs sometime ago as to whether having children working in “sweat shops” in developing countries had any positive social value?  One argument put forward by supporters of the sweat shop was similar to Churchill’s observation on democracy; it might not be good but it was better than the alternative. Many of these kids, the argument goes, would fare far worse without the sweatshops.
 I, for example, believe that children should not be allowed to enter spaces of mature entertainment. 
Yet how realistic is this notion?  It might be easy for me and my middle-class friends to philosophise on this matter but what about the youngster who would starve or become a gunman if he does not peddle cigarettes and sometimes even contraband at these events?  Is the protection of our children from harmful  entertainment content a middle-class obsession? Will we do more harm than good to some of the children from the poorer classes whom we are trying to protect by restricting their access to places like the dancehall where they earn their living? What kind of measures will we put in place to ensure that children will not have to enter places of mature entertainment in order to survive
  The managers of the media houses are not saying it but a concern which must now be occupying their minds is how will they survive in the absence of edgy content? Is it possible that we could see an overall decline in viewership and listenership of local programming as a result of this new wave of regulatory activity? In such an event  what will be the reaction of the advertisers? As an entrepreneur who runs the weekly audience-based television countdown “FiWi Choice” on TVJ and Fame FM in Jamaica, I am keenly aware of the financial impact of a ban on certain types of content.  While I may be able to absorb the  financial implications of this development at least  in the short run there are other players who might not be able to withstand the economic effects of the new regulatory environment. How will we balance the economic with the moral
imperatives? This is why there needs to be rigorous debate about the parameters and implications of our decisions. I believe that a ban on the playing of music on the buses and other forms of public transportation can be effected without any harmful effects to the operators of this system. I don’t contemplate that there would be much economic fallout on this matter. Dealing with the dances might be a bit more difficult as regulation of this sphere has  more direct economic implications. There is the Noise Abatement Act but in these harsh economic times government might not  be too eager to trifle with a man trying to “make a food” and therefore might be willing to countenance a man who is a nuisance to his neighbours through the playing of his music.
The Commission has latterly moved to ban violent lyrics and also imposed  restrictions on soca songs which are explicit in their sexual reference whether aurally or visually.  The Commission hardly had any choice in the matter of addressing Soca  since to do otherwise would have opened it to charges of class bias.
The fact, though, is that the double entendre-loaded  musical products  from the Eastern Caribbean are not as linguistically accessible to our children as are works done in our vernacular.  The fact also is that there are works which would be classified as “problematic content” in Jamaica which are freely played on the airwaves in other territories.  Problematic content is a matter of context.
I personally am a strong advocate of better regulation of the public space.  This I believe can be achieved through the enforcement of existing laws and regulation.  Young Stephen McGregor (son of musical icon Freddy and already a top flight producer in his own right) made a very important point when he noted that many works with problematic content were finding their way on the air because the disc jocks have edited and taken them there.
What this speaks to is the unauthorised alteration of the artistic efforts of others.  This is illegal ( however well intentioned) and  speaks to the impracticality of punishing producers for the content in their “work”.  The original producer might not even be aware of the use to which his work is being put.
I do believe, however, that we will have to examine a system of prior restraint which will ensure that certain types of material do not reach the airwaves in the first place.
I have suggested that an industry body assume the responsibilities for rating musical output in conjunction with the Jamaica Broadcasting Commission. This would minimize the risk of misinterpreting the regulations from the Commission.  We must ensure that adult content do have their own avenues of expression which would not traverse the paths of our children.  I do not countenance placing a limit on one’s ability to express oneself.  However I believe we should impose  restrictions on where certain types of expressions are allowed.
  We cannot tell how history will treat “Ramping Shop”.  I see it as a work of scatological brilliance (a point shared by even some of the harshest critics of Kartel).  Mr. Palmer ( Kartel’s real name) should have the right to express himself so that history might be able to make a more accurate determination of the issues which  dominated  the concerns of his generation. Language is dynamic and words which are  seemingly harmless today can take on a sharp edge tomorrow. The reverse is also true. 
The fact is many of the words used by Kartel would have lost their sting and shock value in a few years’ time. However, there is nothing wrong in establishing some rules as to how his material is currently distributed to the public.
I welcome this debate and the input of Mavado and Kartel to this most important discourse on the kind of society we are contemplating. As I have indicated before, if this debate leads to a kinder gentler Jamaica then we can thank Spice and Kartel for their sins.
—clyde.mckenzie@gmail.com

Allen Stanford

The unfolding global financial crisis has now served to expose not only excessive risk-taking, compensation and personal greed, but also massive fraud.  One of the latest episodes involves the iconic IT services company Satyam where billions in cash went missing on its balance sheet. 
The Caribbean has witnessed in quick succession, both situations – the collapse on CL Financial under the weight of a liquidity crisis and the collapse of the Allen Stanford group under charges of massive fraud.  As one noted investor is said to have observed: “You can only see who is swimming naked when the tide goes out!”  Jamaicans would have fresh in their memories the recent fraud of the pyramid schemes which left many Jamaican investors naked.

CL Financial

The CL Financial group (CLF) led by Lawrence Duprey was probably the largest conglomerate in the Caribbean with assets of over US$15 billion and with interests in Petrochemicals, Petroleum, Lumber, Land and Property Development, and Alcoholic Beverages, in addition to the core insurance and financial services businesses.  CLF is a private company and operated with few if any of the governance structures which public listed companies are obliged to put in place.  The Group is highly leveraged and used its financial services companies to fund its adventures in various non-financial businesses in the Caribbean, Florida and more recently the Middle East.  The CLICO insurance company developed and sold the “Executive Flexible Premium Annuity’ (EFPAs) product which, disguised as an insurance product, offered the subscriber high interest rates.  CLICO Investment Bank also offered its depositors interest rates which were not obtainable elsewhere in the local market.
As the stories on what went on in CLF over the last several years emerge, it is certain that recklessness and greed will be found in the rubble.  Whether or not there was also fraud and other criminal activity remains to be seen.

Stanford Group

Allen Stanford became the main financier of West Indies cricket in the last 15 years and his 20/20 tournament between England and the West Indies offered the highest prize money ever for a single game of cricket –US$20 million. 
The complaint filed by the SEC in the United States against Allen Stanford is clear that there was massive fraud in the businesses run by him, to the tune of about US$8 billion.  The complaint alleges that:
“…SIB [Stanford International Bank], acting through a network of SGC [Stanford Group Company] financial advisors, has sold approximately $8 billion of self-styled “certificates of deposits” by promising high return rates that exceed those available through true certificates of deposits offered by traditional banks.”

Lessons for Investors

There are several parallels in the stories of CL Financial and the Stanford Group and, indeed, investment banks in the US and Europe which have collapsed or have sought the protection of the state or regulatory bodies there.

Lesson #1 -  “If it’s too good to be true, it is probably too good to be true”

In buoyant times as continued growth seems to be the norm and the stories of ‘success’ multiply, it is difficult for investors not to succumb to the notion that higher than normal returns are to be had somewhere.  If returns in the USA are at a certain level, there is China and India, Brazil and Russia, where even higher returns can be had.  And you look timid and foolish if you do not participate in the gold rush when so many of your friends tell you what astonishing gains they have made in a short period of time. 
Some of these opportunities are indeed real and sensible, but the fact remains that where returns are higher, the risks are indeed always higher.  Those risks might take the form of exchange rate or currency risk, excessive volatility in thinly-traded stock exchanges or weak governance structures of investee firms.  The rising tide may conceal or mask these risks for a time, but the inevitability of the cycles will expose those risks and many investors who are not protected will be caught and will lose their shirts.
It takes real discipline, resistance to peer pressure and resolve to stick to an investment strategy where the level of risk is appropriate to one’s particular circumstances.  Most investors succumb and when losses begin to roll through fall victim to the perverse psychology of hanging on and hoping that the situation will miraculously turn around and losses will be restored to gains.  Some comfort themselves with the foolish thought that “It’s not a loss until I actually sell.”
Lesson #2 – “Know Where Your Money (Really) Is”

In recent years, financial institutions are required to ‘Know Your Customer’.  The reverse is also absolutely necessary.  Snake oil salesmen may dress in business suits and be armed with slick Powerpoint presentations and glossy brochures containing- as appeared to have occurred with the Stanford Group- fictional historical returns.  Investors need to know who they are dealing with and where (exactly) their money is invested.  The CLF and Stanford cases would suggest that a good rule for the conservative investor is to avoid private companies whose governance structures may be weak if they exist at all. There is a better chance that listed companies will be better governed, although the Satyam case (a listed company) should give the investor pause.

Lesson #3 – “Look out for the Black Swan”

A ‘Black Swan’ is an event which is a statistical outlier, highly improbable but all the same quite possible.  (Black swans do exist.)  These events are also quite dramatic in their effects.  In other words, as improbable as certain outcomes may seem they can and do occur. Indeed events like the market crash of October 1987 are held to be ‘one in a thousand year events’, yet they have occurred several times in the last century, leading to the notion of ‘fat-tailed distributions’ meaning simply that these events are not as improbable as they might first appear. 
If that is so, then investors need to be mindful and maintain a portfolio of assets that can absorb a ‘black swan event’.  In practical terms that means holding some cash, a difficult sell when the market is roaring ahead because cash earns a zero or very low return.  True, but remember the Black Swan.
—www.businessinsightcaribbean.com

By Lennox Grant
A review of Beyond The Islands, autobiography of Sir James Mitchell.

For years, all that had stayed with me about James Mitchell was the image of the goateed smartman who, in the 1970s, had parlayed his single seat as an independent into the premiership of St Vincent and the Grenadines.
This alone was an achievement worthy of proper recording and celebration, including by calypso or other song, in Caribbean history.
It’s thus enormously instructive to me, and helpful to Caribbean consciousness and Caribbean life, that a full documentary presentation is now available of the life and times of a large and variously accomplished figure of our age.
Sir James Mitchell, government leader in St Vincent and the Grenadines for more than 30 years, has summarised his life as “Anglican acolyte, sailor, navigator, agronomist, hotelier, husband, father and lover.”
Playing in all those innings, many of them simultaneously, he has clearly scored well enough to earn inscription in Caribbean record books.
He has now added to his achievements his own book, recording his own life, Beyond the Islands.
Reading of this book has been for me both an eye-opening and an eye-closing experience.
My eyes stayed open enough to read to the end, but the narrative volume, pouring out over more than 450 pages, often sorely tested the attention span. 
Generously, Sir James gave thanks to his Sri Lankan editor who literally died on the job.
Thereafter, the writer kept on. He churned out his recollections and reminiscences, often enriched with detail so compelling that you can smell it off the page. 
Editing lapses are attributable to a fallen figure in the management of literary output, but the Mitchell determination to get it all out persisted.
So that, for example (at least in my review copy), Basdeo Panday is at least once called Manday. More seriously, in the account of Sir James’ long-distance efforts to resolve Trinidad and Tobago’s 1990 attempted coup, UNC leader Basdeo Panday is consistently confused with NAR Foreign Affairs Minister Sahadeo Basdeo.
In the extended chronicle, dating from the 1930s to the first decade of the new millennium, numerous misspellings distract the serious, or picky, reader.
I confess to having been distracted.
But the riveting chronicle rewards persistence. Having persisted with eyes wide open, I now know not only a lot more about James Mitchell, but also a lot more about the period of Caribbean history in which he took part, and on which he is now reporting from his own perspective.
This is the man who can be said to have created the entity now known as St Vincent and the Grenadines. He even invented its national flag.
His period from birth in 1931, through World War Two, studies in Trinidad and in Canada; back-pack travels in Europe; the West Indies Federation; the Carifta-Caricom initiatives; Independence for his islands; and a micro-state’s finding a way in the world, is set out in this book, in a typically sprawling way.
The narrative flashes back and flashes forward. In just one page, I noted, references came tumbling  about events of the 1970s; then Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney who came to office in 1984; then offshore banking; DEA suspicions about drug trade involvement; Geest dumping of potatoes in St Vincent; the energy crisis from 1973; a ban on imported foods; and, finally, Eric Williams’ sending him home in a Coast Guard plane—to the envy of Kingstown government colleagues and political rivals.
In some ways, this is the work of an indulgent memoirist, who doesn’t trouble to order recollections, or often even to date them.
He grew up in the Bequia in the Grenadines, a child of a sailing captain, who had been a great navigator in his time, a builder of his own wooden boats, like other people of what he profiles as hardy, self-sufficient, seafaring, Grenadines stock.
 James’ grandfather, who would dine on roasted sprats and farine, owned shares in Barclays in London, and fathered 22 children with five women.
 James, called “Son” literally from birth, was recognised as a leader-type, even from schooldays when, though an indifferent sportsman, he tended to be picked anyway, for the benefit of his personality.
He has obviously lived long, has preserved mind and body against natural and other wasting threats to both. He must have clocked maybe a million of miles in global travel.
And the book is replete with stories, anecdotes, snatches of observation, told with the detail of one who pack-rats every record of everything that ever happened to him.
Was he always planning his career?  Was he always planning this post-career biography?
The question is prompted by the appearance, so neat, so convenient, of flashes of discovery, of meaning.
It’s an account of an impressively rich life, illustrated by diverse people and events, a tumult of encounters that he has preserved, in some cases. through diary-keeping.
His was a life scripted in heaven, a reader concludes, observing how much worked out right for him.
As he said, reflecting on one survival experience, “I can only surmise that guardian angels do really exist.”
The agronomist trained at St Augustine and in Vancouver, claims to have carried learning and mental preparation from this training into the various governmental portfolios he later held.
 Everything connects, contributes to, everything else.
He touched and was touched by scores of places. They include Trinidad in the 1950s where, when he was a student at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, white students refused to be coached by a black golf pro. 

Today, and even then, Sir James looks white enough. But he claims a mixed-up ancestry.
“My complexion,” he wrote, “had emerged through centuries of liaison between Europe and Africa.”
He took the golf coaching and became champion golfer at St Augustine.
The Bequian red man, whose “genealogy is a true Caribbean cocktail,” whose ancestors include a Jewish pirate, and who would be often mistaken for Fidel Castro, is a someone with winning ways.
And he won a lot. Nine elections in 32 years, once drawing 92 per cent of the popular vote.
He won Rolodexes full of friends around the world. It’s as if the measure of political, and business, and social, success is the number of people he has been able to call “friend.”
He won friends, and influenced important people and organisations in North and South America, Europe and Asia, to support investment or aid projects in the Caribbean, St Vincent, and especially in the Grenadines.
Sir James qualifies as what, in Trinidad language, used to be called a “liver.”
He became a connoisseur, and a consumer of fine wines. He has written with evident relish about dishes he consumed, and some he himself cooked, like the lobster boiled in sea water, and served with white wine.
Adventures he describes include the happy results of his eye for women, including, sensationally, the nurse in the theatre where he underwent his heart surgery.
Her name isn’t revealed.
But the book is an endless cascade of name-dropping, including of Trinidad figures. Ellis Clarke, Eric Williams, ANR Robinson, Karl Hudson Phillips, Sidney Knox, Ken Gordon, Sat  Maharaj, Anthony Lucky.
It appears James Mitchell played a role in cobbling together the alliance that became the NAR government in 1986.
This is a man who called Buckingham Palace to assure the queen of his “moral support,” after Prince Charles and Princess Diana broke up.
And people take his calls.
Inevitably, in a book recalling people and places in many continents, over decades, the reader’s eye is caught by people and places he best knows.
So some curious things stand out.
To a Trinidadian reading this book in 2009, it’s striking that he seems to have struck out with Trinidadian women during his student days. That is, apart from those in the “Gaza strip” of night-time entertainment places along Wrightson Road.
 He admitted, sadly and lovelessly, on leaving, that “I had succeeded in all but one of my Trinidad endeavours.”
But, then, looking back at the Trinidad we recognise, and especially at Carnival time today, you have to wonder what company the student James Mitchell kept in Trinidad.
He opined, from a highly erroneous, ex cathedra, perch: “The bikini seldom has opportunity to reveal the glory of flesh in Trinidad.”
I don’t know, and it’s not clear from his autobiography, if the novel he had written about his Trini experience was ever published.
The book certainly reveals that he was luckier with women elsewhere–much luckier.
His London landlady once complained about “all these European girls” coming in and out. A later English landlord, not so tolerant, evicted him because he had rented a room for one tenant, but all too frequently accommodated a (female) other.
Beyond the Islands is more than a chronicle of riotous exploits of a hot-blooded Caribbean blade.
For one thing, he also loved and lost. In a touching part of the book, revealing the soft underbelly of the hard-nosed political operator, we read a rare descent into self-pity and self-doubt, over “the shock of my wife’s infidelity.”
Prime Ministership has consolations, however. He sourced, and got the police band to learn the score of US the negro spiritual, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.” The band played it for their prime minister, as he wallowed in the blues.
For another thing, much of the biography consists of the activities of a high-flying world statesman, who obviously enjoyed the approval of other high-ranking people, who made time for him.
Margaret Thatcher, who remembered that Royal Navy crews rested at Bequia on the way to the 1982 Falklands War, called him “one of the sensible ones.”
She obviously thought otherwise of others among her Commonwealth colleagues.
Canadian Prime Ministers, Indian Prime Ministers, Malaysian Presidents, African Presidents, Pakistani presidents, Middle Eastern kings and sheiks, Taiwanese leaders, all made much of James Mitchell.
He was celebrated in Venezuela with the Order of the Liberator. He was decorated in Taiwan with the Order of the Propitious Clouds.
He was received at the White House during the helter-skelter Watergate days, and embraced by Fidel Castro who curiously sought his secret in bringing so much investment to St Vincent and Grenadines.
Castro joked that the two men’s physical resemblance had kept him alive. “They don’t know which of us to shoot,” he told Sir James.
President Sir Ellis Clarke once held up a dinner party, making prime minister Eric Williams wait, as Son Mitchell arrived late from meeting Vincentian dockworkers in Port of Spain.
In the Caribbean, he was able to work with rivals Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham, and then with Desmond Hoyte; with both Seaga and Michael Manley; Eric Williams and ANR Robinson; and a succession of Prime Ministers and Finance Ministers in Barbados, St Kitts, St Lucia, Dominica, and the Bahamas.
He survived them all.
He was one of them, but kept his distance. Repeatedly, he defined himself as a “liberal,” a rare identification among Caribbean politicians, who advanced a private-sector agenda. He was steadfastly anti-communist, even bluntly equating anti-colonialism with communism.
Sir James has produced a personalised case study of how a tiny country makes its way in the world. Or at least how the leader of a tiny country makes his distinguished way.
He didn’t just come from St Vincent, but from St Vincent’s Third World, the Grenadines where, in the 1940s, nothing mechanical operated, and where, even in the 1960s, when he opened his Frangipani restaurant kerosene powered his refrigerator operated; no electricity was available.
The Grenadines, whose Son, ran the country longer than anyone else, have apparently since done well for themselves.
To the extent that the famous Son now complains about the loud Bequia DJs, playing familiar Caribbean “three-chord” music.
On the way to such debatable development, Son Mitchell worked hard, mastering details of economics and international relations.
In the most demanding part of the book, he immerses the reader in his own immersions in the Banana Wars, lost by the Caribbean after a long campaign of skirmishes.
At points, the detail of Government work–what the Americans call policy wonking–negotiations, and talks, and meetings, becomes turgid; and the absence of the editor is felt.
His frustration, and deepening cynicism about the regional integration movement, or lack of movement, amount to a sobering reflection coming from this old Caribbean soldier.
The heavy-going is often, however, relieved by sharp observation, and trenchant aphorisms.
As he counted failure in efforts to rationalise Caribbean airlines into a single private venture, he mused: “For all my unforgiven sins, I was closer to Heaven than a Union of Caribbean States.”
When his attempt to get Liat privatised came to naught, he imagined Patrick Manning, prime ministerial principal of BWIA, to be rejoicing.
In an insight that resonates here today, he remarked: “After all, Trinidad and Tobago had enough natural gas to subsidise incompetence and indifference.”
The text, thus, rewards persistence with inside stories told with authority and, the reader presumes, with veracity.
It’s for historians to probe the significance of a heretofore untold story about Eric Williams and Norman Manley. Sir James had got the story from  Arthur Lewis who related it as an episode that helped doom the West Indies Federation.
During one meeting, reported by Lewis, Jamaican premier Manley told T&T premier Williams: “You’re only a little boy. You’re not going to tell me what to say.”
We have that today, and a thousand other points of historical light, on the authority of Sir James Mitchell. The book is a final contribution to Caribbean life, to Caribbean letters, on which he is offering himself up for historical judgment.
In Beyond The Islands, historians will find material to help flesh out the Caribbean story, material told from one man’s self-confidently unflinching and confessional standpoint.
As a reader, one with just enough training in history, political science and, economics to be a generalist-journalist, the book, as a book gets my nod, as an eminently worthwhile deposit to the fund of Caribbean self-awareness.