JUNE 2012

GREGORY McGUIRE evaluatesthe stewardship of outgoingCentral Bank Governor EwartWilliams.

T HE Monetary Policy Report(MPR), has become the mostreliable source of public in!formation on the state of theeconomy.The latest issue (April 2012) MPR,may well have been the swansong presentationby Governor Ewart Williams who is due to retireon July 14.As is usually the case, theGovernor’s statement providedall economic agents! Government,firms and households, with an ob!jective assessment of the state ofthe economy. It was a welcomeintervention, which has filled thevoid left by the government.However, apart from the acceler!ated decline in the energy sector,there was nothing surprisingabout the results or theGovernor’s forecast. If anything,Governor Williams continues tobe a bit optimistic in retaininghope for a one per cent growth in GDPin 2012. The message, however, was clear. The economy continues to be in recession,struggling for an impetus for growth. But, atbest, options seem limited. The foreign in!vestment inflows have dried up, domestic pri!vate sector appears to be in wait and see modeand the government continues to have chal!lenges with its public sector investment pro!gramme. According to Governor Williams, eventhe minimal growth forecast faces significant

downside risks from the Euro Zone crisis, thetense industrialization climate and the ongoingscourge of crime. To this list, one may add the un!stable political climate which appears much morefluid than the politicians would have us believeor can themselves afford to believe. Unfortunately, the Governor seems to be danc!ing to a different tune from what was blasting atthe government’s May 24th celebrations. As thisera comes to a close, it is perhaps an appropri!ate time to assess the Governor’s performancemore completely and to reflect on the implicationsof his departure.Ewart Wil l iams assumed the position ofGovernor of the Central Bank in 2002, succeedingcurrent Finance Minister, Mr. Winston Dookeran.Governor Williams has reigned for 10 years, mak!ing him the longest serving Governor since VictorBruce (1969!1984). This fact is not just a strangeinconsequential coincidence. Rather, it is direct!ly correlated with the dynamics in the politicalarena and tells the depressing tale of the divisivenature of national politics. But that is for anoth!er time. Prior to coming to the Central Bank, Mr.Williams worked at the International MonetaryFund for about 25 years. During that time he ledseveral IMF missions and supervised IMF struc!tural adjustment programmes in a number ofcountries including Jamaica, Mexico and Nigeriaand other countries in Africa. His experience alsoincluded a short stint in T&T during the IMF inter!vention of 1998. Mr. Williams completed his careerat the IMF, as the Deputy Director of the WesternHemisphere Department in June 2002.An assessment of Mr Williams’s stewardshipshould be done in context of the mandate of theCentral Bank. In Trinidad and Tobago, as elsewherein the Western World, the Central Bank’s over!arch!ing roleGOVERNOR continues on Page 4

Governor’sBALL

ADVERTISMENT

T&T Review June 2012 Page 3EDITORIAL

The Trinidad & Tobago Review is published by The Lloyd Best Institute of the WestIndies, 91C Tunapuna Road, Tunapuna, Trinidad and Tobago.

Tel: 868-663-5463; Fax: 868-645-4485; E-mail: review@tstt.net.ttManaging EditorSunity Maharaj

Business ManagerAnnette Bradshaw

Layout/DesignBarry Mohammed

AdvertisingCharlene JohnsonTrinidad ExpressTel: 623-1711; 623-0314(TTR)663-5463

ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONCaribbean: EC$140B$100North & South America:US$100Europe/Asia/Africa: US$100

Online edition: www.tntreview.com

By Sunity Maharaj

I T GOES without saying that constitu!tionally speaking, the prime ministerdoes not have to consult with anyonein appointing members of her cabi!net. Politically speaking, however, and inthe current context of a fracturing part!nership, the requirement to consult is anabsolute imperative.In announcing her plan to “re!config!ure” her government, Mrs Persad!Bissessarhas called a time!out from the rising lev!els of anxiety within the People'sPartnership. What she does next will de!termine whether the fracturing intensi!fies or whether the PP gets the chance totransform itself into a coalition for gover!nance beyond mere electioneering.The unilateral nature of the PM's an!nouncement already indicates her incli!nations in the matter. But in the chessgame of politics, as in everything else, whathappens next will always depend on whatelse happens next. Absolutely nothing is tobe taken as a foregone conclusion.The UNC for one, should be cautiousin its assumptions about its own con!stituency after the Arrival Day protests inDebe. With Basdeo Panday on the outsideand the COP calling for talks with theRe!route Movement inside, the UNC mightdiscover that its constituency is not assolid in its support for a political leaderwho, after all, had run against the UNC,and been defeated, as an NAR candidate inthe elections of 1991.While the focus is on the MSJ and theCOP as points of friction within the PP gov!ernment, the UNC might be the party underthe greatest internal pressure as it jugglesthe twin agendas of winning the next elec!tion on its own, and settling its politicalsuccession, especially given the prime min!ister's health.In an effusive moment early in her term,Mrs Persad!Bissessar had all but anointedRoodal Moonilal. But if a vote were to becalled in the House tomorrow, it is any!body's guess what name of which com!promise candidate will go forward toPresident's House as the leader of the partywhich “commands the support of the ma!jority of the House.” But because nothing is pre!ordained,these two weeks that the prime ministerhas given herself for re!configuring thegovernment, have the potential to becomeone last opportunity for the People'sPartnership to rescue itself from the con!sequences of its lack of preparation forgovernment.At the PP's anniversary celebration inChaguanas on May 24, the dessert dis!traction served up by Sugar Aloes mayhave tantalized the buds but it was the

COP leader's proposal for reining in theUNC and bringing the government undercontrol of the People's Partnership thatwould have given the UNC leadershipsomething to chew on.Before a high!spirited UNC crowd,Prakash Ramadhar called for “firm, clearrules of engagement”, regular leadershipmeetings” and”meetings of the chair!men”and, most important of all, a“Partnership Council made up of threepeople from each party” with the respon!sibility to “resolve contentious issues andmake recommendations to the leaders”.This proposal for a Partnership Councilof equal weight among the partners,is thefirst firm public proposal by any leader ofthe People's Partnership regarding theoperational structure of the coalition con!struct. It has taken all of two years for thePP's leaders to recognize that while theideology of “the enemy of my enemy is myfriend” might work in building a coalitionagainst the PNM,much more is needed forbuilding a coalition for government.The fact that Ramadhar could bravethe UNC masses without incurring the on!slaught of heckling served up to its ownleader Winston Dookeran in February2006when he tried to swim against thePanday tide,merely underscores the powerthat the UNC's partners have, but rarelyemploy to advantage, opting to squabbleover the political crumbs of office than tobargain for real power in an agenda forchange.

Finally, it seems, the COP is man!aging to negotiate some political spacefrom which to tackle the UNC jug!gernaut as it steams its way towardsa future without them.To Ramadhar'scredit it can be said that he had thecourage to brave the UNC den in lay!ing down his gauntlet before the po!litical masses in preference to somemore comfortable but treacherouscloseted space.Ramadhar has found, and opened,his own window of opportunity, butwhat becomes of his challenge willalso depend on who does what next. How will his political partnersoutside of the UNC, respond?Will theMSJ, TOP and NJAC join the COP in

creating a counter axis of power in!side the Partnership?Can they, inworking together, expand their ownroom for negotiating with the UNCin promoting a multi!interest agen!da?Do they even believe it is in theirinterest to do so? And if they did,what specific national interest mighteach hope to serve? And how will theUNC respond to an internal re!align!ment of power?The COP and MSJ have alreadyfound common ground in their con!cerns about corruption and the Re!route Highway Movement which hasshot to the top of the negotiationagenda following its confrontationwith the Prime Minister. Working as

partners of the Partnership, thesetwo parties could build a bridge be!tween the movement and the gov!ernment that would give validity andpurpose to their presence in gov!ernment. In declaring to the anniversaryrally that the PP Government “mustengage the highway re!route move!ment in meaningful dialogue in whichwe speak with them not talk to them”,Prakash Ramadhar was beginning toopen up the narrow space betweenhis political responsibility as COPleader and his collective responsi!bility as cabinet member.W hile Abdulah may be oth!erwise tempted, his onlyrationale for staying inthe government nowwould be to actively promote the in!terests represented by the MSJ with!in the People’s PartnershipGovernment. In doing so, the MSJmust take the public into its confi!dence and explain, in detail, its pro!posal, as a member of the govern!ment, for meeting Labour’s demandswithin the context of the adminis!tration’s programme. The MSJ has,after all, supported the government’stwo national budgets. In treating with Trinidad!basedissues, the TOP’s support is likely todepend on whether the principle in!volved is important to its Tobagoagenda. Given its focus on the nextTobago House of Assembly election,however, leader Ashworth Jack maybe inclined to give the UNC what itneeds from him in Trinidad, in ex!change for what he needs from thegovernment in Tobago.As for the NJAC, just surviving inthe PNM heartland after returningfrom the starvation of politicalwilderness, might be the interestworth serving.

BUILDING A COUNTER-AXIS

OF POWER People’s Partnership supporters during their second anniversary celebrations on May 24 at Mid Centre Mall car park, Chaguanas. —Photo: DEXTER PHILIP

Page 4 T&T Review June 2012ECONOMY

GOVERNOR from Page 1is to pursue such monetary policies thatwould foster monetary and financial stabili!ty, public confidence and economic growthand development of T&T.More specifically, the Governor leads theCentral Bank in applying monetary policyaimed at:• Maintaining a low inflation rate• Managing the foreign exchange marketto ensure adequate levels of foreign exchange • Protecting the external value of the cur!rency • Fostering and promoting stability of thefinancial system In addition to these specific monetary pol!icy objectives, it is helpful to look at theGovernors’ accomplishments with respect toinstitutional development and public edu!cation and outreach. Governor Williams’ tenure spanned twocontrasting economic periods: a period ofeconomic boom (2002!2008) during whichthe economy expanded at an annual averagegrowth of 8.1 per cent. This was followed bya period of sharp contraction and stagna!tion, (2009!2012), with an average Real GDPgrowth of ! 1.7 per cent. (Chart 1). Each pe!riod required very different policy positionsas the dynamics of the macro economychanged. The first objective proved the most diffi!cult to achieve, particularly during the boomperiod. The challenge of monetary policy wasto manage the delicate bal!ance between rapid eco!nomic growth and inflation.The Governor adopted atight monetary policy stanceaimed at mopping up excessliquidity in the banking sys!tem. Policy action includedseveral increases in the Reporate, increases in the statu!tory reserve requirements,and issues of Governmentbonds and treasury bills.While the Bank appeared tobe proactive in taking actionto stem the inflationary tide,the Government pursued acounter intuitive expan!sionist fiscal policy. The Manning adminis!tration consistently ignoredthe Governor’s warningsabout the negative conse!quences of double!digit in!flation. Repeated calls bythe Central Bank for fiscalrestraint were given only lipservice by the Manning regime. For example,in the MPR April 2006, the Central Banknoted: “a major factor underpinning the risinginflationary pressures has been the increasein Government spending and its impact on thenon-energy fiscal deficit. Similar warningswould appear in every MPR in 2007. Yet,three months before the global financial cri!sis, MPR, (April 2008) the Bank again cau!tioned that”…the available data suggests thatbudgetary operations continue to have astrong procyclical stance contributing to do!mestic inflationary pressures”. In short, monetary and fiscal policy werein conflict as the former Government relent!less pursued its expansionist programme inkeeping with its Vision 2020 goals. As a re!sult,inflation climbed from 3.2 per cent in2002 to peak at 12.8 per cent in 2008. (Chart2)The inflation threat moderated consider!ably after 2008 as Government capital spend!ing fell away and the push from internation!al food and commodity prices weakened.

The exchange rate and the import coverratio,i.e. the number of months worth of im!ports we can purchase with current holdingsof foreign exchange reserves, are both use!ful indicators of performance with respectto the Governor’s mandate to “protect the ex!ternal value of the currency”. Over the peri!od 2002 to 2011, the exchange rate driftedupwards up by 2% from TT$ 6.28 to 1 USto $ TT 6.40 (chart 3). At the same time ,however, our gross official reserves have in!creased from just 4 months’ import cover to13.5 months(chart 4). The data however doesnot tell the full story of themanagement of the currencyvalue. Firstly, the strong foreignexchange performance isrooted in the rapid expan!sion of the energy sector aswell as a period of high com!modity prices. Secondly, onmany occasions during theperiod the Central Bank hashad to support the exchangerate by selling more US dol!lars into the market, to quellrumours of a chronic short!age of foreign exchange andpossible devaluation. TheGovernor’s dilemma was tofind the optimal amount offoreign exchange to sell tothe market. While he wasoften criticized for “hoard!ing” foreign exchange andfrustrating business expan!sion, the Bank was awarethat a liberal policy positioncould have lead to rapid de!pletion of reserves followed by currency de!preciation as well as capital flight and relat!ed consequences. The Governor was resolutein his position that in a small open economylike T&T, the Bank has an obligation to pru!dently manage the allocation of foreign ex!change in the interest of macro !economicstability. The Governor has also publicly champi!oned the need for greater national savings,in particular savings to the Heritage andStabilization Fund. Speaking at a seminar onSovereign Funds in 2006, Governor Williamsprojected that the HSF Assets could increaseto US$25!30 billion by 2020 based on fiscaladjustment to a sustainable non!energydeficit. Fiscal sustainability studies showedthat the non!energy fiscal deficit should notexceed 10% of non!energy GDP. However,the Governor’s pleas seem to have fallen ondeaf ears. Between 2006 and 2011, the non!energy fiscal deficit averaged 16.5 per centwith a peak of 19.9 per cent in the most recent

year. There were some important legislativeand institutional developments during thetenure of Mr. Williams. These included the in!terdiction of the real time gross settlementssystem, the introduction of the BankingOmbudsman and the passing of the FinancialInstitutions Act (2008) which formalized the

consolidation of supervision of all financialinstitutions under the Central Bank. Thiswould allow for closer monitoring controland corrective action when necessary. Formany, the latter was a case of too little toolateHistory will record that Governor Williamspresided over the collapse of the

The Governor’s Ball

Central Bank Governor Ewart Williams

‘There were someimportant legislativeand institutional developments duringthe tenure of Mr.Williams. These included the interdiction of thereal time gross settlements system,the introduction of the BankingOmbudsman and the passing of theFinancial InstitutionsAct (2008)...’

T&T Review June 2012 Page 5

region’s largest single financial institution. This standsout as the major blot on his book. The debate contin!ues on whether this was a legislative or a regulatoryfailure. While the Governor argues that the Bank’s lim!ited powers at the time prohibited its intervention intothe insurance company business, others claim that hehas failed in his duty to promote stability in the finan!cial system. The shocking revelations at the Commissionof Enquiry into Clico and the Hindu Credit Union hasserved to intensify the pain of loss among policy hold!ers and depositors, from whom the Governor will findno forgiveness.So as the date of Williams departure draws closer,the inevitable question arises. Who we go put”? Ormore appropriately in this case, citizens will wait to see“ who they go put”. A look at other jurisdictions can provide an indica!tion of what is best practice with respect appointmentsto the position of Governor of the Central Bank. In theUSA, the Governors of the Federal Reserve System arenominated by the President and confirmed by theSenate, for a period of 14 years. The Governor andDeputy Governor are then selected by the Presidentfrom among those appointed by the Senate.Notwithstanding these powers of the President, AllanGreenspan served as Governor of the Federal Reservefor 18 years under four Presidents. The current GovernorBen Bernanke was appointed by President Bush andre!appointed by President Obama in 2008. In the UK,it is the convention that the Governor of the Bank ofEngland comes from an internal candidate. The present Governor Sir Mervyn King was a ca!reer central banker, appointed by Tony Blair’s LabourParty in 2003. King has now served three PrimeMinisters and two political parties. His successor inthe post is already being groomed for the position. Weshould note as well that the Board of Governors of the

Federal Reserve system has seven (7) members andthe board of the Bank of England has nine (9) mem!bers. In Trinidad and Tobago, there are now 18 direc!tors on the Board of the Central Bank. What is abun!dantly clear is that in both the USA and the UK, the lawsand conventions aim at ensuring independence, stabilityand consistency at the helm of the Central Bank as abuffer against the hurly!burly world of politics.To his credit, Governor Williams has followed theBritish tradition with respect to succession. Over thelast ten years he has groomed, not one but perhapsthree, ready and capable in!house candidates for theposition. Deputy Governors Dr. Shelton Nichols and Ms.Joan John as well as Chief Economist Dr. Alvin Hilaire,all have the breadth and depth of academic trainingand banking experience to allow for a smooth pass!ing of the Governor’s ball. There is another reason infavour of a strong internal successor. While monetaryand fiscal policy should be complementary, there isneed to retain the relative independence of the CentralBank. As a former Governor himself, Mr Dookeran mustavoid the temptation to become involved in monetarypolicy matters . This is likely to be the case if he fol!lows the pattern of recent years and goes for an exter!nal candidate who is perceived to be a party loyalist. Ewart Williams has made a sterling contribution toTrinidad and Tobago. He has strengthened the Bank asan institution, maintained the value of the currency,was relentless in the fight against inflation and, notwith!standing the challenges of Clico, has maintained sta!bility in the financial system. On this basis, I thinkWilliams has earned a more than a passing grade for hisstewardship. Moreover, he has maintained the inde!pendence of the Central Bank across two administra!tions. Citizens will expect no less from his successor.

‘Ewart Williams has made a sterling contribution to Trinidad and Tobago. He hasstrengthened the Bank as an institution, maintained the value of the currency, was relentless in the fight against inflation and,notwithstanding the challenges of Clico, hasmaintained stability in the financial system’

ADVERTISMENT

Page 6 T&T Review June 2012COMMENTARY

By Kevin Baldeosingh

L ONGER school hours. A newdate for the SecondaryAssessment Examination (SEA).More examinable subjects onthe primary school curriculum, in!cluding Morals and Values. Fewerextra!curricular activities. Continuousassessment in primary schools.These are just some of the policychanges which Education Minister TimGopeesingh has trotted out, seeming!ly willy!nilly, since he was handed thatportfolio. If there’s any comprehensiveplan behind these various announce!ments, neither Dr Gopeesingh nor theEducation Ministry has seen fit to in!form the general public. But at leastGopeesingh, unlike most past EducationMinisters, appears to see the need forfundamental changes to the country’seducation system. This is not only anecessary goal in itself but, if the so!ciety as a whole is to progress, the ed!ucation system is probably the singlemost important institution which cancatalyse this transformation. This cannot happen, however, invikey!vie fashion. Education reflectsand reinforces the wider culture, andit can escape from itself only from astarting point rooted in rigorous analy!sis. Gopeesingh has made his policysuggestions without explaining theirpedagogical rationale, and inevitablyangered the Trinidad and TobagoUnified Teachers Association and otherstakeholders. This crude approach to educationtransformation may be usefully con!trasted with the initiatives taken inFinland, which within 30 years made itseducation sector into one of the world’sbest. In his 2011 book Finnish Lessons,education administrator Pasi Sahlbergwrites: “Finland has a unique educa!tional system because it has progressedfrom mediocrity to being a model con!temporary educational system andstrong performer over the past threedecades...it has been able to create aneducational system where studentslearn well and equitable education hastranslated into small variations in stu!dent performance between schools indifferent parts of the country at thesame time.”This didn’t happen by ac!cident, nor without po!litical initiative.In the

1960s, Finland’s levels of educationalattainment were on par with Peru andMalaysia, and far below its neigh!bouring nations Denmark, Norway, andSweden. Moreover, the improvementsin Finland’s system began in the 1970s,when the country was having seriouseconomic problems—indeed, thosevery problems were a key reason thegovernment decided to make educa!tion a priority. At the same time, thegroundwork for this transformationhad been laid since the 1950s, whenFinland established its SchoolProgramme Committee, which sub!mitted its recommendations in 1959.These recommendations, based onanalysis of then!current internationalresearch on pedagogy, were taken toParliament in 1963, with implemen!tation starting in 1972. “The new schoolsystem was launched with philosoph!ical and educational assumptions thatinsisted the role of public educationmust be to educate critical and inde!pendent!thinking citizens,” Sahlbergwrites.I suspect Dr Gopeesingh would behard!pressed to define the “philo!sophical and educational assumptions”behind his various policy changes. But,unless these are made clear, it is notpossible to create and implement thetechnical changes required to achieveeducational goals. As Table 1 shows,the majority of students in T&T aren’teven close to what is needed to achievedeveloped!nation status. And even thisbarebones data raises fundamentalquestions: Why are

students doing so badly in basic sub!jects? If we are so creative, as we liketo boast, why the low pass rates inmusic and the arts? And, by contrast, isthere a comparative advantage hint inthe relatively high pass rates in PE andIT?So consider Sahlberg’s innocuousphrase !”equitable education”. Thiswas one of the most hotly debated is!sues when Finland started changingits education system, because equitymeant that the goal was to ensure thatall students attained a high level of ed!ucation. Naysayers naturally arguedthat students had inherently differentcapacities to learn, and trying to edu!cate all of them highly was a utopianideal which would only drag down thebest rather than raise the worst. A par!allel local view was heard a decade agofrom the former principal ofPresentation College San Fernando,Michael Samuel, who on his retirementsaid, “Twenty percent [of all students]! no matter what people say, that everyboy and girl is teachable, that is non!sense ! they are labourers”. Sahlberg,however, writes: “[This new philosophyfor education] included the beliefs thatall pupils can learn if they are givenproper opportunities and support.”(See Box 1.)In T&T, a parallel policy would re!quire the abolition of the SEA as ascreening exam with access to allschools determined by zoning. Anysuch suggestion would, however, bemost vehemently opposed by thosewho

most vociferously complain about thestate of the society—the middle! andupper!classes whose children haveprivileged access to the prestigeschools. Yet even this revolutionarypolicy would be accepted if citizenswere convinced that every school hadthe same quality standards ! and con!vinced, not through PR, but by actualreforms. The Finns didn’t set their goalswith blind idealism. Curriculum reformtook place after empirical studies weredone in 300 field schools involving1,000 teachers. “The national curricu!lum provided schools with tools to dif!ferentiate instruction for different abil!ity groups and personalities,” Sahlbergwrites. “Foreign languages and math!ematics teaching, for example, werearranged in a way that offered studentsoptions for three levels of study: basic,middle, and advanced...required thatteachers employ alternative instruc!tional methods, design learning envi!ronments that enable differentiatedlearning for different pupils, and per!ceive teaching as a high profes!sion...Ability grouping was eventuallyabolished in all school subjects in1979.”A 2010 report published byMcKinsey and Company,which examined educationsystems in 25 countries, list!ed the following three factors as crucialfor successful reform: (1) high teacherquality for raising student performance;(2) better classroom methods; (3)mechanisms to ensure that every childgets high!quality instruction. But T&Twould have to do its own research, atthe very least to find out how to fine!tune the data from other societies. TheMiracle Ministries High School, for ex!ample, has boasted full exam resultsat CXC, according to its founder PastorWinston Cuffie, but this is a schoolwhich gets the students of low ability.If they are indeed getting such highpass marks, it is quite telling that theEducation Ministry has not done anaudit to find the school’s and staff’s se!cret. In Finland, if any one variable couldbe identified as the key to pedagogi!

cal success, it is the teachers. Thereare five classifications ! kindergarten,primary, subject (secondary), specialeducation, and vocational! and, since1979, teachers must have a Mastersdegree, (save kindergarten and voca!tional teachers, who must have at leasta Bachelors degree). Finnish teachersare given a high degree of autonomy,including the authority to create theirown classroom pedagogy (theirMasters degree qualifies them as re!searchers). They have fewer classroomhours than teachers in other devel!oped countries, in part because thatextra time is spent on pedagogy. And,since the Finnish school system has noexaminations, teachers are the oneswho decide if students have qualifiedin their subjects. Opinion polls inFinland consistently find teaching tobe the most admired profession, aheadof law and medicine.Education reform is a serious pol!icy issue, which needs both intellectu!al rigor and political maturity.Unfortunately, it seems that theEducation Ministry and all other stake!holders are lapsing on both counts.

Education. . .about educationSubject Students getting Grades I and II

English Language 35% Mathematics 25% Music 13%Theatre Arts 26%Visual Arts 11%Religious Education 42%Physical Education 65%Information Technology 76%

Source: Ministry of Education

TABLE 1: Pass rates in selected CSEC subjects

1. Young people learn well and perfor-mance differences among schools aresmall—and all with reasonable cost andeffort.2. Teaching is a prestigious profession,and many students aspire to be teachers.3. Teachers have a great deal of profes-sional autonomy and access to purpose-ful professional development throughouttheir careers.4. Teachers usually stay in their profes-sion for life.5. Almost half of all 16-year-olds, whenthey leave comprehensive school, havebeen in some sort of special educationwhere they got personalised help or indi-vidual guidance.6. Teachers teach less and studentsspend less time studying in and out ofschool than their peers in other countries.7. There is no standardised testing, testpreparation or private lessons.

BOX 1—Key traits of Finnish

education system

Source: Sahlberg, 2011

ADVERTISMENT

Page 8 T&T Review June 2012VOICE OF PAN

By LAURIE ANDALL

WHEN Lord Humbugger chipped downCharlotte Street at the helm ofAlexander Rag Time Band, dressed tokill in top hat and scissors!tail coat onJouvert morning 1939, the all steel percussiongroup coming all the way from Woodford Street tothe irresistible chants of ‘Run yuh run, KaiserWilliams, run yuh run’ was really performing the lastrites to Tamboo Bamboo, the staccato rhythmwhich had served previous generations so well inour earlier street festivals.At this musical eclipse one can well imaginethe comments of the market vendors on CharlotteStreet and the burgesses of Hell Yard as the pro!logue to Pan unfurled before their eyes changingthe Carnival landscape, which thereafter was si!lenced by the bombs of World War Two, forever. While the curfew imposed by the war forbadestreet parades, it offered Pan’s pioneers an op!portunity to experiment and invent and by thetime the Fuehrer’s dream of a master race reced!ed into history, the pans of biscuit, paint, carbideand caustic soda had given way to Winston ‘Spree’Simon’s four note tenor on which he played ‘GodSave the King’ for the Governor in celebration of thevictory of the allies over Nazi Germany,on MarineSquare, Port of Spain.As Pan moves from the periphery challengingfor the centre of our social consciousness,a positionwhich it temporarily holds for at least one montheach year during the panorama festivities, it has of!fered us many proud moments, validating not justour survival as a people emerging from centuriesof colonialism but as a people capable of chartingnew horizons in the advancement of civilization. Pan may yet provide the sound tracks for theideal state upon which many philosophers havepondered but which like the promised land haseluded every prophet and politician from Moses toObama. If only our leaders could get it right!The first time piano and pan met in a publicconcert was at the Victoria Institute in 1948 whenCasablanca,which had a few months before won anisland!wide steelband competition featuring pan!nists like Patsy Haynes and Art DeCoteau, collab!orated with the German musician Professor WalterKatz and Tenor singer Victor Soverall to producea successful show at the princely sum of twentyfive dollars. We look at this encounter as the be!ginning of the gradual embrace of Pan as a musi!cal invention worthy of acceptance by the con!ventional Orchestra. Of course, TASPO’s tour in England was a wa!tershed moment in Pan’s history, followed by theappearance of a steelband ensemble led by BelgraveBonaparte at the Rome Olympics in 1960 and, afew years later,the appearance of thePan Am North Stars at the US nationally tele!vised Ed Sullivan Show.PanAm North Stars holds pride of place inthese epic pan moments because it also collabo!rated with Jocelyn Pierre and the MarionettesChorale in concert in 1965 and, in 1968, offered usa musical collaboration with internationally ac!claimed pianist Winnifred Atwell at Queen’s Hallresulting in an album which today stands as per!haps the most significant musical legacy in the his!tory of Pan. Of course the many travels of Hugh Borde andTripoli Steel Orchestra with internationally!

renowned pianist Liberace has become the stuff oflegend and we are all eager to view the movie ofLiberace’s life and the role as co!star in which weexpect the Pan to be featured. The Desperadoes from the hills of Laventillehave also etched their way into steelband folklorewith their 1966 visit to Dakar, Senegal and theirtour of eight US cities where under the musical di!rectorship of the inimitable Pat Bishop, they playedat Carnegie Music Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Musicand The Philadelphia Academy of Music, blazing atrail to establish Pan as a musical brand on therecording landscape of North America.Also the Trinidad All Stars, notto be outdone,after their pop!ular Panorama victory in1980 with Scrunter’s‘Woman on deBass’ visitedIndia andChina,breakingnew

groundon theold traderoute ofMarco Polo, ascultural ambas!sadors of Trinidad andTobago. This was a tour onwhich Earl ‘Abdul’ Reid, aScherzando veteran and then PanTrinbago P.R.O, served as the representative ofthe international authority on Pan.Also on this tour was teenager Derrick Nursewho as Warrant Officer Class 1 of the Trinidad andTobago Defence Force,was musical director of therecent collaboration betweenThe Defence ForceSteelband and Patubate of Brazil. This five!mangroup from the Land of Samba and Soccer hasadded its own unique flavor to our steeband byincorporating the music of discarded steel andplastic drums,pots and pans and other discardedcar parts, along with electronic music.Watching and listening to the two groups dis!cover each other as Officer Nurse blended themusic into one during rehearsals for a Steelfestt per!formance at Scherzando’s Culture Market, wasa unique experience.The organisers and sponsors ofSteelfesTT2012 a reality including the SteelfesTT

Planning Committee, the National Gas Company,the Ministry of Arts and Multi!Culturalism, PanTrinbago and our dearly departed PatBishop,Keeper of the flame, who was honouredfor its conceptualization, deserve a bow.SteelfesTT is part of the growth curve that Panhas been seeking to achieve and it should be!come part of our bi!annual! if not annual! cal!endar.It was at Pan Trinbago’s 2011 Conventionthat Steelfestt 2012 was unveiled to the Pancommunity by its Chair!person MaureenManchouk. It was immediately evident that herewas a lady who had come to en!rich the narrative of womenin pan with a plan notjust to highlightour national in!strument butto em!bracethecul!

tureofothersacross thediaspora,usingnot the tired sys!tem of patronage buta partnership model ofbusiness to bring a win!winmodel to the portfolio of all share!holders.Katzenjammers, a band of over fifty years,with an impeccable steelband pedigree as thefirst Tobago band to win a national competition(in 1967)and defending Panorama champion(Medium category 2011 and 2012) was chosento make a musical presentation with Cuba’s ObiniBata, an all female group combining dance, per!cussion and song. The high calibre international performancetook place at Katzenjammers’ brand new pantheatre, an achievement that has been realizedunder the leadership of Beverly Ramsey Moore.The theatre has since been incorporated as aPan Institute, serving as an inspiration to othersteelbands,as the full import of SteelfesTT 2012begins to resonate throughout the wider Pancommunity .The remarks of the Minister of Planning and

the Economy, Senator Bhoe Tewarie,on theSteelfestt programme brochure and his addressat the opening of the inaugural Internationalconference on the Steelpan 2012 were the firstcomprehensive statement to date from a gov!ernment minister of the People’s Partnershipon the Steelband industry.Many of us in Pan have been waiting on aclear policy on Pan as our national instrument,given the yoke of multiculturalism which hasbeen hung around Minister Gypsy’s neck.Havinggrownup post!independence accepting thatTrinidad and Tobago are islands of Steelbandand Calypso, we now acknowledge that calypsomay well include soca, chutney and even parang,but we hesitate at the thought that Pan, too, maymean something else.Yet,as Dr. Tewarie implored at Steelfestt 2012,we also welcome musicians and instruments fromforeign lands to our home, the home of Pan. As amatter of fact it is via the journey of Pan in for!eign lands that the instrument has arrived at theplace of esteem with which it is held today.ManyPannists earn their living abroad, perhaps more!so than in Pan’s own homeland. So it goes withoutsaying that Pan welcomes fusion.It was disheartening to hear that Pan accountsfor just 2.8% of the revenues earned by theCreative sector which is a challenge for PanTrinbago,steelband leaders and the government.This was countered by the good news that thelong overdue Pan Headquarters is at last to beconstructed but we hope that the deafening si!lence of both Pan Trinbago and the NationalCarnival Commission on the controversial ‘Panin Schools’ issue has nothing to do with this de!velopment. Even the minister had no words of wisdomfor us on this topic while our Pan Tutors languishwithout contracts and it is almost two years sincea school has commissioned its quota of Pans, leav!ing manufacturers and many tuners in abeyance.Inour own school system Pan is slowly being leftbehind while our leaders twiddle their thumbsat the altar of multiculturalism.While the minister complained of the needfor a ‘properly documented history of Pan’ somewere left to wonder if his advisors had not in!formed him about Kim Johnson’s ‘The illustrat!ed Story of Steelband’ or George Goddard’s ‘FortyYears in the Steelband Movement’ or the few post!graduate theses lying about, including AmericanSteven Stuempfle’s ‘The Steelband Movement:Formation of A National Art’ , certainly a fusionalong the lines of SteelfesTT.There is too much romanticism, theHonourable Minister declared, yet informing usthat the industry must think opera and motionpictures among other media arts. Did Hollywoodnot build its success on romanticizing the west,turning outlaws like Jesse James and Billy the Kidinto legends and criminalizing patriots like SittingBull and Geronimo?Against this background and with ministeri!al advice in tow, our local movie makers have apantheon of heroes awaiting their intervention.Imagine what our actors could do with tales aboutTrail, Fisheye, Patch eye, Breakadoor, Gold Teeth,Eddie Boom, Whitey Kincaid, Ghost, Cobo Jack,Boots, Elephant Walk, Fire Kong, Preacher Boysie,Joe, Lolly, Mastifay, John Bull, Bake Nose, Jack Sladeand many others.

NegotiatingPan’s Labyrinth

ADVERTISMENT

Page 10 T&T Review June 2012MUSIC

SHARDA PATASAR faces off with an Indianpioneer

RASIKA gestured towards the page inher hand. “Seven verses! You mad?You think people here going to stopand listen to all that? Here you does

sing two lines to ketch them and buss it.” Rasika Dindial, the ‘Rani’ of Chutney,

squinted at the 26!year!old girl as if she hadlost her mind. “And look at all these cusswords! Nah! I not singing dat,” she declaredin a tone of finality, passing the page back tothe girl. “Screwed up? I can’t sing ‘screwed’!How you want me to use that word!” The lineshe was referring to was “My loveless andluckless and screwed up piya (lover) “.

Her horror was clearly not feigned.“Ok we’ll change it,” said the girl, Sneha

Khanwalkar, with a mischievous smile. Onephone call to her lyricist in Bombay and thenecessary adjustments were approved, in!cluding reducing the number of verses in thesong and changing the offending ‘screwedup’ to ‘messed up.’

They resumed recording. Rasika’s power!ful and melodious folk voice belted out‘Electric Piya’. The musical composition, aslight variation of the 1950’s “breakaway’song Babhana Aawe Jaaye originally renderedby the Surinamese singer Ramdew Chaitoe,had been a popular number among the Indianpopulation in Trinidad at that time.‘Breakaway’ songs were so called owing tothe spicy, danceable nature of the music thatcaused listeners to, as Trinidadians styled it,‘break away.’ It meant throwing off all self!con!sciousness to permit oneself to dance andhave a good time. The lyrics of breakawaysongs ranged from the religious to narrativesabout daily life, the common feature beingthe exciting dholak beat. The themes weresimilar to the popular, commercialisedChutney music that later developed out ofthis breakaway tradition and even gave birthto the ‘sokah’ or ‘soca’ as all Trinidad ! and,hopefully, other parts of the world ! nowknow it. Some older singers might say thatChutney always existed; what has happenedis that somebody gave it a formal name tomake it marketable.

Electric Piya had been penned for Anurag

Kashyap’s film The Gangs of Wasseypur. Thefilm, which runs for a total of six hours, is tobe released in two parts. It is set in Dhanbad,a city in the state of Jharkhand. Dhanbad isalso known as the ‘Coal Capital of India.’ Basedon a true story, the first part, Wasseypur, is setin 1941, the year that marked the beginningof the coal mafia in India. Part II, Gangs ofWasseypur, takes the narrative all the wayto 2004. The film tells the story of successivegenerations of a coal mafia family from pre!independence India into the new millenni!um.

Winner of the 2011 R.D. Burman FilmfareAward for Best Promising Newcomer,Khanwalkar had come to Trinidad in search ofthe music with which she had become fasci!nated since her college days. The fourth fe!male music director to pass through theBollywood film industry, this was her firsttime out of India. Her travel to Trinidad wasrooted in a combination of curiosity and herquest to discover new sounds. Furthermore,The Gangs of Wasseypur was set within the re!gion from which many of Trinidad’s East Indianindentured labourers had come, making theisland fertile ground for her research.

“Anurag had first offered me a film in whichhe required jazz music,” she explained. “SinceI hadn’t studied that, I was hesitant to do it.Then he offered one that was based on Biharifolk and, when I read the script, I decided Iwanted to come to Trinidad to do the re!search. I knew that many of the Indians wholive here now are descendants of the inden!tured workers who had come here from thesame area in which the film is set. About threemonths before this I had been playing withthe idea of coming to Trinidad because I hadtaken a liking to chutney so I immediatelysuggested this after I read the script. He madeno fuss and allowed me the freedom to dowhatever I wanted to.”

“But why Trinidad?” I asked. “You couldhave gone to some other island like Guyanaor Suriname. They have Chutney music therealso.”

“See? I had found it fascinating that theseIndians had come here in the 19th century,”she responded, “and I wanted to see what ahundred years had done. Although so manyyears had passed, the songs remained withthem though they had changed. It’s like hav!

ing some ancestor of mine who spokeJamaican like “Yah, mon” although she wasIndian, you know. I found it really intriguingso I just wanted to see.

“Also Sonny Mann’s Lotay La was a reallybig hit with my classmates back at college inIndia and he was from Trinidad,” she contin!ued. “When I heard it, I went looking for moreChutney music on the Internet and that’s howI found out about Trinidad. The one that Iliked was Tote He and I made all my friendslearn it. I know every word of that song. Nowthat I’m here I recently learned what it means,but back then, it was just a catchy piece.”

She laughed and started singing Tote Hebut her Indian accent gave the song an evenmore humorous finish; it definitely didn’t havethe Trinidadian ring to it.

I rolled my eyes. She laughed. “C’mon, yaar (a word mean!

ing “friend”), you have to admit, it’s catchy. Ithink these guys here are doing some inter!esting things with this.

“So,” she said, rocking back in her chair,“I want to get some really dirty Chutney music.You think I’ll get someone to sing a really dirtyone for me?” she asked.

“You just sang Tote He for me, didn’t you?Are you really serious about that question?Will you get someone to sing a dirty one foryou?”

“Yeah, yeah, I mean, like dirty dirty. Oh! al!right,” she said catching on to what I had justsaid, “Yeah, yeah, okay. Who do you recom!mend?”

I sighed. “Well you could try any numberof them. I’m sure any one of the younger oneswould be delighted to sing for you.”

She eventually decided on Chutney singersVedesh Sookhoo (of Dhal Belly fame) andNigel Salickram, who doubled as a ventrilo!quist.

Sneha’s work is characterized by her use offolk music in which she reworks the folk aes!thetic to create a modern but raw, realisticsound. She rarely opts to work with the

Musical Re-Mapping

Chutney Goes

BOLLY WOOD

T&T Review June 2012 Page 11MUSIC

well!known playback singers. Instead, as she did inthe case of Dindial, she uses the earthy voices of thefolk singers and reworks modern music around them.Her aim is to create a different sound from the oneheard in the more commercial popular films beingchurned out by Bollywood. The work of Kashyap andDibaker Banerjee do not fit into mainstreamBollywood and Sneha fits perfectly with these direc!tors in her movement away from the mainstream. Whatever the setting of the film, Sneha would gointo the depths of the regions to search out songsand singers who best represent the feelings she wasattempting to create in her music. Her earlier work forthe Kashyap film, Oye Lucky Lucky Oye!, led her to theinteriors of Punjab where she went looking for a par!ticular song which her director had requested. In an interview, director Dibaker Banerjee, de!scribed her as someone who could take a backpack,go into any ‘village, God!forsaken areas, etc and getinside the musical soul of that area and come outwith melodies.’ That was precisely what Sneha didin Trinidad. She chose to stay in an area of Barataria,where she was close to the ordinary folk and able todraw from their musical experiences. By her secondweek in Trinidad, her search for Chutney music hadtaken her into the soul of Trinidadian music, withsounds ranging from the Indo!Trinidadian folk voic!

es of Rasika Dindial, Vedesh Sookhoo andthe late Sagar Sookraj, to steelpan andparang.Four tracks that feature the music shehas collected from Trinidad have been con!textualized in song to suit a rural Indian,Bihari aesthetic. Dindial’s voice is featuredin the track ‘Electric Piya’ while ‘Hunter,’penned by Varun Grover and sung by VedeshSookhoo, features another track in whichSneha has added other singers from India,to render the Bhojpuri part of the song. (Seeit on youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5PEr7ceqPE&feature=related)A third track, “Moorah Calypso,” record!ed by Trinidad’s Robert Persaud, featuresthe cuatro, mandolin and tambourine andhas been reworked in India to give the senseof an acoustic feel of the village on an af!ternoon. “Bhoos,” (translated as “Hay”), also

recorded by Persaud and reworked in India,aimed at featuring what Sneha describes as“aggressive parang” perhaps a relevant adap!tation to the mood of a film that has, as itscentral focus, a gangster theme set againstthe grimness and violence surrounding theDhanbad coalmines. The entire soundtrack of Gangs ofWasseypur will be familiar to Indo!Trinidadians attuned to the folk musicalsound. The song “Hunter”, featuring lead vo!cals of Trinidadian Chutney singer VedeshSookhoo can be heard on the youtube Gangsof Wasseypur song list, along with such trackslike “Tain Tain ToTo” that echo the unmis!takable sound of Trinidad. In May 2012, thefive!hour film met with favourable reviews atthe 65th Cannes Film Festival in France whereit had its international screening. The Indiarelease is set for June 22. Since the film doesnot conform to the mainstream Bollywood

fare that is part of the Indo!Trinidadian’s en!tertainment menu, it may not reach thescreens of Trinidad and Tobago’s cinemasbut we have much to look forward to in it ifit is released here. A portion of the soundtrack promises to be an exciting re!inter!pretation of music that Trinidadians regardas commonplace, our familiar sounds repack!aged and re!presented to us in feelings rang!ing from the sensual to the aggressive. Sneha Khanwalkar’s music holds up a mir!ror before us T&Tans, enabling us to see thepossibilities that we rarely recognize as weseek external validation of our hidden cre!ative selves. For the Indo!Trinidadian, Sneha’sattraction to and use of Chutney music rep!resents confirmation of the great creativityof a culturally marooned people who havefound the wherewithal to utilize their syn!ergies to create an entirely new form.

‘A portion of the sound trackpromises to be an exciting re-interpretation of music thatTrinidadians regard as commonplace, our familiarsounds repackaged and re-presented to us in feelingsranging from the sensual to the aggressive’

ADVERTISMENT

Hunter: Chutney singer

Page 12 T&T Review June 2012

The following is an edited excerpt of an address delivered bySir ShridathRamphalat the 2012 Dr Eric Williams Memorial Lecture presented by the CentralBank in Port of Spain on Saturday, May 26, 2012. The fulltext can be viewed at the Bank’s website at: www.central!bank.org.tt

F IFTY years ago, in 1962, I lived among you, here inmy West Indian Capital, in Port!of!Spain; in Maraval.I was a younger labourer then; and the vineyardwas of course ‘federation’. The West Indies’, with acapital T, the Federation for which West Indian leaders hadstruggled, intellectually and politically, for 40 years ! nonemore so than Trinidadians like Captain Arthur AndrewCipriani and Uriah ‘Buzz’ Butler ! and for which its peoplehad yearned, (the Federation) was about to becomeIndependent on the 31st May 1962 ! 50 years ago nextThursday. We should have been celebrating the 50th anniversaryof the Independence of the West Indian nation next week.That is how close we came to reaching the ‘holy grail’.Instead, on that same day (31 May 1962), the Federation wasdissolved. The immediate cause of the dissolution was, ofcourse, Jamaica’s referendum and Dr Williams’ inventive, andnow notorious, arithmetic that “1 from 10 leaves nought”.But these were only the proximate causes. Federation’sfailure had many fathers.As Assistant Attorney General of the Federation, I hadbeen drafting the Federal Constitution. My vision, my mis!sion, was regional ! an independent West Indies. I left Port!of!Spain on 30th August 1992 for Harvard, where I wouldbe reassured by the example of other federal founding fa!thers who had overcome their trials ! trials much greater andmore traumatic than our own ! through sustained visionand leadership. I have never lost faith in real Caribbeanunity as our regional destiny.Nor, I believe, did Eric Williams. In the last pages ofFrom Columbus to Castro he wrote this:The real case for unity in Commonwealth Caribbeancountries rests on the creation of a more unified front indealing with the outside world ! diplomacy, foreign trade,foreign investment and similar matters. Without such aunified front the territories will continue to be playthingsof outside Governments and outside investors. To increasethe ‘countervailing power’ of the small individual units vis!a!vis the strong outside Governments and outside compa!nies requires that they should aim at nothing less than asingle centre of decision!making vis!a!vis the outside world.[A SINGLE CENTRE OF DECISION!MAKING!].He had earlier written in those same pages:Increasingly, the Commonwealth Caribbean countriessuch as Trinidad and Tobago will become aware that thegoals of greater economic independence and the develop!ment of a cultural identity will involve them in even closerties one with another ! at economic and other levels. Forthe present disgraceful state of fragmentation of theCommonwealth Caribbean countries makes it extremelydifficult (although not impossible) for a single country toadopt a more independent and less ‘open’ strategy of de!velopment.……From all this two questions seem to invite answers fromus, one speculative; the other more definitive. The first iswhether West Indians (all of us) would be better off werewe celebrating next week the 50th Anniversary of theIndependence of The West Indies? The second, given thatwe abandoned federation, is whether we have rectifiedwhat Eric Williams called (in 1969) our disgraceful stateof fragmentation.In this special year, the first question is uniquely ap!propriate; the second, I suggest, is imperative. So let uslook at the first. Would we have been better off had theFederation not been dissolved? Any answer to this must

make some assumptions; but there are good clues. The firstis that the patch!work Lancaster House Constitution agreedto in 1961 would have been the basis of Independence !i.e. a very weak central government; but with a constitu!tional review in 5 years time. But another assumption ismore positive. Norman Manley had pledged that if he wonthe referendum, he would offer himself for election to theFederal Parliament. His actual words were: “As simply as Ican, and with a full heart, I must state that when the first elec!tion for a new West Indies comes, I shall offer myself as a can!didate. In other words, Norman Manley might be the PrimeMinister of the independent Federation.The new Federal Government would have minimal, in!deed miniscule, powers. The Economics of Nationhood, bywhich Eric Williams placed such store; but whose strongcentral government so frightened Jamaica, would be in coldstorage. The Government would be essentially a vehicle formobilising the people of the West Indies to nationhood !and with Manley at the helm inspiring in them and in the in!ternational community confidence in the maturity of thenew Caribbean state. Five years later, constitutional re!view, against the backdrop of those first years of nation!building, would give confidence to a process of endowing theFederal Government with more substantive but still limit!ed powers. Perhaps, most important of all, would be thegains in the deepening of our West Indian identity and theenlargement of a West Indian patriotism. And they would be years of the West Indian people get!ting to know each other as never before. The Federal Palmand The Federal Maple ! Canada’s thoughtful gift to theFederation ! would carry them where only their West Indianspirit had been before in their inter!island travels.Independence for all of the islands would be achievedwithin the framework of the federation, and each of theIsland States would be autonomous within their substantialpowers. On the international stage, The West Indies, thoughstill small in world terms, would have become a sizableplayer, not least because of the quality and spread of ourhuman resources. And would Guyana, which had inexcus!ably abstained from the federal project, not have been in!exorably drawn in? It would, I believe, have become its un!avoidable pathway to independence. Today, on the eve ofits 50th Anniversary our national Federal State (with Guyanaand Suriname in it) would have comprised more than 6million people; it would have had vast resources of oil, gas,gold, diamonds, bauxite, forestry, uranium, manganese,tourism, and financial services; importantly, it would havehad an educated and talented people who have shown bytheir global accomplishments, and the demand for their ex!pertise, that they could compete with any in the world com!munity. It would have been a State that commanded our na!tional pride ! and respect of the international community !while keeping alive our several island cultures and values. Against what might have been, we have to place what hasbeen. Independence on an Island basis (and I regard Belizeand Guyana as islands for this purpose) with our one WestIndies formally fragmented into 13 separate states, withas many flags and anthems and seats in the United Nations.But, most of all, Independence in the context of very smallcommunities without the checks and balances that larger sizebrings. In his frank Epilogue to Sir John Mordecai’s invalu!able record, The West Indies: The Federal Negotiations, SirArthur Lewis, after asserting that (t)he case for a WestIndian federation is as a strong as ever, concluded his rea!soning with the following:Lastly, Federation is needed to preserve political freedom.A small island falls easily under the domination of a boss, whocrudely or subtly intimidates the police, the newspapers,the magistrates and private employers. The road is thusopen to persecution and corruption. If the Island is part ofa federation the aggrieved citizen can appeal to influencesoutside: to Federal Courts, to the Federal police, to theFederal auditors, the Federal Civil service Commission, thenewspapers of other islands, and so on. If the Governmentcreates disorder, or is menaced by violence beyond its con!trol, the Federal Government will step in to uphold the law.

These protections do not exist when the small island is in!dependent on its own. So far West Indian governmentshave a fine tradition for respecting law and order, but inthese turbulent days traditions are easily set aside. TheWest Indies needs a federation as the ultimate guardian ofpolitical freedom in each island.That was 1968. We have had up to 44 years of experienceof separate independence to say whether he was right ! notonly here and in Jamaica, but in all the independences thatfollowed, in Barbados and then in the smaller OECS islands! and, of course, in Guyana and Belize. Judgement will notbe uniform; but I believe that many West Indians, in manyparts of our Region, will say that Sir Arthur was right ! andis; and that the answer to my speculative question is ‘Yes’,we would be better off as West Indians, were we celebrat!ing next week the 50th Anniversary of the Independence ofthe Federated West indies.But, besides Sir Arthur’s particular questions are oth!ers which we cannot avoid; questions not only for Jamaicaand Trinidad and Tobago, but for all of us; questions whichprobe whether as independent countries we have done aswell individually as we might have done collectively.To mention only a few, starting with the specific andcontemporary:Had there been a Federation, with a region!wide regu!latory agency, could it have done better in preventing thedebacle of CLICO and BAICO and the terrible consequencesfor ordinary people now being felt throughout the region,including here in Trinidad and Tobago? Would we have been in a better position to feed ourgrowing population by mobilising the land resources ofGuyana, Suriname and Belize, the capital of Trinidad andthe skills of Barbados and other countries to create a vi!able food economy that reduces our import bill of overUS$3 billion?Would we have been better able to manage the securi!ty of our borders, and to exploit the possibilities afforded bythe Exclusive Economic Zone authorised by the UnitedNations Convention on the Law of the Sea, by the estab!lishment of a seamless maritime boundary across much ofthe Eastern Caribbean island chain?In the UN Climate Change negotiations, and at the up!coming Rio+20 Summit on Environment and Development,would we have been listened to with greater respect and at!tention, speaking as a single voice from a bloc of islandstates and low!lying countries whose very existence isthreatened by climate change, and having a common cli!mate change mitigation and adaptation regime governedby a common political authority? W ould the Federation not have created a largerspace for the creativity, productivity and ad!vancement of our people, especially the youth?And, could we not have done better in keepingat home the over 60% of our tertiary educated people whonow live in the OECD countries? Would not our Caribbean companies been more com!petitive in the global community than our locally!placednano!industries? Would what Eric Williams described as a single centreof decision!making vis!a!vis the outside world have been ableto bargain more effectively in the global community ! in!cluding with the World Bank and in the WTO, with theEuropean Union and now with Canada and China ! for bet!ter terms and conditions for trade, aid and investment thanour individual states with their smaller resources have beenable to do? With its greater resources and larger pool of human tal!ent, would the Federation not have given us a wider field ofopportunity and greater protection and prospects than ourindividual states have provided? Of course, not all will agree on the answers. Separatismhas its beneficiaries: in political establishments, in com!mercial sectors, among anti!social elements that prosperin environments of weakness. That has always been the al!lurement of ‘local control’. But what of the West Indian peo!

ple ! the ones for whom Nor looked to federation as prov tion?Whatever our speculation that ! 50 years ago the movin ‘federation’, and having ‘writ’ solutions, history does not er needs of which Eric Williams w of Independence?How have we done in our responding to the real case fo ation of a more united front world ! diplomacy, foreign tr similar matters.How have we responded the countervailing power of o quires nothing less than the cr cision!making vis!a!vis the ou How have we acted to ch state of fragmentation of the countries of which he wrote Having disposed of federation we retrieved through econom had hoped for from federatioWhat success has attended Have we been labouring? The ond question; and our answe itive.Within 3 years of the disso imperatives had actually ens Caribbean dialogue o Antigua/Barbados/Guyana in the establishment of CARIFTA Area, in which ultimately all t ritories would be involved. B ginning. The Agreement estab shadowed the ultimate cre community of the Caribbean t self enabled by closer econo units. When Eric Williams inscrib to mein 1970, the Caribbea Market was on its way to bein being planted; but the labour ue. Work on the Treaty to form under the guidance of William other brilliant son of this soil regional economic integratio of West Indian regionalists: Treaty was signed at Chagua original Treaty of Chaguaram Ministers Barrow, Burnham, M The signing of the Treaty has b in the history of West Indian And it was a highpoint of r In that same year we were n European Community as on Community ! and using our o the African, Caribbean and P reducing the developing cou Convention with Europe from ing our own at the UN in New ternational ‘make!over’ deb Economic Order. And, just mo Treaty, on Guyana’s initiative and Trinidad and Tobago had and broken the diplomatic December 1972. And there President Ronald Reagan’s C had advanced proposals for a the Caribbean Basin, with Tri host the defining Summit ConBut we had flattered to dec lapsed into inertia and wors 1982, the Heads of Governm Common Market Council, CAR

IN FOLabouring in th

Page 13

rman Manley spoke when he iding a wider field for ambi! n ! and it can be no more than ng finger of history wrote out moved on. But in writing out rase needs. What about those wrote in 1969, within 7 years r separate independences in r unity that he saw in the cre! t in dealing with the outside rade, foreign investment and to his view that ‘to increase ur small individual units... re! reation of a single centre of de! utside world? ange the present disgraceful e Commonwealth Caribbean e with trenchant authority? n for better or for worse, have mic integration the gains we on? d our labours in the vineyard? ese are all aspects of the sec! er can, indeed, be more defin! lution of the Federation, these sured the resumption of the f unity through the nitiative of 1965 which led to A ! the Caribbean Free Trade the previously federated ter! But CARIFTA was just the be! blishing it had expressly fore! ation of ‘a viable economic territories’. ! a Community it! omic integration between its bed From Columbus to Castro an Community and Common ng agreed. The vineyard was r of nurturing would contin! malise and fill it out was in hand Demas at the Secretariat ! an! who toiled in the vineyard of on and inspired a generation economists and others. The ramas on July 4th 1973 ! the mas ! signed initially by Prime Michael Manley and Williams. been described as a landmark people’; and so it was. regional unity and confidence. negotiating with the still new e Caribbean ! with our own oneness to forge the unity of Pacific countries (the ACP) ! untries negotiating the Lomé m 46 to 1. And we were hold! w York and Geneva in the in! bate on a New International onths before the signing of the e Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica d defied hemispheric opinion c embargo against Cuba in e was more. Long before US Caribbean Basin Initiative we an Association of countries of nidad and Tobago offering to nference. ceive. Within years, we had re! e. For 7 years, from 1975 to ment Conference ! with the RICOM’s ‘principal organ’ ! did

not meet. This is not the time or place for an inquest intoCaribbean dissipation; the excuses were multiple: the en!larging economic disparity between Trinidad and Tobagoand Guyana and Jamaica in particular; the virus of ‘ideologicalpluralism’ that infected the integration process; the divi!sive effects of the emergence of Grenada’s RevolutionaryGovernment specifically, and the threat of a return of theregion to external power rivalries; the deterioration of per!sonal relations between Caribbean leaders to the point ofincivility. By the end of the 70s it was realised that an im!passe had been reached in Caribbean affairs and the CARI!COM Council turned to William Demas and a team of re!gional experts to ‘review the functioning of Caribbeanintegration.....and prepare a strategy for its improvement inthe decade of the 1980s’.The Group’s findings were blunt and worth recalling:An analysis of the performance of CARICOM in its threeareas of activity shows that, although gains were registeredin many aspects of functional cooperation and to a lesser ex!tent with respect to inter!regional trade, inadequate progresswas made in production integration and coordination offoreign policies....The misunderstandings......that charac!terised certain initiatives taken by some member countriesin the field of external economic relations also gave a poorpublic image to the Community.But their conclusions contained seeds of hope:The fact, however, that the institutional framework of thecommunity remains intact, that an inter!governmental di!alogue was and is being sustained and that intra!regionaltrade and functional cooperation continue to show resilienceand in some cases growth, indicate that the foundations ofthe movement are still intact.But hope was misplaced. The Grenada invasion in 1983effectively put paid to any ‘re!launch’ of CARICOM.……….A year ago, the Institute of International Relations ofthe University of the West Indies here at St Augustine ! asI recall, very much the creation of Eric Williams ! conduct!ed a study of the region’s record by some of the most emi!nent scholars on the Caribbean. It is the most authoritativecontemporary commentary on the state of Caribbean inte!gration ! the state of the vineyard. Entitled CaribbeanRegional Integration, its Executive Summary said the fol!lowing:There was a real sense that the optimistic era ofCaribbean integration may well have passed just at thetime when it is most desperately needed. The difficul!ties facing the region are no longer simply about competingeffectively in a globalisingeconomy. Rather, theyare ‘existential threats’ which bring into ques!tion the fundamental viability of Caribbean so!ciety itself. Climate change, transnational crime, the declineof regional industries, foodsecurity, governancechallenges, internationaldiplo!macy and so on areproblems which canonly be effec!tively addressedby co!ordinat!ed regionalresponses.

Moreover, these problems are becoming increasinglyacute in the immediate present; failure to act immediately,decisively and coherently at the regional levelcould quite conceivably herald the effective decline of Caribbean society as a ‘perfect storm’ of problems gatherson the horizon. The regional leadership is seen as crit!ical to either the continued deterioration of the integrationprocess, or its re!generation. ...This report is thereforetimely in terms of both its recommendations and the window of opportunity that has opened for the region !and especially the Heads of Government (HoG) ! to seizethe integration initiative. It cannot be stressed just how crit!ical the present juncture is; this may well be the last chanceto save the formal integration process in the Caribbean aswe know it, and to set the region on a new devel!opment path. Another opportunity might not present itself inthe future.The study was available before last year’s CARICOMSummit in St. Kitts; but there is no indication that CaribbeanHeads took notice of it. Certainly their decision to ‘pause’ theintegration process; slow down the pace a bit, as the Chairmaninsisted, is at total variance with the Study’s call for the re!generation of the integration processA t the St. Kitts Summit, the Honourable KamlaPersad!Bissessar, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago! and a successor of Eric Williams ! assertedthat: “Trinidad and Tobago is for CARI!COM and for regional integration”, So, in dif!ferent words, did many other political leaders.Why then is ‘one West Indies’ an oxymoronto so many?We all need to ponder this as we cele!brate 50 years of independence; not justTrinidad and Tobago and Jamaica thisyear; but everyone over the years to come.While we celebrate survival; we mustnot ignore our under!achievement andpretend that they were 50 glorious years.On the regional slate, which is ours col!lectively, the record is not good, and thetrends beyond 50 are palpably worry!ing. Caribbean people know of thesefailures, they know the state of theregional vineyard. They are no longermoved by political promises of itsimminent improvement. Yet, po!litical leaders over the years havesustained the pretencethat regional in!

tegration is moving forward. The opposite is now so obvi!ous that pretences are being abandoned…..You in Trinidad and Tobago are in some respects thestrongest now. When Jamaica precipitated the fall of feder!alism 50 years ago they were the strongest in our Region.But they precipitated that fall on a lack of knowledge andfalse belief ! deliberately fostered by those who opposed fed!eration for their narrow political purposes. Federation is anoctopus anxious to suck Jamaica dry, recorded John Mordecaias being a symbol used by the JLP to embroider their oppo!sition campaign. Youmust not, in your present strength, do the same toCaribbean integration. Remaining out of the full appellatejurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice is one of thoseacts that, without meaning to, could precipitate a collapse ofmore than the Court. Continuing to squat on the door!step ofthe Privy Council50 years after Independence; keeping the CCJon ‘probation’ while clinging to its Headquarters, is not the in!tegration model to which this country is legally bound.Fortunately, Prime Minister Persad!Bissesar has said enoughto suggest that all is not lost for that model.Were it lost, we would all be the weaker. You would losenot only a guaranteed market for your manufactured goodsand for your services, but also allies ! kith and kin ! whowould stand at your elbow and strengthen your arm in yourbargaining with countries larger and stronger than you; andin resisting external forces that threaten the safety of your so!ciety; all those gains that Eric Williams saw ! afterIndependence ! as the pillars on which rested the real case forunity of the Caribbean countries.But let me be more positive. The Caribbean Communityneeds Trinidad and Tobago not just as a player but as aleader ! an intellectual leader most of all. It will not haveescaped you how central ! and, indeed, how indispensable! have been the roles that Trinidadian leaders and tech!nocrats have played in the history of moulding our scat!tered archipelago into a West IndianCommunity, if not yet a WestIndian nation.

OCUS e Vineyard

Page 14 T&T Review June 2012ART

By DAVID CAVE

T HE Art Society is a veritable institution, havingbeen established almost twenty years beforeIndependence, in 1943. In this year of Trinidadand Tobago’s 50th anniversary of Independence,

the Art Society opted to connect the present with its en!viably long history in presenting an exhibition titledNostalgia ! The Old Inspires the New, which ran from18th May to 2nd June 2012.

This exhibition was one of the Art Society’s mostpublicised and marketed ever, enjoying good supportfrom both public and private sectors..

As far as art exhibitions in Trinidad and Tobago go,Nostalgia was impressive with 56 works of art on dis!play and on sale. In keeping with its relatively novel de!gree of openness, work could be found in any genre,from traditional drawing and painting to sculpture, pho!tography, digital graphic design and collage.

In terms of quality, the exhibition was impressive.Pieces such as Abuela by Colin Bootman, the realism ofCross Breed and William Francis Rummie by RobertaStoddart and the abstract piece Rhizome by CandiceSobers provided a clear and definite reassurance of thetalent and artistic capacity that reside our art. The ex!hibition itself was proof that the logistics could come to!gether to create an impressive show.

Give the successes of this exhibition and the modestcatalogue prices, the lack of support for the fine arts in

T&T is all the more perplexing.Compared to other markets, T&T art remains severely

undervalued. In economically depressed Jamaica, forexample, visual art still manages to fetch attractive sums!in US dollars to boot. The Jamaican art market is signifi!cantly more developed than ours, to the point wherethe Jamaican branch of Scotiabank deals with the ap!praisal and collection of art. In Barbados, the dimunitiveNational Art Gallery puts our National Art Gallery toshame.

In terms of the art itself at Nostalgia, that tension ofwhich Derek Walcott spoke in reviewing the Art Society’sIndependence Exhibition in October, 1962, the year ofIndependence, was still alive and discernible.

For Walcott back then, the tension was the result ofthe diametrically opposed forces of local creativity andstrong foreign influences, each pulling against the otherin the effort to create good indigenous art. Today, not onlydoes that old “tension” persist, but it is made even moreoverbearing by a heavy and palpable sense of stagnation.

While there seems to be no lack of talent and artisticability in Trinidad and Tobago, there is a serious void withrespect to the sense of direction and implementation ofsupport structures for our artists, art galleries and artmarket.

If we continue to be apathetic and complacent andfail to put measures in place to dynamise the visual arts,we will have even less to celebrate in Art fifty years fromnow.

The

Hau n t i n gT E N S I O N

Abuela by Colin Bootman

Rhizome by Candice Sobers

Nostalgia

ADVERTISMENT

Page 16 T&T Review June 2012

Usually, it is Indian movies thatdraw the crowds, but inChaguanas these days, thou!sands are streaming in to view,of all things, a science exhibi!tion.“India: A Culture of Science”which runs from two monthsfrom May 22 to July 20, has beenhailed as the first tangible prod!uct of the Prime Minister's offi!cial visit to India in January.In the space of four months,India's National Council ofScience Museums and Trinidadand Tobago's National Instituteof Higher Education, Science,Research and Technology(Niherst) have managed to puton a large!scale exhibition ofover 175 exhibits covering 7000years of India's history in sci!ence.The exhibition is presentedthrough 3D interactives, mod!els, graphic displays, artefacts,multimedia games and videos.The Divali Nagar premises inChaguanas is almost unrecog!nizable as host location even asit underscores the need for asuitable, purpose!built locationfor exhibitions of the scale rep!resented by this one.Visitors have been particu!larly enthralled by the life!likedepictions of indigenous tech!nology that evoke the early Indo!Trinidadian experience and thefine filigree jewelry and cottonfabric being made on!the!spotby Indian craftsmen. The sciencedemonstrations and games area big hit, especially with stu!dents.The day's schedule combinesthe exhibition tour with lecturesand cultural performances.Exhibition hours, Monday toFriday are 9am to 7 pm and 1pmto 9pm on Sundays and publicholidays.Admission is free.

7000 Years of Popular Science...From India

ADVERTISMENT

Page 18 T&T Review June 2012BOOK REVIEW

By JEROME TEELUCKSINGH

Glenville AshbyThe Believers: The Hidden World of West Indian Spiritualism in New York (London and Hertfordshire: HansibPublications, 2012)188 pages

ONE of the most fascinating recentbooks published on the West Indiandiaspora is The Believers. The author,Dr. Glenville Ashby is well!known andrespected in New York and Trinidadand Tobago as an accomplished jour!nalist. He provides a profound analysisinto the religious and spiritual experi!ences of a segment of the working classCaribbean diaspora in one of the mostdiverse states in the United States.The book contains 39 concise chap!ters that are coherent and informative.It provides valuable snapshots of adiasporic people who are trying to sur!vive in their adopted homeland. Ashbyis accurate in stating, “The Caribbeanpsyche is rooted in the spirit world.The spirits are everywhere. They areintegral to social, economic and politi!cal life” (p.2).Evidence of assimilation, accultura!tion and adaptation is prevalent inChapters 5, 6 and 7. The author pro!vides a first!hand account of Kali wor!ship and reflects on the lives of Hindusin New York. Pundit Rakesh Maharaj'scomment was noted by Ashby, “Hetalked about the City and FireDepartment regulations that restrictedthe lighting of deyas, and how per!forming a puja here could be a littlemore expensive” (p. 30). Throughout the book, Ashby'sanalyses reflect a keen observer whoutilizes social, religious and culturallenses. An illustration of his objectivityand awareness of historical baggage isevident in his comment, “Every cultureis different and they worship Godthrough their experiences…. I gavesome thought to the whole experienceand realised how much Western reli!gious thought had prejudiced our con!cept of the spiritual” (p. 27).In Chapter 15 'Immanuel Bones' andChapter 22 'Haitian Magic', Ashbyvividly recalls the conduct of meetingsand the reactions of participants andleaders. Readers would be enthralledwith Chapter 28 'The Grandmaster' asit offers insight into the meaning of thespiritual alphabet and occult symbols.The explanations emanate fromArchbishop Philip Lewis! the grand!master who recalled seeing persons,associated with the banquets orKabbalistic table, die unnaturaldeaths.The thought!provoking issues inThe Believers will prove interesting for

scholars and lay!persons. Topics aslife after death, the existence of Godand spiritual forces, good and evil andforms of communication with godswill certainly contribute to philosophi!cal and religious debates. The authoralso provides personal reflectionssuch as “The belief in God does notrequire you to be devout. It's just afeeling you cannot explain, a knowingthat you cannot prove, but a sure betthat there is something much biggerthan us all” (p. 172).This work should serve as an inspi!ration for West Indian writers in North

America and Europe to document therich spiritual tapestry of the Caribbeandiaspora. In retrospect, The Believersshould be compulsory reading for any!one who seeks to understand the sig!nificance of spiritual and religiousrealms of West Indians in New York.• Jerome Teelucksingh is a senior

lecturer in the Department ofHistory, University of the West Indies,

St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago

Caribbean Spirit World in New York

T&T Review June 2012 Page 19TRIBUTE

By LeRoy Clarke

I T IS amazing how someevents touch us with a seam!less mutuality that signifiesthe extraordinary bond wehave, even though, too often, wetake it for granted. The passingof our Spiritual Mentor, GrandMaster Artist and Philosopher,Phillip Moore should bring us intoconsternation of our all too ca!sual attitude to the welfare of eachother. We are sufficiently aware ofthe unending struggle that facesus individually, as Artists, be itpainters or poets, musicians,thinkers, sculptors or novelists !creationists all! yet a gulf of in!difference seems to increase ourrisks at being in insurmountablebondage of anxiety, separate andapart from each other. The last chapter of our mag!nificent Pointerman, Phillip, wasnot only met with apathy, but withthe sodden rumour of his wors!ening all!round condition, andfrom which we idly turned away;that should trigger in us the needfor greater responsibility to eachother and a lessening of ournomad inclination that often caus!es us to fade into the thralldomof loneliness, abandonment andthe certainty of unceremoniousdeath!Guyana is a marvelouslydense, unique repository. Itsrivers are dark, slowly movingseas that map innumerable pathsto hideously forbidding heightswhere mountains are continuingto rise among splendours un!dreamt, mute and concealed in aplanetary width of green that isthe enigma of abundance, out!stressing any logical and politi!cal mind. This is where noise is aqueer absurdity in the almost suc!culent harmony that absorbs theslightest trespass. This is whereinitiations to the realm of imagi!nation begin! This is the birth!place of renowned avant!gardes,the likes of Denis Williams,Aubrey Williams, EdgarMittelholzer, Jan Carew, WilsonHarris, Walter Rodney, ForbesBurnham, Clyde Walcott,Shivnarine Chanderpaul, CliveLloyd, Martin Carter, MichaelGilkes and other LightBringers…This is the birthplaceof our magnanimous spirit madevisible !Phillip Moore!that we maytouch it!Phillip Moore, despite all oddsthat disfavoured him with theirignorance of the significance ofhis presence in the world we in!habit without any sense ofdwelling, was the physical en!dowment of an undamped spir!it, meant to insist on our effort tohold strain, bearing the severity ofsavagely bent convictions, thosebefore which, the human spirit is

beginning to wilt; and those, aboutwhich, we must be intenselyaware, measure for measure, ifwe were to attain our true heightand its sovereignty. Our paths crossed severaltimes leaving me that feeling ofan engagement within a mor!phological space; it vibrated as ifit were an actual dialectic held toits fort, but more at the very mo!ment of summarizing the criteri!on of several conversations. Andthose were being conducted as ifemanating from the blinding rootof unconsciousness, just enoughto allow the visible brimming ofappearances adorned in the em!broideries of incandescent de!calcomania! S eeing him is an act!mag!netized perception; onecannot be settled enoughin one's own, not to bedrawn into an extraordinary hap!pening !his orbit! He lured us intoimaginings of primordial states,of living geneses that procure forour excitement, “the phenome!non of simultaneity” where Past,Present and Future in a pendu!lumnic swing, are caught… loom!ing precise moment, TotemicPresent. Tree!like too, in its nobleethos, weathered, encrypted skinsturned absorbed centurion !a vi!sual orchestration of primordialconvergences! that was Phillip, acentrifugal force of an insolubledisposition to his faith. And, as ifnavigating the multi!dimension!ality of a space absolved from us,he romped through, pass the bom-basticity of our illicit crafts, with a

humorous glint at solitariness thatglowed around him; the enigmaticcharts of the virtuosity of his liv!ing art, how they omitted us! Andfor that, how we retaliated withour spiteful good! Whereas the islands of ourCaribbean in reality are fragmentsof disemboweled origins, and, enmasse anxiously precipitant, emp!tying ourselves in increasing slip!shod festivities, Guyana's plural!ity, notwithstanding its richcogitative dimensionality, is stol!id!blind to the opportunity as gate!way to a yet unmatched, contem!plative imagination that, in theWest, can be the seat of NewWorld aesthetics. As is of such, wemust be urged on to recognize inPhillip Moore and his life work,species of significations that, atall cost and sacrifice, be preservedin the power willed them, and nothindered by popular unintelli!gence, to be slaughtered by maliceof the impotent, and the decadenceof wild!flung!sh*t!in!the!facemediocrity! Clothed pure, in a wistful cli!mate of equity, echoing riddles,he walked to the beat of a con!stant call to be shrewd and ex!emplary, always arriving as iffrom somewhere hidden; a fisherof dreams, but as huge quartz ofmemory, stepping barely aboveits continent, ready to dictate tous, of what we are and can be.Therein, was the driving force ofThe Grand Master; he was em!bodied by an unwavering faith inthe Arts to assure qualities thatmake the world of our word, pal!pable Destiny.

It was there, at Princeton, inNew Jersey, in the privilege of agrant that he stood, the voice of anOracle open to the world, never!theless, here he is, a CaribbeanVoice that up to the present hasnot been eared here! It is with un!canny!ness that our artists areinsisted upon to seek recognitionabroad first, before they are madeaware of, in their own home, yetto suffer indignities under no lessthan nefarious systems that will!fully hold the Genius of our heart!land in the bondage of their in!difference. Nowhere in the world are theartists treated as meagerly andwith such contempt as is the casein the Caribbean; the inevitableplague of our space is a pauper!izing of will that is essential toshaping a society of the millionsthat populate it, leaving our bestattempts flagellated !the wiltedglow of agate that is our pride!less carnival has overtaken uswith its funeral slur of too manynoble dead buried here.F rom the firm wonder ofthe Kaiteur Falls he extri!cated the model of Cuffie'sdefiant presence thatwould emphasize his philosophy,Godmanliness. This monumentto his staunch belief in God!Word!Manliness will herald that axialmoment in his sense of origins;his was an African presencing ofWord. He seemed a fitted bride!groom, willed suitor to the reck!onings of his Queen, the Muse ofhis calling! LeRoy, O LeRoy, hemoaned, a caveat of memory!Pointing to a photograph ofMiriam Makeba on his night tablenear his bed, where Eye could notimagine he slept; it was an altar,because all else had added to im!press me thus, a cave, the inch toinch!filled walls of paintings, inthe single three or four storiedhouse, shy and away from itsneighborhood, a salute to its ownhinterland afar and away fromthe Guyanas. In the Passing, theendured Majesty of the SupremeArtist haunts the absurd trials offictions brought to bear heavywith disdain on the Noble Soul ofHumanity. Where were you whenthey slaughtered him with dwarf!like seditions that gnaw away atthe most highborn texts to leavehis lips… Leave the heart of hishands… Grandfather, MasterArtist… We may never know whoyou were, and are among us inthe lies we tell ourselves… Slavesthat we are, and well keptstrangers, protuberances, far andoblivious from that singular pun!gency of spirit awaiting us!

—leroyclarke@hotmail.com

Guyana’s internationallyacclaimed artist andsculptor, Phillip Mooredied on Sunday, May13 at the age of 90 athis home on theCorentyne, EastBerbice.

His most famouswork is the 33-foot1763 Monument tribute to Cuffy, theleader of the Berbiceuprising who isGuyana's nationalhero.

Moore consideredhimself a “spirittaught” artist, citing adream he had in 1955of a huge hand reaching down to himfrom the heavens as avoice commandedhim to become anartist.

He was a residenttutor at the BurrowesSchool of Art inGuyana and professorat Princeton University.

Phillip Moore

The Passing of Phillip Moore

D’eath of Us

1793 monument by Phillip Moore, cast bronze, Plaza of theRevolution, Georgetown, Guyana.

Page 20 T&T Review June 2012SPORT

By ASHFORD JACKMAN

O N THE fourth day of the opening Testat Lord’s, when the West Indies hadfought their way back to give them!selves an outside chance of victory,two of our three leading TV stations both teasedand led their sportscasts with the news thatChelsea had beaten Bayern Munich in theEuropean Champions League final. The TVhighlights were followed by “Vox!Pop” reac!tions fromamong a large gathering of jubilantChelsea “fans” and their grieving Bayern coun!terparts, both having watched the game onlarge screens erected in Port of Spain in a bidto simulate the atmosphere inside Munich’sAllianz Arena.The cricketers, including T&T’s own DeneshRamdin who had contributed a critical 43 runs,were relegated to third in the news peckingorder.It was a damning statement of whereour loyalties lie; our present!day sports re!porters, after all, are merely reflecting atidalwave that is drowning much, much more thancricket. Ironically, while cricket was used toillustrate my point, it is, to my mind,local foot!ball more than any other sport that is mostimmediately threatened by this runaway trend;and,if the domestic game is to survive, the sit!uation might just call for hard decisions thatcould lead to great upheaval.At the launch of a major tournament severalmonths ago, Dexter Skeene, CEO of the TT ProLeague, said that the season was proving tobe “a challenge, to say the least.” Doubtless,prominent among his thoughts was the last!minute withdrawal of Joe Public, the loss ofincome from the League’s remaining die!hardsupporters (inflicted by the State of Emergencyand accompanying curfew) and the strain ondefending champs Defence Force, as well asPolice, forced as the protective services wereto play their full slate of matches over a con!siderably shorter period after the SoE was lift!ed.Considering that all this had come in thewake of T&T’s elimination ! at the feet ofGuyana, no less !from World Cup 2014, it wasno small achievement on the part of Skeeneand his staff that the League and all relatedtournaments had contrived to retain theirsponsorship.What Skeene could not do was get crowdsout to matches, even after things were backto normal. The ployof running the League onparallel with Europe was doomed from thestart; from September to May, the locals whoare into football were all at home or in sportbars watching Barcelona, Real Madrid, the two

Manchester heavyweights and the rest of theheavily!marketed English Premier League.David against Goliath does not begin to de!scribe the odds against the survival of a pro!fessional league in a single Caribbean statetoday. Size, money and technology havechanged everything. The TT Pro League has amaximum potential market of 1.3 million spec!tators; individual European clubs alone com!mand followings that are several times thatfigure. Pro League matches are recorded andplayed back days later on a local sports chan!nel. In contrast, matches in Europe are shownlive via satellite around the globe, withnet!works paying hundreds of millions of dollarsin cash for the right to broadcast them. ThePro League uses its shoe!string budget to place

a few ads in the newspapers; the UEFA leaguesare backed by comprehensive marketing strate!gies and campaigns that go so far as to includethe participation of major clubs in off!seasontournaments in China, India and whereverthere is wealth, for the sole purpose of “hook!ing” new markets for TV rights and uniformand memorabilia sales. That does not include the value of spon!sors’ messages on signage around the playingfields and on the players’ kitswhich are broad!cast to millions around the world. Not for noth!ing have the world’s wealthiest businessmencome to appreciate the true meaning of theterm “The Beautiful Game.” European clubsare owned by massive conglomerates that in!vest staggering sums in the purchase of play!

ers and coaches, in their desperate quest notmerely to win trophies but to get into the ul!timate vehicle for global exposure: theChampions League. Meanwhile, local clubsstruggle to pay meagre salariesand often selltheir best players just to stay afloat.The Pro League draws its talent from home,where guns, gangs and drugs have lured ! andcontinue to lure ! a significant percentage of thepotential players away from sport. Aside fromits own home!grown talent, Europe has al!ways commanded the best from South America;in recent decades, it has added the cream ofAfrica, Asia and the CONCACAF as tributariesfeeding into its mainstream leagues.Cable and satellite TV are dumping thisEuropean juggernaut smack into Caribbeanliving!rooms while whatever is not available onFox Sports and ESPN can be accessed for a fewdollars more on the Jamaica!based Sportsmaxchannel. Our domestic football has as muchchance of survival as a corner roti!shop whenKFC, Burger King and Subway suddenly openup outlets on the same or a nearby street.H ow did Trinidad and Tobago’s footballland in this mess? For the answer,we have to go back to the 2001 FIFAUnder!17 World Championship.FIFA’s laws dictate that, to host a major tour!nament, a country must have a professionalleague and its stadia must meet certain crite!ria.True, the United States started the MLSafter staging the 1994 World Cup; but in thisworld of greed where money talks, some, asGeorge Orwell pointed out, are more equalthan others.T&T spent millions building four stadia justto host that tournament and since the HaselyCrawford was the premium arena, we mayhave established a record of sorts! four groupsplaying at five venues; so that one group hadto split its matches between the AtoBoldonandthe Manny Ramjohnstadiums. For a while, all went well enough with thePro League; the football drew crowds and T&Tclubs were actually importing talent fromGuyana, St. Lucia, Antigua, St Kitts and evenBrazil.But the oil boom ended and realitychecked in. Wages are now rumoured to be atan all!time low, and players are as eager toseek betterment abroad as the owners seemanxious to sell them. Additionally, with the na!tional team languishing at 82nd in the FIFArankings, players have had to accept whatev!er crumbs are thrown at them.In the just concluded season, ShahdonWinchester, Hughton Hector, Cornel Glen, ClydeLeon and Devon Jorsling have all

STRATEGY FOR FOOTBALL’S

SURVIVALWind Up Pro-League, Return to Community

Dexter Skeene...wealth of experience

been either recruited or on trial in Vietnam.Jerrel Britto and Kendal Jagdeosingh havebeen to Turkey and Thailand respectively,and Densil Theobald has just returned fromthe Indian league. A few even play in morerecognised leagues ! Khaleem Hyland inBelgium, Lester Peltier in Slovakia, MekeilWilliams in Poland, Robert Primus inKazakhstan and Carlyle Mitchell with theVancouver Whitecaps.Even KenwyneJones, who mustbe undertremendouspressure at StokeCity, will hang inthere, even if hehas to take a dropdown to theEnglish

Championship.The Pro Leagueproduct is furtherdiluted every timeanother player ofsome talent leaves forgreener pastures. Smallwonder the football!lov!ing public has gravitated indroves to the well!marketedand inevitably superior alter!natives on Cable television. Itmatters not that problems ofracial hatred may be rife amongthe followers of Barcelona, Real,Juventus, Inter, Liverpool, United,Dortmund or Munich; when alocal “fan” buys the shirt and donsit on Saturday morning to sit infront of his flat!screen, he is mere!ly trying to belong. The problemsexperienced by Anton Ferdinand,Patrice Evra and Mario Balotelli, toname only those three, are realitiesthat are cleverly hidden from thecameras; they are issues the localsupporter is not prepared to con!front. Safe in the comfort of his liv!

ing!room or of the sports bar, he is living hisdream.But all is not lost. Those who genuinelylove the game in Trinidad and Tobago must actsooner rather than later. We must first extri!cate ourselves from a fight that we cannothope to win. The Pro League must be woundup, with club owners being compensated ac!cording to their records and the audited valueof their assets! physical and human. Our pre!mier league must return to its roots, withclubs based, as in the pre!Jack “Voice of One”Warner era, on regions! Arima, Tunapuna,San Juan, Santa Cruz, Maraval, Carenage, DiegoMartin, Caroni, San Fernando, Point Fortin,Palo Seco, Scarborough and Roxborough. Such an approach comes with a “hook” ofits own, community interest and allegiance. How can this work? For one, thereare the material benefits. The Statecan provide partial annual funding toeach regional organisation and ap!point representatives to super!vise and ensure things aredone above board. Objectorsneed to be reminded that,for over two decades, twomen essentially ran all foot!ball in the country.Today, theAssociation is bankrupt andmonies, earned in large quan!tities over the years, cannot beaccounted for. A returning to amateur or evensemi!professional status will signif!icantly reduce the cost of runningthe league and other major compe!titions.Players and coaches whostand out can be offered part!timeemployment contracts; in otherwords, those who work hard andexcel can become semi!profession!al. Such a scheme will provide part!time employment for people in de!pressed areas, from as simple a taskas washing the team uniforms toproviding meals, driving the teambus and producing a uniform rhythmsection made up entirely of villagers.When, aside from the players repre!senting their communities, there arepeople involved in the day!to!day op!erations of the club, those who live inthe region will have an interest in anda reason to support whatever the clubdoes.Local and multi!national firms canbe encouraged to sponsor clubs; theymight be influenced by location, for ex!ample, Angostura in Laventille, or byinterest, such as Atlantic LNG in the oilbelt. There is no income to be earnedfrom broadcast rights! our local TVstations cannot and will not pay fora commodity they cannot re!sell; butthey can be made to provide anagreed quantity of promotion in ex!change for the right to video!tapematches.The scheme also offers other ad!

vantages. No one candeny that the lure offinancial compensa!tion from clubsabroad has been amajor influentialfactor in the rash offoreign transfersthat we have seenin recent years. Inthe community!based alternative,there will either beno reward for aplayer leaving toplay professionallyabroad, or the moneywill go towards theclub’s finances. The con!tinuous bleeding of talentwill slow down significant!ly; it is unrealistic to believeit can be stopped com!pletely. There would be noneed to search for per!sonnel to run this nation!al league; the current TTPro League executive andstaff have built up sev!eral years of experiencein running a league withlittle or no income fromthe gates; Skeene himselfhas managed to bring insponsors in spite of all thesetbacks; such experienceshould be put to use inorder to ensure that thenew league takes offsmoothly.For years, individualvoices have called for a re!turn to our roots of com!munity!based football; butthese pleas have fallen ondeaf earsperhaps becausethere has never been a con!certed call. But the greatestargument in favour of a returnto the past is lying in the open forall to see. It is to be found in the de!plorable state of the nation’s footballand the fact that most of our greatestaccomplishments of yesteryear wereachieved in the days of the communityclubs. When the “Strike Squad” made theentire football world focus on T&T for onefateful day in November 1989, the nationalleague was all amateur; even the key figuresin qualifying for Germany 2006 owe theirearly development to a period before the faceof the national league was changed. Theseare solid arguments for dismantling a sys!tem that has not worked.The alternative is to continue to engagein a battlewhich we stand absolutely nochance of winning.

T&T Review June 2012 Page 21SPORT‘Those who genuinely love the game in Trinidad

and Tobago must act sooner rather than later. Wemust first extricate ourselves from a fight that wecannot hope to win. The Pro League must bewound up, with club owners being compensatedaccording to their records and the audited value oftheir assets- physical and human’

Densil Theobald… just back from India

Kenwyne Jones…hanging inat Stoke City

Page 22 T&T Review June 2012SPORT

Earl Best assesses the ODI prospects

K IRK EDWARDS has played nineTests, scored 665 runs including twocenturies, four half!centuriesand arun of 0, 4, 1, 0, 7 and 0 in his lastsix innings. Edwards is the current vice!cap!tain of the West Indies team. RamnareshSarwan has played 87 Tests, scored 5842runs including 15 centuries, 31 half!centuriesand a run of 94, 18, 117, 98, 19, 17, and 6 inhis last six innings. Sarwan is a former captainof the West Indies who is not in the regionalTest squad for England…and was not evenconsidered at any stage.Apparently.Darren Sammy has played 26Tests, scored968 runs including one century and two half!centuriesand a run of 61, 10, 37, 17, 106and25 in his last six innings. Sammy is the cur!rentcaptain of the West Indies team.Christopher Gayle has played 91 Tests, scored6373 runs including 13 centuries and 33 half!centuries and a run of 26,82*, 57, 6, 128*and27 in his last six innings. Gayle, the leadingrun!getter in IPL 2012 with 733 runs in!cluding an unforgettable century against theDelhi Daredevils, is a former captain of theWest Indies who last played for the regionin December 2010 and who is not in the Testsquad for England…and was not even con!sidered at any stage. Apparently.The current top four in the West Indiesbatting order boast a grand total of 49 Testsamong them; almost half as many as Gayle's91 and just short of 40 less than Sarwan's87. Yet there is no room in the side for thein!form Jamaican left!hander who went out ofhis way to make himself available or the frus!trated Guyanese right!hander who, be itnoted, has publicly declared his allegiance tohis current county Leicestershire. But is thatan accident? Might it not be that, adaptingSparrow, WI like it so? Even before the series started, West Indiesteam coach Ottis Gibson was declaring hissatisfaction with “taking it into the fourthday.” Why, therefore, the seeming surpriseto discover skipper Sammy's smug satisfac!tion at not winning but at merely putting upa fight? Whydoes anyone think that the WestIndies are really trying to win? Whywould itsurprise anyone that the side led by Sammyand Gibson is 0!2 down in the three!Test se!ries with one still to play? Why if we are de!termined not to pick our best team ! not theXI best, ent Hilaire? but the best XI ! are weeven bothering to take the field? One can be forgiven for thinking that thepeople in charge have a vested interest in theregional side's continuing failure to turn thecorner. On what grounds, really, can the omis!sion of Gayle from the squad for the SecondTest be justified? What more does he haveto do to make it clear how much he wants toserve his land on the field of play? ProudJamaican that he is, it must have been tanta!mount to a public humiliation for him to swal!low such a huge slice of humble pie as theWICB required of him; but swallow he did.It must have cost him a princely sum to with!draw from his summer contract withSomerset; but withdraw he did. What has hegot in return? Loud silence. Protested he hasnot. Nor have we. Not enough.Fortunately for us all, Michael Holding haschampioned the cause of both Sarwan andGayle and Jerome Taylor, the near!forgottentalented pacerwho almost single!handedlywon us a series. “People responsible for WestIndies cricket do not want Chris Gayle in theteam,” the former West Indies ace told theworld in a Sky Sports interview. “He (Gayle)is available, yet the WICB are still putting outpress releases saying there are residual mat!

ters to be dealt with. What residual matters?It is supposed to be cleared [up], so whatresidual matter is there now?”In another interview with the Daily Mail inwhich he waded into the coach's methods,Holding, nicknamed Whispering Death in hisheyday as a tearaway fast bowler, spoke hismind loudly and clearly about the source ofthe problem.“Ottis Gibson needs to understand thatthe West Indies cricket team is not a bootcamp. He needs to learn how to man!man!age. “I have no issue with Ottis trying to getdiscipline back into the team. But it is theway he has done it. As soon as someone saysanything he doesn't particularly like, he does!n't want them around.”Holding may not have got it quite rightbut we shall be much closer to knowing thetruth when the squad for the second half ofthe current tour is announced. It is not pos!sible for the selectors to overlook Gayle; theyare likely to incur the wrath of even theEnglish spectators if they were to so err. Butbecause the IPL is now over, there are otherplayers such as Dwayne Bravo and SunilNarine whose absence will also have to beexplained. Both players, Narine in particu!lar, have been enjoying very successful sea!sons in India and distinguishing themselvesweek after week by their performances. N arine, who won a lucrative contractto turn out for eventual winners theKolkata Knight Riders, ended the sea!son as the second most successfulbowler, his poor showing in the final againstBravo's Chennai Super Kings costing him thetop spot. Bravo never quite managed to pro!duce a single world!beating performance buthis consistency and his reliability combinedwith his ability to deliver in the crunch cer!tainly helped the Super Kings to go all theway to the final. Hiscredentials as a genuineall!rounder are not in question, which is prob!ably why his place on the West Indies team is.Skipper Sammy who, some still argue, hasnot earned his place on the starting XI, is thestarting allrounder on the current squad. Nomatter what their form, three bowlers backedup by “third seamer” Sammy simply do not

seem adequate to dismiss the oppositiontwice. But with the already cited inexperi!ence of the top four, especially given theirpoor recent record, nobody dares go for anextra bowler. On tracks where the conditionssuggest that the XI should contain a secondspinner, say, or a third out!and!out quickie,the selectors often find that they have no realoptions since Sammy, who is really neitherfish nor fowl, is the first man picked. Whereasbefore he has tended to weigh in with theball rather than the bat, in England at pre!sent, the opposite is true. He still bowls asmany overs as the next man but in the four in!nings so far completed, he has only managedfive scalps in the 78 overs he has bowled. Byway of comparison, Roach, the only otherspecialist bowler to have played both Tests,has figures of 68 overs for 8 wickets at anaverage of 34 runs per wicket. MarlonSamuels, picked as a batsman who bowls, hascontributed 310 runs with the bat and cap!tured four wickets in his 36 overs with theball, raising questions in some quarters aboutwho is the real all!rounder on the side.But the very real problem in England hasbeen the form ! or the lack of it ! of the toporder. The openers have posted only onepartnership in excess of 30 and only oncehas the team score reached triple figures be!fore the fourth wicket fell. In four innings,none of Adrian Barath (73), Keiran Powell(47), Edwards (30) or Darren Bravo (53) hasyet managed to amass 100 runs as aggregate,let alone in a single innings. Edwards' besteffort has been a mere 22 but the other threehave all got to 25 in at least one innings butfailed to carry from that start. The conditions,mind you, have been almost as difficult asone always knew they would be with the tourstarting in Maybut one does not get the im!pression that the necessary adaptation isgoing on apace. The television commenta!tors and analysts are having a field day iden!tifying flaws in the technique of the top orderand they keep rubbing salt in the wound byreferring to Gibson as the “bowling coach,”a none too subtle suggestion that he simplyhas not managed to provide the assistancethe team needs most urgently at present. The good news is that the weather in TrentBridge was better than at Lord's. And the se!lectors have the evidence of both of theseTests ! maybe even of the Third Test whichstarts this week ! on which to go before theydecide on the composition of the squad forthe ODIs and T20s that lie ahead. Whetherthey will have the courage to act on that ev!idence is another question. Only the mostnaked political intervention can keep a fitGayle, whose 700+ runsleave his form in nodoubt, and a fit Narine whose 24 wickets from15 matches at an economy!rate of 5.47 earnedhim the IPL Man!of!the!Series award, out ofthe squad.Serious consideration will alsohave to be given to including all of AndreRussell, Keiron Pollard and the two Dwaynes,Bravo and Smith. The critical question is whowill make room. Unless Edwards and Barath come good inBirmingham, theymust join Powell,AssadFudadin and Narsingh Deonarine on the flightback home, Edwards' vice!captain status notenough to offset his palpable lack of form.IfBarath fails again, Chanderpaul, who hasbeenshouldering the middle!order load man!fully as is his wont, will have to be asked toopen the innings with Gaylewith Ramdin orDwayne Smith as the back!up. Chanders' “self!ishness” was justifiably the subject of somediscussion after he took a single off the firstball and exposed his tail!ender partner to therest of the day's final over, which he did noteventually survive. But I would move him to

the opening slot because,in the context ofEngland 2012, he is the best man to give Gaylehis head by turning the strike over consis!tently. And his sheet!anchor role would givehim all the time he usually needs to get his eyein. Despite unleashing some of his very aes!thetic drives at Trent Bridge, Bravo theYounger could also lose his place, not hav!ing really convinced in the shorter gamesagainst Australia and not really having lookedup to it on this tour so far. But I would keephim in the squad although he would not makemy starting XI for Game One on June 16.But there is still Birmingham left to ne!gotiate before we cross the ODI bridge. Thequestion to be asked is whether, after themorale!destroying nine!wicket four!day lossin Nottinghamshire, is there anything thatthe West Indies can do to keep their headsabove water? The simple answer, if you be!lieve the television analysts, is that the toporder batsmen must move their feet.The videoanalysis of the dismissals pointed over andover to the failure to get into position to playthe ball. Coach Gibson who is so strong onthe senior members of the team pulling theirweight and helping the younger ones, mayresent my saying so but he might usefullyhand over the batting coaching responsibil!ities to Chanderpaul. T he redoubtable Chanders, who start!ed his career watching the ultra!ele!gant Brain Lara at the far end, is themodern batsman least concerned ofall with aesthetics. He facesmidwicket/squareleg as the bowler is run!ning in so he has no choice but to move hisfeet by the time the ball is released. And he iscompletely unperturbed if he gets into lineand the ball's path takes it away from thestumps. His approach is the batting equivalentof Holding's much repeated slogan to bowlers“You miss, I hit;” “You miss,” Chanderpaulseems to say to bowlers, “I here,” a mottoBharath, Powell, Edwards, and Bravo theYounger might usefully be made to adopt.I think, however, that morale is the cru!cial factor which will make the difference inthis week's Third Test. England are cock!a!hoop, their commentators graciously dis!cussing how “pleasantly surprised” they wereat the amount of fight that came from thelowly!ranked WI. But the truth is that, havingworked themselves back into good enoughpositions in both Tests so far, Sammy's menstill contrived to come out on the losing end.Twice. And by a far!from!small margin thesecond time. Half the team, Chanderpaul,Roach, Ravi Rampaul, Sammy and Samuels,have something to feel confident about; every!one else on the team ! with the possible ex!ception of Ramdin ! has a question mark hang!ing over him. Should Sammy fail to call righton Friday and Strauss' troops get to decidewho gets the better of the wicket, a white!wash is on the cards.If we are not lucky and the May sunshinegives way to June damp and cold, we couldstill make very heavy weather of what promis!es to be a remodelled English attack.And coaches Chanderpaul and Gibson maywell find themselves with a couple of extrapractice days as well.

My ODI/T20 15: D.Sammy (capt.),D.J.Bravo, D.M.Bravo, S.Chanderpaul,F.Edwards, C.Gayle, S.Narine, K.Pollard,D.Ramdin, R,Rampaul, K.Roach, A.Russell,M.Samuels, S. Shillingford, D.Smith.

Discipline vs Dictatorship

Shivnarine Chanderpaul

T&T Review June 2012 Page 23SPORT

By ROMAIN PITT

D ARREN SAMMY does not have to apol!ogize for having been selected captainof the West Indies team; he did notchoose himself and, what is more, sincehe became captain, he does seem to be an im!proved player and no longer seems out of place.I would not have selected him, for one reasononly, namely, that he was not an automatic se!lection on a West Indies Test XI. All other Testcaptains are and, with the possible exception ofDennis Athkinson, all our past captains sinceJohn Goddard have been.Sammy would definitely be an automaticchoice on the T20 and very likely the One!dayteam, along with such fine all!rounders as ChrisGayle, Kieron Pollard, Andre Russell, DwayneBravo, Dwayne Smith and Lendl Simmons He isalso well!spoken and well!mannered with nohistory of bad behaviour or trouble!making.The practical problem with Sammy's cap!taincy arises from the difficulty selectors willalways face in finding places for three specialistfast bowlers or two specialist spinners withSammy on the team unless they can feel com!fortable with him as the No. 6 or, at the lowest,No. 7 batsman.That situation has already re!sulted in the exclusion of players like KemarRoach, Ravi Rampaul, Fidel Edwards, Russelland Devendra Bishoo from the Test Team.What troubles me about Sammy is his ten!dency, in expressing support for Coach OttisGibson and in congratulating himself for whathe perceives to be improvement in the team, toconvey the impression that previous teams, eventhose with whom he played, did not give theirbest because they did not appreciate the im!portance of winning for the West Indian people.His language is very nuanced but the objectiveis quite clear. I think that approach is very unfair.As I have noted before, losing for most of thefirst decade of the 21st century has made WestIndian fans very irrational and forgetful. No oneseems to remember that in 2003 the West Indiesteam under Brian Lara, set a world record againsta strong Australian team for a 4th inning chase.In2004, also under Gus Logie and Lara, the Windieswon the Champions Trophy and in 2006 we alsogot to the final of the Champions Trophy whenGayle who, along with Chanderpaul, was the in!form batsman, was bowled early by a Brett Leeno!ball.After winning a One!day "Summer" series inEngland under Gayle in 2007, they proceededto defeat South Africa in South Africa in the FirstTest for the first time ever. After that first Test,the team was decimated by injuries. AlthoughWest Indian media and fans tend to believe thattheir players' injuries were either self!inflictedor caused by laziness, I would suggest that theyare not. Shortly after the South African tour in

which Marlon Samuels led the averages for bothteams, he was suspended for a two!year peri!od. West Indies drew the Test series against SriLanka at home in 2008 and won the One!day se!ries, with Shivnarine Chanderpaul performingone of his many miracles in Trinidad.In 2009, West Indies won a Test series againstEngland at home. Just as Kemar Roach was be!ginning to emerge as a major talent, FidelEdwards and Jerome Taylor, the destroyer ofEngland in 2009, went down with severe in!juries.This brief summary ought to demonstratethat, while it is true that West Indies cricketerswere not a force in the cricket world between2003 and 2009, the players had some successand there was no evidence that they did not tryto win to make their fans happy. It should also beremembered that Gayle was, like Sammy, verypopular with his team!mates.I have seen either live or on TV almost everygame the West Indies team has played in the21st century, including live Test matches inAustralia and Sri Lanka. It always seemed obvi!ous, as would be expected, that they were doingtheir best to win, often against great odds, in!cluding unreliable umpiring and horrible weath!er conditions. They were not, by any stretch, thebest team. In fact, there were times when the

line!up included three very good bowlers likePedro Collins, Corey Collymore and Ian Bradshawwho could not field. Our wicketkeepers, whiledecent keepers, were never in the same class aswicketkeeper/batsmen on the more successfulteams. For a considerable part of thatperiod,there was no quality spinner. Because ofthe weak bench strength, injuries affected WestIndies more than any other team. Yet, I saw in!credible effort. In South Africa in 2007, the catchby an injured Chris Gayle that produced the firstTest wicket ever for Rawl Lewis would rate thedescription "miraculous."During that same SouthAfrica tour, Dwayne Bravo, a relatively smallman, bowled for an entire session owing to in!juries. I n Australia in 2009, Gayle was probablythe first Man!of!the!Series to be chosenfrom the losing team. Because of their con!sistent performances, Chanderpaul andRamnaresh Sarwan were regarded by all for!eigners as among the best middle!order bats!men of the period. Time and again, Edwards (F)defended as if his life depended on it. Taylor,perhaps the greatest talent produced in yearsin the Caribbean, a man who virtually won a Testseries against England in 2009, has been aban!doned without explanation by both the WICB

and the Jamaican Cricket Board. Yet, not oneWest Indian journalist has tried to find out andreport what has become of him. When the SouthAfricans last visited ! with a support staff larg!er than either team, be it noted !on the firstmorning of the last Test, a WICB directorarranged for a 20!year!old fast bowler to bebrought from the Cave Hill Campus to open thebowling for the West Indies.It is not right that Sammy should join theBoard and some commentators in maligningWest Indian cricketers simply because they werenot providing the Board and commentators withvictories as regularly as their psyches required.Sammy's recent warning to Gayle about Gayle'sneed to work hard is nothing short of outra!geous.As Michael Holding noted in his autobiogra!phy No Holding Back, as late as 1976 when raincaused no play in a Test match in Guyana, thecricketers who were to be paid $200 for thematch received no pay because the policy was"No play no pay". These were the kind of con!ditions that caused the cricketers to organizethemselves. No West Indian captain should showdisrespect for his predecessors, least of all a cap!tain like Sammy who has not been a supporterof WIPA and who,rather than earn the captain!cy, had it thrust upon him.

A Matter OfRespect,

Mr SammyOttis Gibson and Darren Sammy