ANOTHER FINE CARICOMESS

Oct 26, 2009 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

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A Baptist pastor ran into some good news and bad news. The good news was that church attendance rose dramatically the last three weeks. The bad news was that the pastor was on vacation. I like these good news/ bad news jokes.

My favourite is the one about the owner of an art gallery giving an artist some good and bad news. He said, “The good news is that a man came in here today asking if the price of your paintings would go up after you die. When I told him they would he bought every one of your paintings.” The artist was pleased. “That’s great,” he acknowledged, “but what’s the bad news.” The gallery-owner replied, “The bad news is that the man is your doctor.”

One sunny day a man decided to jump from an airplane. When he jumped there was good and bad news. Good news – he had a parachute. Bad news – it didn’t work. Good news- there was a haystack down below. Bad news – there was a huge pitchfork in the haystack. Good news- he missed the pitchfork. Bad news – he missed the haystack.

A few days ago, I got some bad news and good news of my own. The bad news is that there is a move afoot throughout the region to licence journalists so that I might end up having to get a Government Minister to grant me a licence to write my column, and the media houses that use my articles in Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Guyana might also have to get licences to use my work or be forced to hire only people with licences otherwise they would lose their licences.

The good news is that the responsibility for drafting the legislation and providing the countries with draft legislation is in the hands of the CARICOM Secretariat.

CARICOM’s ability to miss the haystack is phenomenal. I was once invited by the CARICOM Secretariat to speak to some Barbados business people as well as the heads of Government Information Services about the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME – pronounced by the Secretary General and his cohorts as the imperative “Says Me!”). I admitted that I found that it had started off with a serious handicap – its name.

I can sell the concept of unity by using a phrase like “One Caribbean”. In fact, over the years I have lived the concept and I am far from unique or alone. At the fundamental level, I believe that we are all committed to One Caribbean. I cannot sell something as cumbersome as Caribbean Single Market and Economy.

Worse, it seems to be a vast and increasingly voluminous vehicle for every political whim and fancy. It is carrying serious baggage already and taking on even more, like the idea of licensing journalists. Its increasing spread reminds me of another good news/ bad news joke.

A man’s doctor gave him the good news. The man’s purchase and use of an internet-advertised enhancement product would give him the extra inches he had hoped for. The bad news is that it was malignant. This is how I view the CSME and its parent organisation, the CARICOM Secretariat.

The good news was that I told them what I thought. The bad news was that needless to say, I was not invited to speak at any CARICOM forum again. Not that it is entirely bad news. A few months ago I saw a CSME advertisement for a consultant in my field and applied to the address in the ad, copying my application to the Deputy Secretary General (DSG).

When I did not receive a reply, I wrote a reminder and again copied it to the DSG. I am still waiting for an acknowledgement and/or reply. However, there is an adage called Hanlon’s Razor which says, “Never attribute to malice which can be adequately explained by stupidity”, something which it seems to me that both the management of the CSME and its attempt to licence journalists amply demonstrate.

A few years ago, I worked in Belize for a CARICOM/World Bank project. It was an interesting learning experience. While what was supposed to be a new project was established in Belize, the previous project, based in Barbados, which was expected to have ended, continued in Barbados up to almost a year after the new project started, using resources from the new project.

The Project Manager of the old project who was also the Project Manager of the new project was in Barbados while the other two employees of the new project (including me) were in Belize without an office. It was a fiasco and the independent mid-term evaluation of the project never saw the light of day.

It was then that I also slightly altered the expression that was used by a Spanish Governor in the New World about the bureaucracy in Philip Second’s colonial empire. He said, “If death came from Spain we would all be immortal.” I changed that to, “If death comes from Georgetown, we would all live forever.”

This is why I know we have some time to deal with the licensing issue. Everything that the CARICOM Secretariat touches becomes what Trinis would call a “caricommess”. But even as I think about what they are planning for us, especially me, I laugh. Would they try to lock me up for carrying a concealed weapon – my wit and humour?

Would they deny me poetic licence as readily as they refuse to answer a simple application? I know that I would never be lucky enough, as at least one person I know, to get a CARICOM job without the post being advertised nor would I want one.

All I ask is for whoever came up with the bright idea that the way to muzzle the media is to make them apply for a licence which only the Government could grant, is to be told the joke about the woman whose daughter said, “Mummy, I know now why you and daddy broke up. I saw it on your driver’s licence.”

The child’s mother said, “My driver’s licence?” “Yes,” the child replied, “It says you got an “F” in sex.” On that note, and given its incompetence, I would give CARICOM an “F” in licence.

*Tony Deyal was last seen saying that his friend and mentor, George John, the Dean of Caribbean Journalism, would not have been given a CARICOM licence because he didn’t have a degree. They might even have charged him for practicing without a licence when he taught journalism at UWI.

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