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Saturday, July 5, 2025

The Joshua factor

by

185 days ago
20250101
Wesley Gibbings

Wesley Gibbings

The an­nounce­ment of a State of Emer­gency on Mon­day ap­peared to un­der­mine my plan to spend time here stretch­ing the Joshua Re­grel­lo metaphor to a place from where we could bet­ter un­der­stand the true state of T&T civil­i­sa­tion.

But maybe this does not have to be so, af­ter all.

I had not­ed the fact that some peo­ple could sim­ply not find in their souls the time and space to even ac­knowl­edge such an ac­com­plish­ment. I be­lieve there was dif­fi­cul­ty in do­ing so part­ly be­cause of emo­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with low ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the steel­pan and what it means for all of us, to­geth­er with a not dis­as­so­ci­at­ed as­ser­tion of eth­nic un­der-achieve­ment.

To­day is not the day, and Hap­py New Year by the way, to re­state all I have pre­vi­ous­ly said on the lat­ter, con­tentious point. But ex­am­ine your heart while prepar­ing to re­but and ex­plain to a friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber ex­act­ly what you mean in plain lan­guage.

Let’s al­so be clear, 31 con­tin­u­ous hours on the pan was not “the great­est thing to hap­pen to our coun­try.” Would it be Au­gust 31, 1962? Or the foot­ball match on No­vem­ber 19, 1989, right? Or maybe not. Maybe elec­tions on De­cem­ber 15, 1986? No?

Yes, we’ve heard the de­c­la­ra­tion be­fore, but to be sure, that mo­ment is yet to ar­rive.

How­ev­er, what young Re­grel­lo did was to redi­rect achieve­ment in, for some, the dis­qui­et­ing so­cio-cul­tur­al spaces oc­cu­pied by the young, black men of T&T, em­ploy­ing the as­sets of a mu­si­cal in­stru­ment born out of open de­fi­ance and vic­to­ri­ous cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion now claimed by all.

Even if you do not en­joy mu­sic as played on the steel­pan (a short­com­ing to which any­one is ful­ly en­ti­tled … I don’t like the ac­cor­dion), the dis­play of hu­man en­durance and em­ploy­ment of an in­sane­ly vast mu­si­cal reper­toire alone is suf­fi­cient for ac­co­lades be­yond those on of­fer from Guin­ness, or Skif­fle, or PanTrin­ba­go, or T&T.

Yet, there are so many who skipped ef­fort­less­ly to ar­gu­ments over SoE 25. Go back to the top to have a clue why this is so. There are dis­qui­et­ing con­nec­tions on their part.

For those of us who cham­pi­on hu­man rights, even the men­tion of sus­pend­ing civ­il lib­er­ties un­der le­gal au­thor­i­ty is trou­bling. We’ve long op­posed mea­sures that curb free speech, re­pro­duc­tive rights, gen­der equal­i­ty, and chil­dren’s rights, to­geth­er with the vast spec­trum of civ­il, eco­nom­ic, so­cial, and cul­tur­al rights.

Yet, dis­turbing­ly, some who were silent about the 2011 State of Emer­gency are now vo­cal about the cur­rent ver­sion, while oth­ers who dis­ap­proved of SoE11 are now dogged­ly sup­port­ive of SoE25. All with­out ref­er­ence to the po­ten­tial im­pacts of both on wider civ­il lib­er­ties.

De­spite dif­fer­ences in con­text, the ar­gu­ments for and against these States of Emer­gency are strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar. In the end, what mat­ters to many is the de­sire for an end to the vi­o­lence, ex­tor­tion, and cor­rup­tion that plague us all.

In oth­er parts of the world, ex­treme mea­sures have been test­ed with mixed re­sults. For ex­am­ple, in coun­tries like Hon­duras, El Sal­vador, and Ja­maica, the ver­dicts are not en­tire­ly im­pres­sive. El Sal­vador has seen some suc­cess at the dai­ly street lev­el, which ab­solute­ly boosts cit­i­zen and vis­i­tor con­fi­dence, but or­gan­ised crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty re­mains large­ly undis­turbed.

Hon­duras, on the oth­er hand, faced an in­crease in ex­tor­tion even in the ear­ly phas­es, and Ja­maica’s years of SoEs have yield­ed re­sults rang­ing from the lim­it­ed to the in­ef­fec­tive. How­ev­er, there re­mains wide­spread recog­ni­tion of the dai­ly vi­o­lence that still char­ac­teris­es life there.

From these ex­am­ples, it’s clear that no easy an­swers ex­ist. This is a long, hard path to peace. Po­lice per­for­mance here, for in­stance, does not in­spire much con­fi­dence. State in­ter­ven­tions need ma­jor up­grades, and there’s a press­ing need for bet­ter cross-sec­toral col­lab­o­ra­tion across the board.

Peo­ple al­so do not be­lieve they have any­thing to do with ei­ther the un­der­ly­ing caus­es or the ac­tions re­quired to frame the out­comes. Af­ter all, we elect gov­ern­ments to do that, don’t we?

Every­where this chal­lenge ex­ists, they are all find­ing, as we must, that this is not an easy road paved with quick fix­es. A Joshua Re­grel­lo lev­el of en­durance, skill, ver­sa­til­i­ty, har­ness­ing of col­lec­tive as­sets, and self-be­lief are among the in­dis­pens­able qual­i­ties. The young man and his sup­port­ing acts showed us how some of these qual­i­ties are not be­yond our reach.


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