Political elite a drawback to progress

David Jessop, Contributor

Sometimes it is easier to hold on to the past than to address the present, for the elite to interact only with each other, to repeat the same actions, and to lose touch with those who they seek to help.

Recently, Financial Times journalist and author, Gillian Tett - one of the few who in 2006 accurately forecast the financial crisis and its origins - delivered a thought-provoking short lecture for BBC radio.

She noted that as a social anthropologist, she had discovered that her discipline had provided her with the tools to analyse issues in ways not normally considered by writers on finance.

Listening to her short lecture, the applicability of her theme to the silences now prevalent in the Caribbean rapidly became apparent.

In brief she argued - see http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b036tz9w for more - that her academic skills had provided her with an alternative framework to analyse markets, to navigate their contradictions and tensions, and to see how what was said within elite groups differed from what was happening on the ground.

Her approach was based on the thinking of the French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu's focus on cognitive maps, how we arrange the world, imagine and talk about it; and how this relates to power. It enabled her, she said, to see the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

Tett said that what she had observed in banking before 2007 was that when ideas about derivatives and other hard-to-understand financial instruments did not fit any traditional system of financial classification, bankers entered into a complicity of silence.

This was because what was ignored and not talked about enabled them to maintain the status quo. It meant that the elite could continue to follow well-worn rituals using existing language and structures.

Among bankers before the crash, there was, she discovered, a desire to establish such rituals to reinforce their position, believing that it was normal to speak abstractedly about finance without reference to human beings.

They assumed, she said, that their actions were a good thing and something that only bankers understood. They did not expect to be scrutinised and so became detached from real life and its human impact.

In short, they developed tunnel vision, developing a kind of tribalism that involved maintaining their elite positions by creating social silences.

Her
remarks well describe what now seems to be happening across the
Caribbean, and in many others parts, of the world, where in particular
closed political elite groups repeat language and ideas in a manner that
guarantees that short of a cataclysmic crisis, little new will
occur.

It suggests why, beyond the slow-burn effect of
the global economic downturn, the Caribbean region has gone from one
that was developing, diversifying, and establishing an identity, to one
that offers little in the way of a positive narrative to address
decline, division, indebtedness, or increasing
crime.

If applied to the Caribbean, Tett's approach
provides a different and alternative analytical framework in which to
consider the Caribbean's failing leadership and why the elite in Caricom
in particular, to paraphrase Tett, are becoming detached from real
life, seemingly unable or unwilling to understand the gap they have
created between rhetoric and delivery or how they are in danger of
creating a hard-to-resolve multi-layered long-term
crisis.

IMF programmes are a good example of this
where, in one Caribbean country at least, the leaders of both political
parties are not wholly convinced, despite a consensus among others in
their leadership, that what is on the table ought to be implemented if
there is ever to be an escape from indebtedness, low growth, and the
constant underachievement of the nation's
potential.

Politicians in particular do not want to
talk honestly about the future and what has to be done if what confronts
them is likely to result in decline in their power or influence, or
might eventually bring about their political
demise.

More often than not, they seek only to disturb
the status quo for as long as it brings
advantage.

This may be why in the Caribbean, the
concept of national interest scarcely exists. The idea that the nation
or the economy or social well-being is to the benefit of its citizens,
rather than the maintenance or achievement of power, seems increasingly
alien and will likely have as its consequence a diminished national
inheritance.

There are many other examples. The
Caribbean has begun a debate on reparations. This emotional touchstone
may have cultural depth and regional resonance, but what are its
practical consequences?

Private sector-led development
is held out as a desired objective, but the number of significant
companies interested in moving into new areas of investment or trade is
limited. Trade agreements are negotiated, then rejected, ignored, or not
utilised.

Tourism has become an industry to be taxed
until those who utilise its services vote by ceasing to arrive. Cuba is
welcome as a partner to Caricom, but the Dominican Republic may not be.
Human rights abuses within the region are hardly ever spoken about. The
concept of Caricom based on shared aspirations may be close to an end,
but who will say so?

As negative as all this sounds,
its purpose suggests that what is desperately needed is an authentic
Caribbean voice, or voices, that can suggest how the region might find a
new and convincing narrative, re-interpret its shared memory of
history, and move on.

Caribbean reality is that of a
disparate group, mainly of islands growing at different economic speeds
separated not just by sea, but by a growing range of issues from big and
small disputes to the high cost of travel, and a view that seems to
suggest that governments are not doing much more than trying to
survive.

Despite this, there are many in the region
longing for change. Many younger well educated people want to
participate, see their region prosper, and move on, bringing to the
region what is best from outside, rather than having to go down the
route, also largely unspoken, of having to move away to find opportunity
elsewhere.

One of the attributes of some of the
world's greatest leaders has been the courage to be revolutionary,
seeking to disrupt the elite, changing the thinking of their own and
other parties, and instituting creative conflict within government, in
business, and in mass movements.

Has the Caribbean any
longer any such person?

David Jessop is director of
the Caribbean Council. Email
david.jessop@caribbean-council.org.