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PERSPECTIVES
OBAMA WINS
THE POWER OF THE NEW MEDIA
BY PREM MISIR
OBAMA is now the presumptive Democratic Party’s Presidential Candidate for the 2008 U.S. Presidential election in November.
And on March 22, 2008, I wrote: “The Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama Democratic Primaries, with many good ideas, are running for far too long; the two candidates operate as marathon runners, slowing the pace of bringing closure to the Primaries. But presenting good ideas alone is necessary but not sufficient; both candidates have to demonstrate how the ideas would make a difference to America and the world. Whoever does the ‘how’ effectively will seize the advantage of not only increasing the pace to effect a remarkable closure to the Primaries, but will secure the Democratic Presidential nomination.
Obama does the ‘how’ quite well in his platforms. One example follows. Obama’s website campaign platforms aggressively and comprehensively address several issues of concern to African Americans. And these issues pertain to reducing poverty, revitalizing urban areas, and empower Black Americans. Clinton’s campaign platforms show nothing to match Obama’s comprehensive efforts on this count. And so this is why Obama is ahead of Clinton in the delegate count.
Clinton’s website has ‘strengthen the middle class’ as top of the list of issues. And this refers pretty much to the White middle class. Others include providing affordable healthcare, ending the war in Iraq, energy independence, fulfilling our promise to veterans, supporting parents and children, restoring America’s standing in the world, being a champion for women, comprehensive government reform, and strengthening our democracy.
Editor of The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education Theodore Cross argues that Clinton is fast moving toward the political center and becoming a moderate. And she refrains, too, from explicitly presenting Black programs because her campaign believes that she could lose voters that she needs; meaning I suppose ‘White voters’.
In effect, Liberalism has become a bitter pill for Clinton, following closely in the footsteps of Democratic candidates in the recent past in both Primaries and Presidential elections. These Democratic candidates lost. And so Clinton has to redefine herself quickly as a liberal if she is going to become the come-back kid as her husband did so successfully. Obama persists with Liberalism in a large way and is more in sync with Democratic traditions.”
Obama’s liberalism and his intense affinity with the Democratic Party’s traditions have issued huge dividends for him; and quite rightly so, as he implemented the ‘how’ better than Clinton. But how did Obama execute the ‘how’ so well in his platforms to emerge the winner of a long hustling and bustling 17-month campaign? The answer may lie with the power of the new media, among other things. The University of Westminster through its business development network ‘New Media Knowledge’ provides some useful answers that run as follows:*
1. Obama has a hyper-open style for his liberalism, driven through his twitter feed, the third most popular feed globally with 32,400 supporters. Clinton had nothing nearly as equivalent to this feed.
2. Nielsen Online reported that 518,000 persons streamed 828,000 videos from Obama’s website in March alone. Clinton reached 351,000 persons who streamed 551,000 videos in the same month.
3. Then there was ‘Invite Barack’, an e-mail response system that responds to requests for Obama to attend local events; requests are then directed to the appropriate team member to participate. The Obama team monitored the requests to construct a profile of possible supporters.
4. There was the ‘Obama Answer Center’ where online questions from voters can be answered immediately. Responses allowed the Obama team to construct an analysis of voters, and the prioritized nature of their issues.
More than 1.11 million persons accessed ‘Invite Barack’ and ‘Obama Answer Center’during the Primary.
Hugh Taylor, Managing Director at Grasshopper, an online marketing agency noted: "In the political space most of the channels are controlled by third parties with political bias and opinions (e.g. newspapers and TV channels) and it is important that political parties try and put their views, opinions and policies in its purest form in real time. The online environment is obviously perfect for this and social media lends itself perfectly to spreading this message…” “Social media works best when the user has passion, enthusiasm and genuine belief for a particular product or brand such as a football club. Politics obviously invokes this kind of passion in many people and as such social media has become a key communication tool. It allows politicians to communicate at grassroots level on a fast paced platform...”
Obama clearly worked the new media so well on a scale that we have not seen before in American politics, especially in Primaries. And on March 22, 2008, I concluded that Perspective as: “Liberalism cannot be presented in an ad hoc manner; Liberalism has to be consistently disseminated as a coherent and comprehensive message.
The Democrats failed to stage a sustainable message of Liberalism in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections. And Only Obama has a sustainable message of Liberalism in today’s electoral engagements.”
The new media enabled Obama to inject his message comprehensively and coherently to the American populace in the just-concluded democratic Primary.
Obama surely will manipulate the new media to Wuthering heights that we have not witnessed before in an American presidential election. Obama, go for the coveted prize in American polity.
Challenges and opportunities:
by Linda Hutchinson-Jafar
(hutchlin@gmail.com)
OVER the next two years or so, most of the economies in the Caribbean are expected to face some challenges brought on by what market watchers are predicting as an imminent global economic slowdown, with the world currently on the cusp of it.
The main factors driving this global slowdown, according to the economists and financial analysts, are coming from the impact of the sub-prime mortgage crisis on financial institutions in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, higher oil and commodity prices, higher food prices and the persistence of inflationary pressures owing to higher oil and food prices.
A recent paper compiled by former deputy governor of Trinidad and Tobago's Central Bank, Dr. Terrence Farrell and his research assistant Anna Lee Ali already paints a slowing down of the economies in Guyana, Jamaica and Barbados over the next couple of years as a result of the global slowdown.
Although seeing a fairly robust economy for energy-based Trinidad and Tobago, it points to worrisome signs for the twin-island state arising from the acceleration of inflation, falling oil production and rising crime levels.
The paper, 'Prospects for the global and regional economies' presented by Dr. Farrell, the CEO-designate of One Caribbean Media Limited at the recent Business Insight Caribbean Investor Conference 2008, predicted weaker growth for Guyana over the next couple of years.
The paper however noted that while the Guyanese economy experienced weak growth interspersed with occasional declines over the 1998-2005 period, it registered very robust growth in the past two years driven by investment and consumption—supported by external financing and grants, FDI, remittances, and domestic credit.
Inflation accelerated in 2007 to 12.2% due to the higher food and fuel costs which also reflected initial adjustments following the VAT implementation.
After depreciating steadily at 2.3% per annum over 1999-2004 from G$178 to G$198, the exchange rate has stabilised over the last year at around G$202/US$1.
In the case of Jamaica, heavily dependent on imported oil, the projection is for a lower rate of growth of under 1.5% for 2008, lower than the IMF’s World Economic Outlook which puts the island to grow by 2.4% in 2008 -- double the rate achieved in 2007.
Jamaica's inflation rate in March 2008 stood at 19.9 percent, measured on a year to year basis, unchanged from February. In January and February 2008, the Central Bank of Jamaica raised interest rates on all its open market instruments in an attempt to stabilize the foreign exchange market. The six-month T-bill rate stood at 13.28% as at March 2008.
Although unemployment has declined, it remains high at about 10.4%. Foreign exchange reserves are in excess of US$2.1 billion.
Jamaica has experienced positive but weak growth over the period 2000-2007.
Inflation which had accelerated between 2003 – 2005 due to hurricanes and higher oil prices, fell significantly to 5.7% in 2006 and surged to 16.8% in 2007 as measured on a year to year basis.
Weaker growth is also anticipated for Barbados although the tourism-based economy expanded by 4% for the first quarter of this year.
The Barbadian economy grew at 4.2% in 2007, following growth rates of 4.1% and 3.9% in 2005 and 2006 respectively.
For the first quarter of 2008, cruise ship passenger arrivals on the island grew by approximately 8.7% and follows six consecutive quarters of robust growth as cruise tourism continues to rebound from the slump recorded during January 2005 to June 2006.
Although the prediction is for fairly robust growth in the Trinidad and Tobago economy over the next two years, the authors said there are worrisome signs for the twin-island state arising from the acceleration of inflation, falling oil production and rising crime levels.
With inflation running at over 9%, real interest rates on deposits are now significantly negative.
Crude oil production is falling rapidly and within recent years exploration activity has declined and fewer successful finds.
Despite the fact that the unemployment rate has been declining steadily for the past five years, the murder rate has risen and the rise in crime on the twin-island state has negatively affected the confidence of local and foreign investors as well as the business sector.
Official estimates indicated that the economy grew at about 5.5% in 2007, though the final estimate is likely to be higher. The authors projection is for growth of about 6.2% in 2008.
Despite the prognosis for an economic slowdown for most of our countries, many are optimistic that the Caribbean has reached a juncture, with the confluence of events, which point to opportunities to help them, not only to confront the challenges short term but for their long term sustainability.
Apart from the worrying crime situation which nobody seems to have practical solutions for its reduction, the other two major challenges confronting the small economies are high food and oil prices.
Managing Director of Republic Bank Limited, David Dulal-Whiteway, for instance, suggests that these adverse situations offer opportunities - for the establishment of regional food production and distribution companies and for the formation of companies that are involved in alternative energy such as wind and hydroelectric power.
There were also opportunities for the business community to design and champion regional solutions, to not only attract financing but to bring them to bear on some of our own challenges.
Already, there is a drying up of liquidity and higher interest rates spreads as lenders are confronted by the credit squeeze in the US and elsewhere and have become more selective in meeting financing needs of emerging market borrowers such as those in the Caribbean.
Dulal-Whiteway asserts that our countries need to work out the solution themselves.
Some of these solutions might be found in having modern regulations, a regional bond and equity market, the structure of regional firms, the role of multi-national corporations and growth of the larger regional companies which are all integral to improvements in the regional investment climate.
The stock markets of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Barbados which have a capitalization of US$40 billion is already evident that investors are willing to take risks and invest in new instruments.
Former Jamaican Finance Minister Dr. Omar Davies also believes that there are many opportunities for the Caribbean financial system but it must first be re-oriented and restructured where it can stand equal with the best in the world.
But an important factor which will influence the march toward this is the willingness of leadership in the region, in both the public and private sectors to abandon some of the “cast in stone” prerequisites for deepening regional integration.
Dr. Davies laments that too much of the discussion on economic integration is dominated by bureaucratic wrangling about objectives. Conversely, too little is focused on devising pragmatic solutions to new challenges.
He suggested that the Caribbean should seek to identify a “do-able” pragmatic set of actions which could then lead to an expansion of output of goods and services within the region.
Food Summit
By Gwynne Dyer
WHEN they started planning the food summit in Rome a year ago, it was going to be about the impact of climate change and bio-fuels on the
world's food supply. It turned out to be mainly about the runaway price of food, which is having a big impact on the world's poor -- and that's a
pity, because there's not a lot that an international conference can do about a short-term problem like that.
The conference, sponsored by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, attracted forty heads of state and government -- far more than it would have a year ago -- because they have to be seen to be doing something about prices. But the immediate need to find the money to feed
the very poor, who simply cannot buy food at current prices, has been met by a donation of $500 million from Saudi Arabia that covers two-thirds of the World Food Programme's $755 million emergency appeal.
There's not much more to be done about the short-term problem, because the huge rise in the prices of basic foods over the past year --
rice tripled in price and wheat more than doubled -- has been driven mainly by the market over-reacting to relatively minor mismatches of supply and demand. A five percent shortfall in world wheat supply, caused partly by the Australian drought, led to a 130 percent rise in price, but the price is already coming down again on the expectation of a much bigger crop this year.
In rice, there was no shortfall at all, but supply was so tight that prices started going up, whereupon some of the biggest producers like
India, Pakistan and Vietnam imposed export bans to protect their domestic markets from shortages. Since only about 7 percent of the world's rice is
traded internationally, that immediately led to panic buying by big importers like the Philippines and Indonesia, and in mid-May the price hit $1,000 a tonne. (It was $327 a year ago.)
Maize (corn, mealies) was a different case, with a huge and ever-growing share of the crop in the United States being diverted into the black hole of bio-fuel, and absolute scarcities in some other countries as a result. Maybe the conference could do something about that, although since the Bush administration (which created this folly with its subsidies) is still in office in the United States, it seems unlikely.
The current spike in food prices will ease, but the long-term problem is real, because the 200-year trend of falling food prices is probably at an end. The cost of food as a share of total income has been falling since the settlement of the U.S. Midwest, the Argentine pampas and
Australia brought huge new areas of land into cultivation during the 19th century. The human population has grown sixfold since 1800, but until recently food production has grown even faster most of the time, so prices fell.
That era is now over. More land could be brought under the plough, especially in Africa, but it would barely balance the amount that is going
out of production worldwide because of urbanisation and salination.
The huge rise in crop yields of the latter 20th century cannot be repeated, because putting even more fertiliser on the land will not raise
yields further in most places, and besides water availability is now a huge constraint. Indeed, much of the land now under irrigation will go back to dryland farming when the fossil aquifers that provide the water are pumped dry, mostly in the next fifty years.
And all this before we even get to the problem the FAO conference was actually supposed to deal with: climate change. The first and worst
impact of global warming will be to reduce the rainfall over some of the world's main crop-growing areas, so the future may be one of growing population (9 billion by 2050, up from 6.5 billion now?) and declining global food production.
Moreover, demand is growing even faster than population because rising prosperity, in Asian countries in particular, is leading to huge
rises in meat consumption (up about 150 percent in China since the 1980s).
Turning grain into meat involves an input-to-output ratio of between three-to-one and eight-to-one, depending on what kind of meat is being
produced, so huge amounts of grain production are being withdrawn from human consumption as meat production rises.
The right priorities, in this situation, are to work on banning the most harmful forms of bio-fuel in the medium term -- "diverting around 100
million tonnes of cereals to bio-fuel has had an impact on food prices," as FAO head Jacques Diouf tactfully put it -- and to concentrate on measures that help agriculture to adapt to climate change for the longer term.
(Plus, of course, measures to mitigate how much climate change we actually cause with our greenhouse gas emissions.)
The current food price crisis, though mainly a market phenomenon, has pushed all that aside. All we are going to see for a while from the
politicians is short-term fire-fighting in an area where there is actually little that they can usefully do. A pity, though not exactly a
surprise._______________________________
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Mood in CARICOM on Obama as President clash of euphoria and caution
By Rickey Singh
THERE IS no mistaking the general mood of satisfaction and hope in member states of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), including Jamaica, that Barak Obama has created history in winning the nomination of the Democratic Party to be its candidate for the coming November Presidential election.
Trinidad and Tobago's Prime Minister Patrick Manning was out front last Wednesday with his comment in the 'Trinidad Express' that: "It is a most historic development which demonstrates how the United States is changing and has changed...His 'message of change' represents a breath of fresh air...We eagerly await the choice of the people of the United States…"
While Manning may well have summarised the overwhelming mood among leaders of government and other sectors, in Jamaica, Dr Rupert Lewis, Professor in the Department of Government at the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies, was blending congratulation with caution to the Caribbean against high expectations of benefits should the Senator from Illinois succeed in becoming the first African American President in the White House.
A distinguished scholar, Lewis, author of National Hero "Marcus Garvey: Anti-colonial Champion", explained to the "Jamaica Observer" (June 5 edition) why expectations about an Obama presidency should reflect political maturity.
"Obama", said Lewis--also author of "Walter Rodney's Intellectual and Political Thought"-- "is not going to alter U.S. foreign policy...He is not going to be playing any black role; he's going to be pursuing America's agenda, strengthened by black Americans, but I do not see an advantage for the Caribbean..."
Even some with dissenting views to Lewis's, may be among those to recall how disappointment was to follow, in a few short years, the euphoria that had greeted the first African American to serve as US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, a scion of Jamaican ancestry.
Truth is the Caribbean did not benefit much while Powell was Bush's Secretary of State and long before the two had fallen out over the falsehood that led to the U.S. war on Iraq.
Meetings in New York
Before Lewis' comments, the ailing retired legendary leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, had hailed Obama -- even before he secured the historical nomination--as "the most advanced" presidential candidate". But he also voiced his criticism in an article he wrote for "Granma", his failure to signal a break from traditional hostile U.S. policies towards Cuba as exemplified by the punitive 46-year-old trade, economic and financial embargo.
Plans are underway for possible separate meetings with Senator Obama and the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, during the forthcoming second Conference on the Caribbean (this time in New York) scheduled for June 19-20. The first took place last year in Washington when CARICOM leaders met with outgoing President George Bush.
The intention is to have an exchange of views with the CARICOM delegation of representatives of government, private sector and civil society seeking to ascertain how the Caribbean region features in the thinking and plans of Obama and McCain.
A key player for the proposed bi-laterals with the Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls will be Congressman Charles Rangel (Democrat), who heads the important House Ways and Means Committee, and long viewed as "a friend of the Caribbean".
Whatever the outcome of the 2008 presidential contest, it is good to be able to celebrate with the enlightened American people this historic moment in their civilization of Obama as the first African American candidate of choice by either the Democratic or Republican Party.
There is this feeling of a new generation of people engaged in a bold, imaginative process of freeing themselves from deep-rooted prejudices that have imprisoned them for far too long, a process that may hold lessons for other societies, including Africa, Asia and our Caribbean..
For we are about to witness the very real prospect of the 46-year-old son of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother in charge at the White House after eight woeful years of the Republican presidency of George Walker Bush.
"Our moment"
In his victory speech last Tuesday night, Obama triumphantly declared to cheering thousands of supporters: "Tonight, I can stand before you and say, America this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past..."
There are encouraging signals, at this stage, to believe that there will be a woman, a white American woman--Hilary Clinton--to help make this "our time" dream come true for more than black Americans whose right to vote became a legal reality just 42 years ago. Then, Obama would have been among the four-year old kids to understand anything about the heroic struggles of the Civil Rights movement for the right to vote.
The possibility of now having a former First Lady and current Senator of New York as his Vice President would certainly give even greater significance to the history of this year's presidential campaign.
For never before has any woman in American politics come so far, and with the highest tally of popular votes against a competitor--the real measuring rod for democracy--though she failed to secure the decisive delegate votes that went to Obama.
Hillary Clinton, whose tenacity during the intense and, at times quite divisive campaign won her much admiration, was expected to make an official announcement this weekend on why and how she intends to support Obama's bid for the White House, even if not as his Vice-President running mate. Together, they may yet be the 'dream team' to defeat the Republican McCain.
Obama, gracious in victory, was in a mood to shower Clinton with praise, declaring that the 60-year-old New York Senator "had made history herself... She is a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage and her commitment. Our party and our country are better off because of her, and I am a better candidate for having had the honour to compete with Hilary Rodham Clinton..."
Well, more than reassuring words are needed to make the 'dream team' a reality. The BBC's Washington-based editor, Matt Frei, writing last week on the "mountain Obama now has to climb", having secured the nomination, offered this very telling observation:
"If America votes with its heart, it will elect Obama. If it votes with its gut, it will go for McCain. Who knows what organ will prevail in 2008..." For, as viewed by the BBC's man in Washington, "Mr. Obama has effectively won the nomination on a losing streak.
Mrs. Clinton has lost on a winning streak."
Management of Technical Support, Part I
By Keith Burrowes
THIS week, I will examine the issue of foreign technical support provided through various consultancies, particularly whether enough value for money is received from them. Over the past ten years, Guyana has benefited significantly from foreign technical support in almost every conceivable area. There is no empirical data, but my estimate says it is in millions of US dollars and of this amount, a significant fraction goes towards funding consultancies.
While this technical support is critical, there is still the cost-benefit question. Are we getting the maximum value for money from these various consultancies? Are we maximising the use of the information gathered? Is there proper management of the information? Are we adequately implementing the recommendations?
This week, we’ll deal largely with how information from consultancies is used, or the lack thereof.
We can assume that with regard to certain consultancies, for example, those concerned with national security, the sharing of the information within them would be problematic. However, we can also assume that the information gathered from the vast majority of consultations in Guyana is not of an inherently sensitive nature.
A lot of these studies are sector driven, and while consultants may use information from multiple sectors in conducting a particular study, the final results of many consultancies are often restricted to the primary sector of concern to the consultant. Very often, these reports are managed in such a way that information which may well be useful across sectors is not distributed.
I am of the belief that the content in many consultants’ reports should be managed for use not only in the specific sector for which the report was done, but also by other agencies, academia and the general public. When one considers the level of investment being made, one can safely say that a key method of increasing the value of information is making it available across the sectors.
Lots of the information provided from these studies were valuable in many respects and could have been used to guide the development of other projects; in terms of providing the sort of information necessary for decision making, among a number of other benefits that can be listed. If there is more information sharing at the time of developing the terms of reference for foreign technical support, then the potential for duplication in the funding of various initiatives could be reduced, freeing up more money to be placed in other areas of development.
One area that needs to be looked at is that of the management of information, particularly what happens following the completion of assignments. I am almost certain that no one would disagree that some of the recommendations of some studies were not implemented due to external and other factors. Very often, the country does not have the capacity to implement certain recommendations, or some are not practicable at the time they are made. Within the individual entities, there are, by and large, few mechanisms which capture recommendations for decision-making at the most opportune time, regardless of whether that time comes months or even years after the initial study. Additionally, in the larger arena, because there is no central hub for information, the opportunity to make maximum cross-sectoral use of the findings and recommendations of various consultations is usually lost.
Regarding information sharing and information management, I am advocating not simply just a repository for information to be accessed by interested parties but a proactive information sharing centre from where relevant information could be sent to individual agencies by staffed trained specifically for that purpose.
Then there is the issue of how well we plan our consultancies in order to maximise the benefits from the process. Because of the level of investment made, there is a need to manage more of these interventions in such a way that we can define from the inception, terms of references to determine what is really needed, instead of leaving the consultant to define the parameters of any particular study, as has occurred in some cases.
Another area of planning has to do with inter-agency cooperation with consultancies. It may well be that while certain sectors may have the resources to commission particular studies, others do not; although there may be some intersect between the areas of interest. Agency A, for example, has the resources to conduct a study on one particular sectoral issue; Agency B, on the other hand, is short of resources to conduct a similar study relevant to its particular sector. If there was greater involvement or cooperation between the two agencies, then Agency A could simply broaden the parameters of its study to accommodate the needs of Agency B.
Something that ought to be given serious thought when strategically planning these consultancies is the level of effort it places on the human resources in local agencies. In some institutions at any given time there are about two or three consultancies, and the consultants have to interact with staff who may be spending a significant part of their time in supporting the work of the various consultants. In some cases the benefits of these engagements may not necessarily outweigh the cost of engaging consultants, particularly if the value of the consultancy only lies in recommendations which cannot be implemented. While the engagement of consultants is necessary, we need to have some idea of the transaction cost to the entity relative to the commitment of human resources in supporting consultancies.
In terms of development of human resources, twinning our local people in a strategic manner with external consultants is a method of capacity building which can be factored in the terms of reference of consultancies. In twinning there is the potential for building the capacity of local technical staff so that not only the outcome of studies stays with us but also knowledge of the methodologies involved.
Finally, one other recommendation in regard to the entire issue is that view that we should hire someone to undertake a cross-sectoral analysis of all the consultancies which have taken place in the country within a ten year period, beginning from last year and going backward. In short, what we may need is a major consultancy on consultancies in Guyana.
Next week, we will take a look at the most crucial issue regarding foreign technical support through consultancies, that of the implementation of recommendations.
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