Make it easy for people to organise

Big up Gabby Hosein for reminding us our national flag’s third colour is black, not blue, and we need to raise schoolchildren with a love of liberty to determine our own foreign policy, be it on apartheid, Cuba, flying fish, or the “immoral cost” of anti-Venezuela sanctions that fall “on the shoulders of innocents and the poorest and most vulnerable” – hence the global call to lift them.

Precisely because we are small and strategically located, we must wield our sovereignty with inexorable artfulness.

That said, the deep harms of our culture of non-transparency in national governance have been wildly on display in official explanations of the arrival of Santa Eloína and her six parranderos – as if we were effortlessly hoodwinked toddlers. Coronavirus has highlighted this mesmerising virtuosity by Caribbean leaders in engaging adult voters. One friend put her index finger nailbed exactly where the hammer hits: “Forever buffing big people who vote them in.”

But, nuff said.

Much of the recovery roadmap committee’s work remains invisible; one person represents “the public interest”; and the prime minister declined to lay key documents in Parliament, while inviting citizens to share our own ideas in writing.

I’ve done so; but I’ve made those propositions and their rationales (developed collaboratively over recent years by a range of civil society organisations) available in a publicly shared drive: bit.ly/RecoveryRoadmapResources_CAISO.

Follow, as I keep last week’s promise to explain all eight.

The definition of society is people coming together. It’s also another word for an organisation. Organisations are ways people come together to pool some resource. So we can do things together we can’t alone – “capacity; “efficiency.”

In capitalist economies, businesses are organisations formed to pursue profit, regulate decisions about pooled resources (they have boards and by-laws), and spread risk – protecting owners from individual liability. People organise for all sorts of other social reasons that aren’t about money; and these usually require rules for decision-making, and involve pooling resources – sometimes just people’s energy.

The State has recognised these groups that aren’t for-profit in a patchwork of ways over time. (I started writing about this in October 7, 2018’s column.) Some are registered by specific ministries (Sport, Community Development, Social Development); some created by acts of Parliament; some corporations. Twenty-five years ago we passed a 500-plus-clause Companies Act. Part V creates the non-profit company as a legal organisational form. On April 28 last year, I wrote about the Non-Profit Organisations (NPO) Act – misleading, as its goal was to reverse TT’s international counter-terrorism greylisting (we’re required to assess and address risks of non-profits being abused).

As I wrote on March 31, that year, our local United Way took a hard look at that regulatory patchwork, with help from smart people like Allyson West (before she became minister) and then-independent senator Jennifer Raffoul. Several civil society organisations (as they’re sometimes called, to distinguish them from business and government) participated in the conversation, which drafted legal and policy proposals (visit the shared drive).

Just like Government makes economic policies to tax profit-making or facilitate business – to encourage grassroots entrepreneurship or large capital investments, or create employment – there’s a public policy interest in facilitating people organising. “Non-Governmental organisations” (another term used), Dr Rowley told the roadmap committee, “can enhance the Government’s execution capability.”

How can Government enhance non-governmental organisations’ execution capability?

As I shared on April 26, we could a) not tax their income; b) exempt their expenditures from sales tax; and c) incentivise “social giving” by facilitating individuals and businesses getting tax breaks.

The “CSOs4Good Governance” recommendations, in brief, propose:

1) simplicity, transparency, e-friendliness and harmonisation of state recognition, registration and regulation of non-profits – even a new office for this;

2) simpler access to tax breaks, plus a wider range of groups that qualify (eg, some businesses give investors’ returns, but their mission is about social good).

During the hurried passage of the NPO Act, groups asked the Attorney General to stop; and do a comprehensive overhaul of legislation. He refused, but opened the door to groups returning to his table to draft comprehensive reforms together that could go beyond those in the paper. Ensuring proposed Revenue Authority legislation enacts these taxation proposals, and keeping that promise are recovery proposals 2 and 3.

Proposals 4 and 5 I’ve also previously written about, on April 7 and 21, 2018.

This February, three non-profit coalitions wrote to Parliament’s presiding officers together, opening a dialogue about genuinely making the Red House the people’s Parliament.

We proposed talk about law reforms that enable citizen organising.

More immediately, we talked about imagining measures together to transform Parliament’s response to citizens’ visits (I’ve lampooned existing rules banning writing, and police officers barking: uncross your legs, take your glasses off your head, sit straight) into a dream of nonprofits having workspace for legislative advocacy in the complex, and advocates being picked by the President to serve in the Senate.

More on that next week.