National self-interest and the absence of vision among CARICOM leaders are pulling the Caribbean apart

CARICOM: It's leadership that's needed
By Sir Ronald Sanders



There should be no doubt that the people of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are well aware that failure of the regional integration project to contribute to solving the urgent problems, which now beset their countries, is a really a failure of leadership.

In a thoughtful – almost despairing - column last week entitled “A new commitment to regionalism”, my friend and colleague, David Jessop, recorded his troubling conversations with “a wide range of Caribbean visitors on where the regional integration process is going”. He reported that “to a person, all were concerned that national self-interest and the absence of vision among leaders were pulling the Caribbean apart and removing any ambition for taking the regional project forwards”.

As I was about to write this commentary, I received an email from a distinguished and learned Caribbean person who has held ministerial office in the region and whose regional contacts are wide and diverse. The email said: ”The real problem is that there is no one among the reigning political class of vision and intellect sufficient to provide the leadership. There is, too, no technician of the calibre of (William) Demas or (Sir Alister) McIntyre. Additionally, the impact of the recession has left the politicians with no time for the integration movement. They are really pushed onto a survival path struggling as they all do with growing unemployment and serious financial problems both on their current and foreign accounts. The virtual abandonment of the integration movement is unfortunate, for a fully functioning, expanded and enriched integration will in the end be the buffer against some of the very problems which we are currently experiencing”.

And, therein lies the rub – there is a lack of understanding that a fully functioning, expanded and enriched integration could help to solve many of the problems that now confront CARICOM countries.

What the region needs now is more not less integration, for not one of its member countries – not even Trinidad and Tobago with its oil and gas resources – can hope to maintain its autonomy in a globalized world in which the rich and powerful are intent upon a new kind of dominance; one which marginalizes small countries whose concerns become important only when they coincide with the interests of the powerful.

The leaders of CARICOM, therefore, should be strengthening and sharpening the regional integration process as a vital instrument in improving the conditions of their countries individually and collectively.

But, the process has to start with a willingness by leaders to talk with each other frankly, openly and with empathy, and it has to be infused with an acknowledgment that they have side tracked the regional integration process, and must put it back on a main track because their countries need it. The conversation has to be underlined by a desire to reach collective decisions which take account of the circumstances of each in trying to achieve benefits for all.

The present media squabble over an announcement by those in Trinidad and Tobago who own and control Caribbean Airlines Limited (CAL) that it will compete with LIAT in some Eastern Caribbean destinations, and the response of the Prime Minister of St Vincent & the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, epitomizes the absence of dialogue at appropriate levels in the region.

One would hope that if the region now had a strong Secretary-General as the Chief Executive Officer of the regional movement, he or she would have stepped-in long ago not only to diffuse this issue, but to steer the leaders involved to a path of cooperation that could realize mutually beneficial objectives.

But the truth is that the regional movement now needs more than a strong Secretary-General, it requires a complete overhaul of the entire CARICOM machinery, beginning with a renewed commitment to regionalism by leaders. New priorities have to be set for CARICOM and many of its dead-weight issues dropped; both sufficient financial resources and appropriate skills have to employed to accomplish the priorities which must include strategic partnerships with the private sector and with international partners including China, India and Brazil to help crank-up economic growth through investment and employment.

All is not well in CARICOM. Indeed, much of it is ailing, and while the regional project weakens, all of its member countries are being left behind in the global race for betterment.

There are also some stark realities that should be confronted, not to jab accusatory fingers but to see how best these realities can be used to improve national economies and the region as a whole.

Here are some of the realities. Trinidad and Tobago has consistently maintained the smallest percentage of intra-regional imports, as a percentage of total imports, averaging less than 2 percent each year between 2004 and 2009 and valued at its highest point in 2008 at US$121 million. On the flip side, Trinidad and Tobago has enjoyed the largest increase in intra-regional exports from US$859 million in 2004 to US$3.2 billion in 2008 (source: Caricom Secretariat Trade and Investment report 2010). That surplus alone – which many regional producers ascribe to “unfair advantage” due to cheaper sources of energy – should encourage Trinidad and Tobago to work with its CARICOM partners to invest some of that trade surplus not in “give-aways” but in bankable projects that would bring mutual benefits to all.

A further reality is that Jamaica is the largest intra-regional importer, due in part to its larger population size. Jamaican manufacturers cry out about the unfair advantage of Trinidad manufacturers, but the CARICOM treaty allows Jamaican manufacturers to establish a manufacturing presence in Trinidad and to also take advantage of cheaper energy.

There are myriad ways in which CARICOM can benefit all its members, if there is a resolve to approach the regional project with a “can do” and not “will not do” attitude. And, there is much that CARICOM should be doing collectively. Tourism – the engine of economic growth for the majority of countries – is struggling and desperately needs combined regional action that it is not getting.

Here again are some facts: Between 1998 and 2008, tourist arrivals in CARICOM grew at an average rate of 2 percent per year while the world average was 6.5 percent per year. Arrivals in CARICOM fell to 5.96 million in 2008 from all time high of 6.16 million in 2007. The years 2009 and 2010 showed no improvement and introduced many new challenges. To revitalize the industry and to make it globally competitive requires regional creativity and regional action.

CARICOM needs strong leadership, a new vision and new and relevant priorities in a more dynamic structure. Only the leaders can begin the process of overhauling it for the benefit of the region’s people.

February 11, 2011

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Bahamas Blog International

50th Anniversary of the Bay of Pigs: Eisenhower tramples right to travel to Cuba

• Granma International is publishing a series of articles on the events leading up to the April, 1961 battle of the Bay of Pigs. As we approach the 50th Anniversary of this heroic feat, we will attempt to recreate chronologically the developments which occurred during this period and ultimately led to the invasion. The series will be a kind of comparative history, relating what was taking place more or less simultaneously in revolutionary Cuba, in the United States, in Latin America, within the socialist camp and in other places in some way connected to the history of these first years of the Cuban Revolution

By Gabriel Molina

• THE unprecedented prohibition of January 17, 1961 – three days before the presidential inauguration of John F. Kennedy – was an attempt to close off a source of income to the island and force its surrender through hunger. The plan to launch an invasion during the 1960 electoral campaign so that Vice President Nixon could take advantage of the result was postponed when it was realized it needed to be further developed. Up until that point there was confidence that a repetition of the successful 1954 CIA operation against President Arbenz of Guatemala would be enough for Nixon to beat the charismatic Senator Kennedy.

But Kennedy’s victory in November 1960 made it more urgent to activate the operation before Cuba’s rapid military strengthening progressed any farther. Hence the measure breaking off diplomatic relations signed by Eisenhower on January 3, 1961, less than three weeks before his presidential term ended.

A meeting at CIA headquarters attended by Tracy Barnes, assistant deputy director for plans under Richard Bissell, and J.C. King, chief of the Latin America Division, had approved the idea of infiltrating an agent into Havana’s military leadership to provoke an accident leading to the death of Raúl Castro, the second leader of the Revolution. According to the U.S. Senate Church Committee, the order was given in a cable datelined July 21, 1960 to the CIA center in Cuba. (2)

The attack on freedom of movement represented by the travel ban was concealed under the pretext that normal security services could not be provided to U.S. citizens after the breaking off of diplomatic relations. Prior to this a series of measures, both secret and public had led to virtually eliminating U.S. tourism to Cuba. But the government feared visits by groups traveling to the island despite the adverse propaganda.

Having seen that Cuban realities were did not match what was being said in the United States, these groups of liberal and progressive Americans condemned the anti-Cuban campaigns and made statements of solidarity with Cuba.

Meanwhile, it was announced that U.S. National Airlines was suspending flights to Cuba.

Fidel clarified the underlying reason for the measure: the Revolution constituted an example, not only for the peoples of Latin America, but also for the U.S. people.

When the measure came into effect, The New York Times published a letter on the ban from Alice Hussey Balassa, an American citizen who had returned to her country after a short vacation in Cuba. Her letter referred to signs of material progress among the many benefits achieved by the population: ending extreme poverty in the barrios, reducing illiteracy, increasing housing for workers and campesinos and building schools and campesino cooperatives.

Official documents declassified by the National Security Archive revealed that on December 12, 1963, less than one month after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, still U.S. Attorney General at the time, sent a communiqué to Secretary of State Dean Rusk urging him to withdraw the regulations on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba. On that occasion, Robert Kennedy described the limitations on travel to the island as a violation of American liberties. In those same documents, found in the Congressional library and in that of President John F. Kennedy and declassified June 29, 2005, the Attorney General added that it was impractical to arrest, bring charges and commit to prosecutions in bad taste against citizens wishing to travel to Cuba.

Kennedy’s initiative was supported by McGeorge Bundy, National Security adviser, who also described them in another memo as inconsistent with traditional American liberties.

However, on December 13, 1963, the day after Robert Kennedy’s appeal, George Ball, under secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, discounted any relaxation in the restrictions. The decree was maintained by President Lyndon Johnson, who alleged that a decision on Cuba during the 1964 elections would hurt him. Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy after his assassination, also rejected subsequent action by the Attorney General to normalize relations.

A meeting about the measures did not include any representative of Robert Kennedy, although he had initiated the proposal to withdraw them. Instead, Ball proposed to warn people considering a trip to the island that, if they did so, their passports would be invalidated and they could face prosecution.

Despite Robert Kennedy’s continuing attempts to rescind them, the measures were upheld by President Johnson, until they were left without effect by James Carter during his 1976-80 presidential term. But the restrictions were re-imposed by President Reagan, who succeeded Carter in January 1981. At the beginning of his second term in office (1996-2000), Clinton allowed travel endorsed by licenses for religious, academic and other purposes. After that, Bush Jr. reinstituted the ban during the 2004 electoral campaign. This year, the Obama administration reversed the measures returning to the situation established by Clinton in the context of his Track II policy: granting licenses for person to person contact. In essence, they make no dent whatsoever in the blockade.

On the same afternoon following the assassination of the President, Robert Kennedy asked John McCone, who replaced Allen Dulles as CIA director, if the agency was responsible for the crime against his brother. Robert knew that the CIA was controlled by Richard Helms, an intelligence professional appointed as its Deputy Director and Director of Plans, who always regarded Robert’s activities with scorn.

In the following months, still as Attorney General in the Johnson administration, Robert was quietly investigating groups of CIA officers and Cuban gangs, whom he got to know and to suspect of involvement in his brother’s death.

Five years later, at the point of contesting the presidency against Richard Nixon, he was even more convinced that attempts to blame Cuba for the assassination were part of a CIA-Cuban gang conspiracy.

When Robert stated for the first time during an electoral meeting, in response to a question on the issue, that if he won the presidency he would reopen an investigation into the assassination, he was endangering the CIA’s well-guarded secret.

The conclusions of the Congressional Special Committee which investigated the assassination of the president from 1976-1978 included a demand that the Justice Department reopen the investigation. But the CIA refused to open the files on the case, which it concealed from the House Select Committee chaired by Democrat Louis Stokes.

In the spring of 2007 it was announced that members of a group of CIA officers suspected of having participated in the assassination of the President, including George Joannides, chief of Psychological Warfare at the JM/WAVE station, were present, outside of their functions, in the hotel where Robert Kennedy was assassinated, after his bid for the presidency was secured. Since then, new evidence revealed by investigators points to reopening the case, but the CIA has remitted files on the tragic events to a period of 50 years before they can be opened.

According to the book Brothers… by researcher David Talbot, diplomat and journalist William Attwood, a participant in the negotiations authorized by the President a few days before the assassination and some close friends of Robert Kennedy, revealed that "Helms put an intercept on [eminent journalist] Lisa Howard’s telephones." (3) For this reason, the Attorney General also suspected that the CIA group and the Cuban mafiosi with whom they were working in relation to conspiracies against Fidel, were also conspiring to perpetrate the assassination.

Given that Robert was John’s right-hand man and the actor of his ideas and actions, "some close Democrat friends of the Attorney General nicknamed Bobby ‘Raúl’ (4) joking about a certain similarity to Fidel and Raúl in his missions. •

(1)Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI (Cuba)

(2) Church Committee Report. Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders. B-Cuba, Pp 71.

(3) David Talbot. Brothers. The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years. Simon & Schuster. 2007, P. 233.

(4) Ibid. Pp. 92.

Havana. February 10 , 2011

granma.cu

Bahamas Blog International

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 3)

By Sir Shridath Ramphal


There is another major respect in which the West Indies, in not being West Indian in the Marryshow manner, is not being true to itself. We are failing to fulfill the promise we once held out of being a light in the darkness of the developing world. Small as we are, our regionalism, our West Indian synonymy, inspired many in the South who also aspired to strength through unity. Solidarity has been lost not only amongst ourselves, but also collectively with the developing world.

And, perhaps, therein lies the ‘rub’. Were we making a reality of our own regional unity we would not be false to ourselves and we would have inspired others who, in the past, had looked to us as a beacon of a worthy future. Instead, we are losing our way both at home and abroad.

Have we forgotten the days when as West Indians we were the first to daringly bring the ‘Non-Aligned Movement’ to the Western Hemisphere, when we pioneered rejection of the ‘two China’ policy at the United Nations and recognized the People’s Republic; when, together, we broke the Western diplomatic embargo of Cuba; when we forced withdrawal of the Kissinger plan for a ‘Community of the Western Hemisphere’; when we were in the front rank (both intellectual and diplomatic) of the effort for a New International Economic Order; when from this region, bending iron wills, we gave leadership in the struggle against ‘apartheid’ in Southern Africa; when we inspired the creation of the ACP and kept the fallacy of ‘reciprocity’ in trade at bay for 25 years; when we forced grudging acceptance in the United Nations and in the Commonwealth that ‘small states’ required special and differential treatment? In all this, and more, for all our size we stood tall; we commanded respect, if not always endearment. We were West Indians being West Indian.

For what do we stand today, united and respected as one West Indies? We break ranks among ourselves (Grenada, I acknowledge, no longer) so that some can bask in Japanese favour for helping to exterminate endangered species of the world’s whales. We eviscerate any common foreign policy in CARICOM when some of us cohabit with Taiwan. Deserting our African and Pacific partners, we yield to Europe -- and take pride in being first to roll over.

What do these inglorious lapses do for our honor and standing in the world? How do they square with our earlier record of small states standing for principles that commanded respect and buttressed self-esteem? The answers are all negative. And, inevitably, what they do in due measure is require us to disown each other and display our discordance to the world. This is where ‘local control’ has led us in the 21st Century. We call it now ‘sovereignty’. In reality, it is sovereignty we deploy principally against each other; because against most others that sovereignty is a hollow vessel.

It is easy, perhaps natural, for us as West Indian people to shift blame to our governments; and governments, of course, are not blameless. But, in our democracies, governments do what we allow them to do: they themselves say: ‘we are doing what our people want us to do’. It is not always true; but who can deny it, when we accept their excesses with equanimity, certainly in silence.

No! There is fault within us also. We have each been touched with the glow of ‘local control’; each moved by the siren song of ‘sovereignty’; have each allowed the stigma of otherness, even foreignness, to degrade our West Indian kinship. The fault lies not only in our political stars but also in ourselves that we are what and where we are; and what and where we will be in a global society that demands of us the very best we can be. When the West Indies is not West Indian, it is we, at least in part, who let it be so. And what irony: Marryshow and his peers demanded that we be West Indian to be free together. We were; but in our freedom we are ceasing to be West Indian and in the process are foregoing the strengths that togetherness brings.

When are we at our best? Surely, when the West Indies is West Indian; when we are as one; with one identity; acting with the strength and courage that oneness gives us. Does anyone doubt that whatever we undertake, we do it better when we do it together?

Thirty-five years ago, in 1975, on the shores of Montego Bay, as I took leave of Caribbean leaders before assuming new roles at the Commonwealth, my parting message was a plea TO CARE FOR CARICOM. Among the things I said then was this:

Each generation of West Indians has an obligation to advance the process of regional development and the evolution of an ethos of unity. Ours is endeavoring to do so; but we shall fail utterly if we ignore these fundamental attributes of our West Indian condition and, assuming without warrant the inevitability of our oneness, become casual, neglectful, indifferent or undisciplined in sustaining that process and that evolution.

The burden of my message is that we have become ‘casual, neglectful, indifferent and undisciplined’ in sustaining and advancing Caribbean integration: that we have failed to ensure that the West indies is West Indian, and are falling into a state of disunity, which by now we should have made unnatural. The process will occasion a slow and gradual descent – from which a passing wind may offer occasional respite; but, ineluctably, it will produce an ending.

In Derek Walcott’s recently published collection of poems, White Egrets-- for which he has just won the prestigious T.S. Elliot Prize -- there are some lines which conjure up that image of slow passing:

With the leisure of a leaf falling in the forest,
Pale yellow spinning against green – my ending.

This must not be a regional epitaph. But, if CARICOM is not to end like a leaf falling in the forest, prevailing apathy and unconcern must cease; reversal from unity must end. The old cult of ‘local control’ must not extinguish hope of regional rescue through collective effort; must not allow a narcissist insularity to deny us larger vision and ennobling roles. We must escape the mental prison of narrow domestic walls and build a West Indies that is West Indian. We must cherish our local identities; but they must enrich the mosaic of regionalism, not withhold from it their separate splendours.

In some ways, it must be allowed; our integration slippage is less evident among the smallest of us. The OECS islands have set out a course for more ambitious and deeper economic integration among themselves, which would be worthy of all, if it could subsist for all. The Treaty establishing the OECS Economic Union is now in force. But, it is early days; it remains to be seen at the level of action, at the level of implementation, whether, even for them, the earlier ‘agony’ (of which Sir Arthur Lewis wrote so ruefully in 1962) lingers still. Meanwhile, however, congratulations are in order, and I extend them heartily.

In moving closer to ‘freedom of movement’ among the OECS countries they have set a vital example to the rest of CARICOM. The OECS West Indies is being West Indian. May it translate into an ethos among them, and in time infuse the wider Community with an end to ‘foreignness’ among all West Indians. The OECS islands have taken the first steps in a long journey whose ultimate goal must be a larger union.

Collectively, we must recover our resolve to survive as one West Indies -- as one people, one region, one whole region. Imbued by such resolve there is a future that can be better than the best we have ever had. Neither complacency nor resignation nor empty words will suffice. What we need is rescue – by ourselves, from ourselves and for ourselves. We cannot be careless with our oneness, which is our lifeline. As it was in St Georges in 1915, so it is now: The West Indies must be Westindian!

The foregoing is an extract from the Eleventh Sir Archibald Nedd Memorial Lecture delivered by Sir Shridath Ramphal in Grenada on 28 January 2011.

February 10, 2011

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 1)

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 2)

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Bahamas Blog International

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 2)

By Sir Shridath Ramphal


Nothing speaks louder of CARICOM’s current debilitation than our substantial denial of the Caribbean Court of Justice. The Bar Association of Grenada is host to this Lecture Series, which is a memorial to a great West Indian lawyer. It is poignant that the Inaugural Lecture in this series delivered in 1996 was entitled: Essentials for a West Indies Supreme Court to replace the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as the final Appellate Court for Commonwealth Caribbean States and Territories. Fifteen years later, it is still apposite that I address this issue when we talk of being West Indian.

In 2001, twelve CARICOM countries decided they would abolish appeals to the Privy Council and establish their own Caribbean Court of Justice, serving all the countries of the Caribbean Community with both original jurisdiction in regional integration matters and appellate jurisdiction as the final court of appeal for individual CARICOM countries. As of now, only Guyana (which had abolished appeals to the Privy Council on independence, believing it to be a natural incident of ‘sovereignty’), Barbados and now Belize have conferred on the CCJ that appellate jurisdiction

Constitutional amendment is required for the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council. In practical terms, this means bipartisan political support for the CCJ. In Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago (where the Court has its much sought after location) that political consensus does not exist – because the political party now in office in each of those two major regional jurisdictions has turned its back on its regional court. In St Vincent and the Grenadines, a referendum last year rejected the transference of appeals to the CCJ.

The situation has been complicated by the issue of the death penalty, on which the Privy Council, reflecting contemporary English (and EU) mores and jurisprudence, has been rigorous in upholding Caribbean appeals in death sentence cases. Someday, the Caribbean as a whole must accept abolition of the death penalty; I believe we should have done so already; but, in a situation of heightened crime in the region, popular sentiment has induced political reticence. Even so, however, the Privy Council’s anachronistic jurisdiction persists; and the Caribbean Court of Justice remains hobbled in pursuing its enlightened role in Caribbean legal reform.

It is almost axiomatic that the Caribbean Community should have its own final Court of Appeal in all matters – that the West Indies at the highest level of jurisprudence should be West Indian. A century-old tradition of erudition and excellence in the legal profession of the region leaves no room for hesitancy. As a West Indian I despair, as a West Indian lawyer I am ashamed, that the West Indies should be a major reason for the unwelcome retention of the Privy Council’s jurisdiction within the halls of the new Supreme Court in England. Having created our own Caribbean Court of Justice it is an act of abysmal contrariety that we have so substantially withheld its appellate jurisdiction in favour of that of the Privy Council – we who have sent judges to the International Court of Justice, to the International Criminal Court and to the International Court for the former Yugoslavia, to the Presidency of the United Nations Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (from Grenada); we from whose Caribbean shores have sprung in lineal descent the former and current attorneys general of Britain and the United States respectively.

As I recall this register of West Indian legal erudition, let me pause to pay tribute to the memory of Prof Ralph Carnegie who left us last month – a veritable icon of learning in the law and of service to it – and always a West Indian. As CCJ Judge Winston Anderson acknowledged at his funeral service, he died sadly without attainment of his vision of a fully functioning Caribbean Court of Justice, and fearful of the prospects for the legal monument he strove so hard to build. We owe him a more lasting memorial.

This absurd and unworthy paradox of heritage and hesitancy must be resolved by action. In law, as in ourselves, the West Indies must be West Indian. Those countries still hesitant must find the will and the way to end this anomaly, and perhaps it will be easier if they act as one. The truth is that the alternative to such action is too self-destructive to contemplate. The demise of the Court itself is not an improbable danger when in both Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago the creation of a local final Court of Appeal is being canvassed. Loss of the CCJ will almost certainly frustrate progress on a Single Market and Economy -- the vision of Grand Anse. We will have begun tearing up the Treaty of Chaguaramas, whose Preamble recites “that the original jurisdiction of the CCJ is essential to the successful operation of the CSME”. If West Indian lawyers, in particular, remain complacent about this absurdity much longer – and I am afraid some are -- we will begin to make a virtue of it, and in the end dismantle more than the Court.

So grave and present is this danger that in August last, five West Indians to whom the region has given its highest honour, the Order of the Caribbean Community, took the unprecedented step of warning publicly “with one voice of the threat being posed to the Caribbean Court of Justice and the Community’s goals more generally”. I was among them. “We warn against these developments” we wrote, “which, as in an earlier era, could bring down the structures for advancing the interests of the people of CARICOM … carefully constructed and nurtured over many decades by sons and daughters of all CARICOM countries”. We were warning of the mire of despond we would stumble into if in this matter the West Indies ceased to be West Indian.

But let me add what we all know, though seldom say: to give confidence to our publics in their adoption of the CCJ as the ultimate repository of justice in the West Indies, our governments must be assiduous in demonstrating respect for all independent West Indian constitutional bodies (like the Director of Public Prosecutions) lest by transference, governments are not trusted to keep their hands off the CCJ. And Courts themselves, at every level, must be manifestly free from political influence and be seen to be sturdy custodians of that freedom. In the end, the independence of West Indian judiciaries must rest on a broad culture of respect for the authority and independence of all constitutional office holders – for the Rule of Law.

We must not forget that the structure of the CCJ goes further than does that of any court in the region, and most courts in the Commonwealth, in securing independence from political influence, much less political control. It is at least as free of such local control as is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; and freer than any national or sub-regional Court. West Indian people who want such a Court that is beyond the reach of politics must understand – and must be helped to understand – that they have it in the CCJ.

The question, therefore, cannot be avoided: is a regional political leadership that conjures with rejecting the CCJ doing so because it is beyond political reach? I cannot believe that; but, in my own judgment, with the Privy Council no longer a realistic option, the CCJ is the most reliable custodian that West Indians could have of the Rule of Law in the region. Despite this, will we once more, with the gains of oneness in our grasp, forego being West Indian?

The foregoing is an extract from the Eleventh Sir Archibald Nedd Memorial Lecture delivered by Sir Shridath Ramphal in Grenada on 28 January 2011.

February 9, 2011

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 1)

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 3)

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 1)

By Sir Shridath Ramphal



It was here in St George’s 95 years ago that T.A. Marryshow flew from the masthead of his pioneering newspaper The West Indian the banner: The West Indies Must Be Westindian. And on that banner Westindian was symbolically one joined-up word – from the very first issue on 1 January 1915. In the slogan was a double entendre. To be West Indian was both the goal of self-determination attained and the strategy of unity for reaching and sustaining it.

Of course the goal of freedom kept changing its form as the world changed: internal self-government in the pre-war years; formal independence in the post-war years; the reality of freedom in the era of globalization; overcoming smallness in a world of giants. But the strategy of regional unity, the strategy of oneness, would not change, at least not nominally: we called it by different names and pursued it by different forms -- always with variable success: federation; integration, the OECS, CARIFTA, CARICOM, the CSME, the CCJ. It is that ‘variable success’ that today begs the question: Is The West Indies West Indian? Nearly 100 years after Marryshow asserted that we must be, are we yet? Worse still, are we less so than we once were?

Times changed in the nineteen twenties and thirties – between the ‘world wars’. The external economic and political environments changed; and the internal environments changed – social, political and most of all demographic. Local control began to pass to the hands of local creoles, mainly professionals, later trade unionists, and for a while the new political class saw value in a strategy of regional unity. Maryshow’s slogan ‘the West Indies must be West Indian’ was evocative of it; and for two generations, West Indian ‘unity’ was a progressive political credo.

It was a strategy that was to reach its apogee in the Federation of The West Indies: due to become independent in mid-1962. It is often forgotten that the ‘the’ in the name of the new nation was consciously spelt with a capital ‘T’ – The West Indies - an insistence on the oneness of the federated region. But, by then, that was verbal insistence against a contrary reality, already re-emerging. The new political elites for whom ‘unity’ offered a pathway to political power through ‘independence’ had found by the 1960s that that pathway was opening up regardless.

In the event, regional unity was no longer a pre-condition to ‘local control’. Hence, Norman Manley’s deal with McLeod and the referendum in Jamaica; and Eric Williams’ self-indulgent arithmetic that ‘1’ from ‘10’ left ‘0’; even ‘the agony of the eight’ that ended the dream. Despite the rhetorical passion that had characterized the latter years of the ‘federal movement’ the imperishable impulse for ‘local control’ had revived, and the separatist instincts of a controlling social and political elite had prevailed. Within four months of the dispersion of the Federation (on the same day in May 1962 that it was to become a single independent member state of the Commonwealth) Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago became so separately. We can act with speed when we really want to!

But objective realities are not blown away by winds of narrow ambition, Independence on a separate basis had secured ‘local control’; but the old nemesis of colonialism was replaced by the new suzerainty of globalization. Independence, particularly for Caribbean micro states, was not enough to deliver Elysium. ‘Unity’ no sooner discarded was back in vogue; but less a matter of the heart than of the head.

In an interdependent world which in the name of liberalization made no distinctions between rich and poor, big and small, regional unity was compulsive. West Indian states -- for all their new flags and anthems -- needed each other for survival; ‘unity’ was the only protective kit they could afford. Only three years after the rending ‘referendum’ came the first tentative steps to ‘unity’ in 1965 with CARIFTA; ‘tentative’, because the old obsession with ‘local control’ continued to trump oneness – certainly in Cabinet Rooms; but in some privileged drawing rooms too; though less so in village markets and urban street corners.

Despite the new external compulsions, therefore, the pursuit of even economic unity, which publics largely accepted, has been a passage of attrition. It has taken us from 1965 to 2010 -- 45 years -- to crawl through CARIFTA and CARICOM, through the fractured promises of Chaguaramas and Grand Anse, and through innumerable pious Declarations and Affirmations and Commitments. The roll call of unfulfilled pledges and promises and unimplemented decisions is so staggering that in 2011 a cul de sac looms.

At Grand Anse in 1989, West Indian political leaders declared that “inspired by the spirit of co-operation and solidarity among us (we) are moved by the need to work expeditiously together to deepen the integration process and strengthen the Caribbean Community in all of its dimensions” They agreed a specific work programme ‘to be implemented over the next four years’ with primacy given “towards the establishment, in the shortest possible time of a single market and economy”. That was 22 years ago. The West Indian Commission (also established at Grand Anse) confidently charted the way, declaring it a ‘Time for Action’. West Indian technicians took their leaders to the brink with the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas. But there was no action – no political action, no political will to act. In twenty-two years, nothing decisive has happened to fulfill the dream of Grand Anse. Over those two decades the West Indies has drawn steadily away from being West Indian.

Not surprisingly, when Heads of Government meet in Grenada later this month it will be at a moment of widespread public disbelief that the professed goal of a ‘Single Market and Economy’ will ever be attained, or even that their political leaders are any longer “inspired by the spirit of co-operation and solidarity” or “moved by the need to work expeditiously together to deepen the integration process and strengthen the Caribbean Community in all its dimensions” - as they proclaimed at Grand Anse in 1989.

Words alone are never enough, except to deceive. As Paul Southwell used to remind us in Shakespearian allusion: “Words, words, words; promises, promises, promises; tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”. Nothing’s changed. In the acknowledged quest for survival (including political survival) the old urge for ‘local control’ by those in control has not matured to provide real space for the ‘unity’ we say we need. Like 19th century colonists we strive to keep our rocks in our pockets – despite the enhanced logic of pooling our resources, and the enlarged danger of ‘state capture’ by unelected groups and external forces while we dally.

The West Indies cannot be West Indian if West Indian affairs, regional matters, are not the unwritten premise of every Government’s agenda; not occasionally, but always; not as ad hoc problems, but as the basic environment of policy. It is not so now. How many Caribbean leaders have mentioned CARICOM in their New Year messages this year? Only the Prime Minister of Grenada in his capacity as the new Chairman of CARICOM. For most West Indian Governments Caribbean integration is a thing apart, not a vital organ of national life.

It seems that only when it is fatally damaged or withers away will Cabinet agendas change.

But let us remember, a civilization cannot survive save on a curve that goes upward, whatever the blips in between; to go downward, whatever the occasional glimpses of glory, is to end ingloriously. Caribbean civilization is not an exception. It is now as it was 95 years ago with Marryshow: The West Indies must be West Indian.

As current Chairman of CARICOM Prime Minister Tillman Thomas has rightly called for the West Indian people to be better informed and more intimately engaged in the regional project. CARICOM is essentially about people; about West Indian people; but, in truth, they have been too remote from its being. They are its heartbeat; but in the small states that we all are Governments tend to occupy the entire space of governance. They control the bloodstream of the integration process and when anemia threatens, as it does now, it is an infusion of people power that is needed to resuscitate CARICOM.

The foregoing is an extract from the Eleventh Sir Archibald Nedd Memorial Lecture delivered by Sir Shridath Ramphal in Grenada on 28 January 2011.

February 8, 2011

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 2)

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 3)

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Where is our future Bahamas?

Democracy, independence and complacency
thenassauguardian editorial



The images and news stories that have dominated the international news media for the past week or so in Egypt are a telling story on the importance of the basic concept of democracy, a concept that is spoken about often, but a concept often not fully appreciated. The benefits that are gained from a properly functioning democracy are too often taken for granted.

The beauty of a democracy is that we, the people, get to elect the leaders of our own choosing through a formal process of narrowing down the candidates and casting a vote.

Another key aspect of that electoral process is that there is a time frame in which those elections must come around again. If we the people are not happy with our leaders, we have the opportunity to elect a new leader, thus holding our leaders to a certain degree of accountability.

The equation is not complicated: Please the people or get voted out of office. The common demands from the people are basic: Provide security (from outside forces and crime at home), infrastructure, jobs, and a growing economy. In other words, provide results.

A true democracy also has a time frame in which there is change. In The Bahamas, the government must have an election every five years. In the United States, it is every two years (for House representatives and senators) and four years for the president. The ability to call for change on a consistent basis allows for stability.

In Egypt, there is no democracy. President Hosni Mubarak has been in power for 29 years. The people are now rioting in the streets and calling for change. Suppressing the voice of the masses acknowledges the ineptitude of a leader to provide for his people while hiding behind the shield of his power.

We must accept that rallies and protests are part of many democracies. The rallies against the Vietnam War in the United States or those here in The Bahamas against the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) sale are examples. But these generally don’t call for ousting a leader, just a change in the policy position currently held by the government in power.

But one aspect of a consistent election process that we do not follow is that of term limits.

Sir Lynden Pindling was in power from 1967 to 1992 (25 years). Our current prime minister has been in power from 1992 to 2002 and 2007 to the present (15 years). The interim period was held by Prime Minister Perry Christie (five years).

Over 44 years we have had three leaders. The United States over a similar period has had eight leaders, almost triple that of The Bahamas. The United Kingdom has had 12 leaders, quadruple that of The Bahamas.

The Bahamas has benefited enormously from the perseverance of these leaders for equality, prosperity and peace. The people of The Bahamas enjoy one of the highest per capita incomes in the region and access to clean water, power, and communication. We have so much to be thankful for.

But it is inevitable that change is upon us. In the coming years it will be time for a new generation to take governing responsibility for The Bahamas. We must take heed of the lessons provided by our leaders and understand that Independence was won with heart and vigor, not to be forgotten.

We have become complacent in our positions and surroundings, a comfort that shields us from the change happening around us. To be constantly challenged by our peers and countrymen sets forth a standard that cannot be undermined.

The children of Independence need to stand and prove that they too possess the skills to govern a country in the 21st century. We know that the prime ministers past and present can do it, but where is our future? It lies in the hands of those born during the Independence era.

2/7/2011

thenassauguardian editorial

Bahamas Blog

May the good people of the world align themselves with the people of Haiti to facilitate the birthing of this true era of democracy!

Have no fear, 2011 will be a great year for Haiti and for the world!
By Jean H Charles



On November 1, 2009, I attended for the second time (the first one being at the Brooklyn Museum in New York) a voodoo ceremony celebrating the guedes (the good and bad angels). The voodoo mambo or priestess made the prediction that 2010 will be an excellent year for Haiti and for the world.

In fact, 2010 was the worst year in Haitian history and in the rest of the world.

In Haiti, a devastating earthquake killed 300,000 people, while leaving 1.5 million homeless. A cholera epidemic brought into the country by the United Nations has killed 5,000 people; it might go to 10,000 before leveling off.

Throughout the world, according to a study made by the Center for the Study of Catastrophes of the United Nations, 2010 has been one of the most costly and deadly for decades. With 373 catastrophes, 200 million people without homes, 400,000 dead and $110 billion economic losses in the US, $18 billion in China and $4.5 billion in Pakistan, the year has wrought calamities beyond recorded observation. Haiti has rung the alarm bell but it was repeated in Chile, Russia, China and Pakistan.

The prediction that 2010 would be a great year for Haiti and for the world was indeed a voodoo prediction, filled with holes and spurious expectation!

Based on the natural principle, after the bad weather is the good one, after the rain is sunshine, have no fear! God has promised He will not bring about the deluge twice to mankind; I am predicting that 2011 will be a good year for Haiti and for the world.

The signals are already there. Tunisia that lives under a dictatorship for the past thirty years has booted out its dictator at the beginning of the month of January. The people want nothing more than true and real democracy. Egypt is on the verge of packing up Mr Mubarak, who ruled as a dictator for the past thirty years. Yemen and maybe some more of the repressed Muslim or Gentiles countries will be taken the lead of Tunis to tell the dictators they have no clothes, they should let the people go!

2011 will be a determining year for Haiti to find, at last, solace after experiencing with dictatorship, militarism and anarchism as a tool of governance. In reviewing the literature on Haitian history, I was surprised to find this gallant nation has been suffering for the past not 50 but 500 years the ignominy of humiliation, repression and plain disregard of their human dignity. For three hundred years during slavery it was the de jure bondage, right after the independence during the next two hundred years it was the de facto enslavement.

Throughout this long history, the ruling nationals intertwined with the international sector have always conspired to keep the masses at bay, ignorant, poor and not in control of their destiny. This February 7, 2011, Rene Preval, sustained by a sector of the international community, at the end of his mandate will either succeed in having the upper hand to continue the culture of squalor in Haiti or he will be butted out by the people power to yield the scene to enlightened governance that puts the needs and the aspirations of the people on the front line.

I am observing in Haiti a global waste of international resources with no significant impact for the population. The United Nations, with a purse in Haiti of $865 million per year, is the biggest culprit. Encircled with a total wall of silence, the 42 nations that comprise the personnel of MINUSTHA are engaged in a scam of diligence and make believe when they know that we know they are completely useless.

The only harm endured by the UN military in Haiti is the wearing of a heavy helmet under constant 90 degrees Fahrenheit weather. For all the propaganda of a violent population, the Haitian people are peaceful, resilient, and going about doing their daily business of survival with a saintly resignation and a shrug that necessitates a personal and collective overhaul.

The thousand of NGOs that took up residence in Haiti after the earthquake are maneuvering like chickens without heads. Without direction, coordination and vision they are spending the international funds mostly on their own needs first, on the needs of the Haitian people maybe or after.

The Preval government, using words instead of action, is busy bilking the NGOs and the international institutions instead of helping them to help his people. In a perverse symbiotic relationship that feeds each other, the government and the international institutions are comfortable with each other, afraid of standing up on the side of the Haitian people.

In the flawed election, planned and coordinated by the Preval government, with the logistic support of the UN and OAS, the people of Haiti have misled the prognosticators and the polls to keep their candidate close to their cards.

When the discredited Electoral Board pushed the government candidate for a second run, putting aside the candidate who carried the popular vote, all hell broke loose. There was rioting all over the country, in particular in Les Cayes (the southern part of Haiti). OAS/CARICOM, an incubator of the criminal conspiracy, was called again by the same Haitian government to correct its wrong.

This time, it has no other choice but to reverse the results and put the popular candidate Michel Martelly in the second round, setting aside the government candidate Jude Celestin.

The drama is not over because Jude Celestin is pulling the patriotic bell to generate national sentiment in his favour. Jean Claude Duvalier, with his surprise visit, is shuffling the cards. Jean Bertrand Arisitide has a expressed strong interest in returning into the country, putting the weight of his popularity in the mix. Rene Preval, in spite of his mediocre leadership standing, wants to remain the broker par excellence of the Haitian political transition.

Haiti will necessitate cesarean section to give birth to a new nation hospitable to all. I am confident the political skills of the people have reached a mature level to handle the birthing of true democracy without too much pain and suffering. .

Closer to home, P.J. Patterson, the Haiti CARICOM Representative, has called for helping Haiti to become the driving force of the Caribbean. He will need the credibility of his long years of service to face the Colin Granderson force embedded with the discredited Haitian government and a corrupt sector of the Haitian elite bent on keeping Haiti in bondage forever.

February 7, 2011, a day of reckoning, will be like the birth of Christ in the world, the day that will force the dawn of a new beginning in Haiti. May the good people of the world align themselves with the people of Haiti to facilitate the birthing of this true era of democracy!

February 5, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International