The CARIBCAN trade agreement - what is the OECS strategy?

By Ian Francis

Within the next year, the much touted CARIBCAN trade agreement tinkering will be concluded. CARICOM, OECS and Canadian trade negotiators will take credit for a job well done after the signing ceremony.

It will be interesting to see where the signing ceremony takes place. If it is in the depth of winter, the Canadian negotiators are likely to push for a Georgetown or Bridgetown signing ceremony only to escape Canada’s brutal winter. On the other hand, irrespective of the cold and soggy winter in Canada, our Caribbean negotiators who are so embedded in the per diem culture will prefer an Ottawa signing ceremony in order to maximize their per diem incomes.

Once the revised agreement is signed, the burning question remains. How can the Caribbean trade and export sectors maximize opportunities in Canada through the CARIBCAN agreement?

It is not a new agreement and has been around since the Mulroney days. Unfortunately, its failure was well known when Caribbean governments took ownership and locked up the policies and tariffs in the cupboards of local ministries of trade and industry. Exporters and investors from some CARICOM states remained disengaged and could not seize the opportunity to penetrate and sustain markets within Canada because there was no information, no market intelligence and no encouragement of partnerships through joint ventures and other initiatives.

It is hoped that, this time around, Caribbean governments will understand that a successful trade and investment partnership must be realized through strong and effective institutional collaboration. To put it bluntly, the Caribbean and Canadian governments are not involved in trade exports. However, through the agreement and sensitizing of officials on both sides of the spectrum, it is quite likely that barriers will be minimized and officials will become more informed about the free movement of goods and tariffs that have been eliminated.

In objective and realistic terms, trade collaborative efforts and sustainability between CARICOM nations and Canada require more than dependency on the “tiny bob” consular missions established in Canada. With fairness, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and Guyana maintain very effective consular missions with a strong trade arm.

Therefore, if the OECS is serious and committed to a trade and investment strategy between Canada and member states, the current regional approach and strategies for market penetration cannot be successful in its current form. Caribbean trade and investment initiatives cannot be achieved through obscurity or ineffective marketing networks.

The OECS must recognize that they require planning assistance to formulate, implement and sustain an effective trade strategy in Canada. It is achievable but there must be a willingness to understand the need for planning and collaboration.

An effective trade and investment strategy between Canada and the Caribbean within the context of the CARIBCAN trade agreement must extend beyond rum and nice beaches. Certainly, Caribbean rum imports in Canada will continue to be very important. However, those responsible for such products reaching Canadian shelves must understand that it is a competitive environment, as Trinidad, Cuba, Guyana, Jamaica and Barbados have already saturated the products.

Therefore, while the Europeans continue to fund the OECS Dominica-based Trade Unit, staff at this unit must understand that the import tariff on Caribbean rum will be affected within the new agreement and OECS nations need to introduce more than rum and hot pepper sauce to the Canadian market.

A few years ago, Michael Astaphan of Dominica and some other OECS colleagues began the process of establishing a private sector export organization. The concept had merit and received much needed assistance from the Europeans. Unfortunately, the concept died and a very valuable opportunity was lost. It is hoped that the concept can be revived because such an organization is of necessity, since most Caribbean exporters and investors are private sector persons.

Both CARICOM and the OECS must recognize that trade and exports should be private sector driven and not given the appearance that it is state sector driven. It is time to support and assist the private sector in their quest for new markets.

Another perception that must be dispelled with is the belief that regional chambers of commerce are the prime export movers in the region. While some chamber members might be exporters, we need to ask why Guyana, Barbados and other MDC Caribbean nations have strong and effective export agencies. The OECS needs to adopt a learning chapter from these organizations and support a strong OECS private sector export agency.

Another issue on Caribbean trade initiatives seems to be the duplication of regional agencies that purport to promote Caribbean trade abroad. There is the Barbados-based, CARICOM-funded agency Caribbean Exports, which continues to find successful niches with only hot pepper sauce promotion. Frankly speaking, this is another serious area that CARICOM’s new secretary general must address.

Maybe it is time to eliminate this agency and find some form of new organizational accommodation with the OECS that will witness the following three concrete outcomes: 1) Development and sustainability of a strong OECS private sector exporting agency to maximize opportunities and success through the CARIBCAN trade agreement; 2) strong and sustainable trade partnerships between private sector institutions in Canada and the OECS; and 3) moving the OECS trade initiative in Canada beyond the Trade Facilitation Centre.

Finally, successful trade implementation initiatives by OECS exporters to Canada require reliability, effective communications, utilization of information technology tools and seriousness. Canadian importers are not interested in stories and excuses as to why a product did not arrive.

The CARIBCAN trade agreement will provide excellent opportunities but its success will only be realized if the regional export private sector players are allowed to play their role. Once the agreement is signed, both regional multilateral agencies need to delimit their involvement.

The trade and investment process between Canada and the Caribbean must be private sector driven.

August 22, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

Belize On A Slippery Road

jamaica-gleaner editorial



There are many ways, the saying goes, to skin a cat. But the process is unlikely to be efficient with a blunt axe, wildly wielded in a crowded room.

You may, in the end, get the cat, but with great collateral damage and at a cost far greater than intended, or you dared to contemplate. Which is what we fear is likely in the English-speaking Central American country of Belize, where the United Democratic Party administration of Prime Minister Dean Barrow is attempting the ninth amendment of the Belizean constitution and is in a fight with almost everyone in the country over the matter.

Jamaica has an interest in the events unfolding in Belize, for like our island, Belize operates a Westminster-type system of government and is a member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). And a few Jamaican companies have interests in Belize.

It matters little that the proverbial cat the Barrow administration is trying to skin is Lord Michael Ashcroft, the hardly liked and shadowy former deputy chairman of Britain's Tory Party, who casts a long, and some claim manipulative, shadow over the Belizean economy.

Lord Ashcroft, who for years avoided paying taxes in the UK by claiming resident status in Belize, controls a wide range of business in that country, from banking and offshore business registration to telecommunications. Ashcroft's holdings include Telemedia, which is a near-monopoly in Belize's telecoms sector.

Lord Ashcroft developed a seemingly cosy relationship with the former People's United Party (PUP) administration which, his critics say, allowed him privileges, as well as an appointment as Belize's permanent representative to the United Nations, until the PUP lost power in 2008.

privatisation muddle

In 2009, Mr Barrow's party, using a hurriedly passed telecommunications law, nationalised Telemedia, over whose secretive licensing arrangements there was much controversy. The acquisition was upheld by the Belizean Supreme Court but was this year overturned by appeal judges, who held that the government did not have sufficient or compelling reason for the nationalisation.

Now, Mr Barrow, who needs more than 75 per cent votes in Parliament to amend deeply entrenched clauses of Belize's constitution, is attempting to place Telemedia's nationalisation beyond doubt by making a provision of the constitution that the government must control public utilities.

The water company, privatised in 2001, has been back in government hands since 2005, but Mr Barrow recently nationalised the electricity company, owned by Canada's Fortis Corporation.

Telemedia's status remains in limbo. While the appeal court held its nationalisation to be wrong, it made no specific ruling on what to do. So the government says the board of directors it appointed remains in place. Lord Ashcroft's lawyers have taken that and related issues to the Caribbean Court of Justice.

In the meantime, Mr Barrow is moving ahead with his constitutional amendment, including an adjustment to Section 69, to remove "all doubt" that any "law passed by the National Assembly to alter any provision of this Constitution which is passed in conformity with this section shall not be open to challenge in any court of law on any grounds whatsoever".

Mr Barrow should be warned that his government's action is having a chilling effect on the private sector and is bad for Belize's economy. But worse, this high-handed behaviour, because he has the parliamentary numbers, poses graver danger for Belizean democracy.

August 21, 2011

jamaica-gleaner editorial

Bahamas Blog International

Turks and Caicos constitution tailor-made for British

By Ben Roberts



And why should we expect otherwise?

It was proposed by them when they yanked the previous document, deciding that a new one was in order.

It was designed by them when they hired a private consultant to put it together.

It was shaped by them when this consultant went throughout Turks and Caicos in town hall meetings, supposedly to elicit input from residents who, when they saw the finished product, were quite stunned and upset that it had very little of what they had laboriously submitted for inclusion.

Its introduction was heralded by a three person British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) team that held meetings around the Islands that can only be described as raucous, and filled with displeasure and dissent. In those meetings the FCO team stated over and over that they were ’listening,’ and ‘heard loud and clear what Turks and Caicos citizens had to say.’

In one of those meetings senior team member, Mr Ian Hendry, almost caused a fire-storm in the house-of-prayer venue when he basically defended the document’s contents by stating that ’Britain calls the shots here.’

Incidentally, it was incomprehensible to me why there was so much upset with Mr Hendry’s comment. He was absolutely right. Britain does ‘call the shots,’ and has been doing so for 212 years since they claimed Turks and Caicos as their colonial prize in the days of sailing ships, and we nor they have done anything to change this state of affairs.

The justification for Mr Hendry’s ’Britain calls the shots’ comment came scant weeks later when the FCO asked a team of seven Turks and Caicos citizens to come to the UK to ’negotiate’ the final touches for this document that would guide the lives of the Territory’s citizens for decades to come.

It gets better. THEY picked the group that they wanted to come to ‘negotiate,‘ which included individuals chosen and serving in the British-created Turks and Caicos Interim Government. These individuals complied with break-neck speed, proving without a doubt who ‘calls the shots,’ and proving Mr Hendry right as rain.

To cap all this off, Honourable Minister Bellingham paid a visit to Turks and Caicos playing the part of the town-crier and announcing the introduction of this diktat, at a timing to be decided by the Governor. Case closed! And this is democracy? And this is how a people’s rights are decided in the year 2011 A.D.

It is difficult to decide whether to laugh or to cry at this process in this day and age. On the one hand it resembles a circus show that makes one want to laugh, but on the other it so seriously affects the destiny of a people, our Turks & Caicos people, that it leaves one feeling close to tears.

Find and read Section #132 of the new Constitution. It is British preferential treatment pure and simple. Who asked that this be put in this document? Was it the Islanders during their input to the constitutional consultant on her visit through the Islands? Was it the consultant and her bosses, the FCO, who alone decided that this was a must? Was it the Turks and Caicos ’negotiating team,’ and especially the Interim Government representatives who thought this preferential inclusion to be necessary? Was it a particular segment of the expatriate community, feeling themselves now to be in a most privileged position by having an Interim Government that sees things from their perspective, and in ways that they relate to, who impressed upon the powers that be the need to include this preferential treatment? This latter possibility is quite intriguing. But think back and ask the following:

-- How is it that expatriates dominate the Turks and Caicos corporate law arena, the river through which the lion’s share of the country’s finances flowed, including that part tainted by corruption, yet no one from that community had to answer to the Commission of Inquiry? Is this not incredible?

-- How is it that in meetings such as the town hall events of the FCO team, almost no expatriates are seen (this observation made at the Provo church-hall venue)? There it is overwhelmingly native Turks and Caicos citizens strongly and passionately voicing their opinions of what is amiss and what they would like their future to be. But then in the final outcome we see Section #132 mysteriously show up in the Constitution. Does this segment of the population quietly, around the tea table, have the ear of these visiting power brokers and are able to get their agenda and interests acted upon in a way that the native population are hopelessly unable to do, no matter how much beating-the-gums and passion they display?

-- Farfetched you say? Think of this. Some believe that the about-to-be-exiled high-flying FCO official from Turks and Caicos to the same venue as Napoleon, was because he royally offended those in the expatriate community that hailed from his part of the world. It is a known fact that many of them despised him, and expressed as much vocally and in colourful language publicly. Oh, make no mistake, he offended native citizens on an ongoing basis, and they made their complaints known across the Atlantic. But to no avail. However, once he incurred the wrath of this expatriate community, it is thought that they used their influence to make him a modern-day Napoleon-in-exile.

We sit around in Turks and Caicos, and elsewhere, contemplating that the British seem to be making moves to take Turks and Caicos from the hands of its natural born citizens. But in truth they might be putting in the final touches to pulling it off.

It’s called deception and suppression of information, ideas, and talent even as they fly the false flag of ’Partnership and Progress,’ and ’we are listening’ and ‘we hear you loud and clear.’ It’s called complicity as our people, quick to stampede over each other, run at their beckoning to help them put their agenda in place.

It is quite disconcerting to see London and other UK cities on fire and being looted in a spree of lawlessness. So not British. An exasperated PM David Cameron described it as ’thievery,’ and ’criminal.’ Not so simple, Mr Prime Minister. A social scientist I am not, but I daresay it is much more than that.

As your people see their fortunes decline as their elected officials give them a deaf ear and get away with most outrageous behaviour, they feel disempowered and frustrated (like Tony Blair‘s deception to get the UK into the war in Iraq, British soldiers dying in Afghanistan, British citizens’ financial fortunes declining due to poor financial management, and the recent phone hacking scandal that makes one question diligent search for justice).

This all points to a crisis of confidence, causing well-meaning and law-abiding citizens to behave in this uncharacteristic manner. Now, if British citizens feel this way about those they chose to govern them, how much more should citizens of a Territory like Turks and Caicos, who lack representation at home or in the UK, feel about the path of their lives and their future? Remember the American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison who said: ’If it’s not just, it’s not law.’ We should all pay heed to the words of this unapologetic and straight-forward man.

Ben Roberts is a Turks and Caicos Islander. He is a newsletter editor, freelance writer, published author, and member of TC FORUM. He is the author of numerous articles that have been carried by a variety of Internet websites and read worldwide. He is often published in Turks & Caicos news media, and in the local newspapers where he resides. His action adventure novel, Jackals of Samarra, is available at Amazon.com, and at major Internet book outlet sites.

August 20, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Keep an eye on Suriname

By Ray Chickrie


Former military leader, and now democratically elected president of Suriname, Desi Bouterse, is keen to bring positive international spotlight to his country. That is the case so far.

Just a week ago, Fitch upgraded the sovereign foreign currency credit rating for Suriname one notch to B-plus, citing a stronger credit position and improvements in its balance of payments. The rating outlook was revised to stable from positive. Suriname is moving ahead in its quest to develop its economy without the help of Holland, its former colonial master.

Already, Suriname has made news in the Arab Gulf after Dubai Ports acquired major stakes in two harbours in Paramaribo. Canada and the United Arab Emirates are emerging rapidly as Suriname's principal trading partners because of economic external factors such as the rapidly growing world market for gold.

In the next three years, Suriname will see over 2 billion dollars in investments from IAMGOLD (US$800 million), Newmont (at least half a billion) and State Oil (US$1 billion). As well, the government will commence the building of 18,000 homes. These investments are besides those that China will be negotiating with Suriname soon. This will lead to a construction boom in Suriname and the government is already looking to address the issue of labour shortage. Most likely, Paramaribo will look to Guyanese labourers to fill this void.

Suriname pushed ahead before Guyana to build a major road and railway to northern Brazil and with a major partnership with Dubai Port and an agreement with Cayenne, this investment is sound. Moreover, on the western front, Suriname will bridge the Corantijn River to Guyana, and there are also discussions to build an international airport in Nickerie. This will attract Guyanese travelers from the state of Berbice, offering cheaper, easier and convenient options of travelling to the Caribbean, North America, Europe and Brazil. Suriname Airways (SLM) will recommence service to Guyana and extend its reach into Northern Brazil according to Foreign Minister Lackin.

Suriname has been on its own for the past decade, funds that Holland owed to Paramaribo have dried up, and the government is looking for foreign direct investment (FDI) and capital from Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Gulf Arab States.

President Bouterse is a keen supporter of South American integration though the multi-lateral organisation, UNASUR. He has also given his ambassador to Indonesia, Amina Pardi the mandate to sell Suriname as the bridge between ASEAN and CARICOM.

Suriname has joined the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) and the Bouterse pro- Arab government has reactivated ties with the Middle East. The IsDB, the OIC’s financing branch, is one of many institutions that could provide financing for several government programs, said minister of foreign affairs, Winston Lackin. “We believe this organization is an important one, taking into consideration the resources which are available through the IsDB to finance our programs and projects,” the cabinet minister added.

On the tourism front, this sector is on the rise. The steady flow of Euro-travelers from French Guiana has the tourism industry there in Suriname learning French. These are not expatriates. While the majority of tourists from Europe are expatiates from Holland, there are many non-Surinamers from Holland visiting as well.

And while Guyana struggles to bring Marriott to Georgetown, Paramaribo has already attracted Best Western, Marriott and Wyndham hotels. These were all brought here by the local private sector. As well, the local Torarica and Kransnapolsky group of hotels have expanded in Paramaribo and in the interior to tap the lucrative eco-tourism market. There is much more work to be done to market this product and to reduce airfares.

August 18, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Jamaica's culture clash with homosexuality

By MARK WIGNALL





"Not in my Cabinet," was the strident answer given by Prime Minister Golding in 2008 when asked by the BBC's Steven Sackur on its programme HARDtalk if he would appoint gays to his Cabinet.

The beautiful luxury of hindsight affords us the opportunity to see that in the interview Sackur was setting up Golding for the simple question and the problematic response, but Golding blew it. Prior to asking the direct question, Golding had touched on Jamaica's culture in relation to homosexuality, and in answering it, he should have reverted to the culture line but with an expansion of his position, the country's position.

Even though we know that Golding was playing to the wider Jamaican anti-homosexual constituency, the full import of his response signalled that the leadership of the country was in the forefront of those who probably wanted to say, "Boom, bye, bye" to those openly flaunting their lifestyles on the down low.

In the previous PNP administration there was at least one powerful Cabinet member who was homosexual. During the PNP's run I had two luncheon meetings with him to discuss policy matters and while seated across the table from him, his lifestyle was the last thing on my mind - in fact it never even featured in my thought processes.

I am not aware that the normal, heterosexual PNP Cabinet members caught his "malady" and neither did I contract anything from proximity to him.

That said, I can empathise with TVJ for not wanting to air the pro-tolerance, pro-love public service announcement in which a former Miss Jamaica World expresses love for her homosexual brother. An indication of the virulent intolerance that Jamaicans have for those practising the lifestyle was seen in a Facebook post where one woman lambasted the former beauty queen for loving her own brother. Utterly amazing!

I have a relative who is lesbian and she has a bubbling, go-getter personality. Did I raise my hands to the heavens when I found out and say, "Oh, Lawd, what is this?" Absolutely not! I simply shrugged it off and made the decision that when next we meet I would give her a special embrace to indicate that I have no less love for her.

As a Jamaican I have to be true to my culture. It is what I am. For example, I could not have in my small circle of male friends one who openly practises the homosexual lifestyle. I wouldn't know how to relate to him or what to say to him. Do I say, "So, how was it with you and Big Moose last night? Did he rock your world?' The fact is, in a country where we are highly intolerant of what is euphemistically called "gay", while we cannot awake the next morning with a "Love gays" label emblazoned in our hearts, the decision to be more tolerant is something that civilised people ought to make, if only for the reason that homosexuals, like the poor, will be with us forever.

That said, I have remained puzzled for many years as to why a male would find another male sexually enticing. No so-called gay gene has been identified and the world accepts that homosexuality is a "lifestyle". In other words it is largely a choice, but, what is it that triggers that decision to go on the down low?

On Monday I telephoned a well-known doctor who has spent many years trying to unravel this phenomenon. "Only a very small percentage, much less that one per cent, of children born at Jubilee Hospital are born with what we refer to as ambiguous genitalia. That is, a vagina and a penis, maybe a vestigial one. It is always a difficult call for the surgeon to make a decision on what to do. It is usually best to wait for a number of years after which one can get an indication as to what particular sexual direction the child is headed, along with a consideration of the physiology on the inside. Then along with the parents' consent we can do the 'repair job' if you want to call it that and apply some hormone therapy."

Then I asked him the question, "Outside of that, what is it that would make a male later on in life want to have sex with another male? Personally, I find it repugnant, but it happens. What causes it?"

His answer shocked me. "To me, it is choice. They could be socialised into it or, as you ought to know, many of our poorer young men are driven to it by poverty."

"But how does that explain, say, San Francisco, or even some of our local homosexual politicians? Poverty was not a factor there. Could it be a mental imbalance which manifests itself into this social deviance? I know that it is no longer classified in medical literature as such, but in the end, what is it that is the main causal factor?"

"Medical science is still struggling with that. The fact is, people for whatever reasons make a choice at some stage of their lives that they want to express their sexuality in a particular way. If they want to do so, it is their right."

Whether it is triggered at birth or later by some hormonal imbalance, or it is strictly choice, the fact is it is here. Our "friends" in the powerful US and EU countries have fully embraced the right of their people to adopt the lifestyle, and thinking of us as savages, they believe that the time is right, considering how parlous our economic state is, to ram home their culture on us.

It cannot be as simple as that. While I would agree that our law on buggery is an ass, the US and the EU must recognise that culture changes do not occur in a flash, by fiat or by money coercion. To me, if two men want to get it on in the privacy of their bedrooms, it is up to them. All I would ask in return is that they keep it where it belongs - in private.

Many Jamaicans are of the view that what these latter-day foreign "invaders" with their money bags are doing is forcing on us a process which may begin with a repeal of the buggery law but may end up with Jamaica endorsing gay marriage. After that, what is likely to follow would be the sick scenario of gays in such a union adopting children!

This is by no means a perfect world and Jamaica has never been anywhere near independent. In the mid-1990s a snotty American teenager named Michael Fay visited Singapore. While there he decided one late evening to spread his US-learned nastiness by using a can of spray paint to despoil dozens of cars. He was held and sentenced to receive six lashes of the bamboo cane.

Even the then US President Bill Clinton intervened. In the end, Singapore did not cave in, but compromised and applied four strokes of the cane to the young man. Singapore was able to do so because it did not have its hands out begging anyone.

We are in no such position so we will always be forced to bend over and accept what is coming.

observemark@gmail.com

August 18, 2011

jamaicaobserver

Bahamas Blog International

What is 'The Help?' A Caribbean perspective

By Rebecca Theodore


It is a fantasy of a post racial America narrated in the voice of a black person by a white woman. It is a story of African American maids in Jackson, Mississippi during the 1950s and 1960s. It is a time and place when black women helped raise white babies, and yet could not use the same bathroom as their white employers.

Set in the Deep South, ‘The Help’ portrays African-American women in subjugated roles and relies on tired stereotypes of black men. ‘The Help’ misrepresents African American speech and culture and omits civil rights activism.

‘The Help’ calls up memories for many affluent whites of being nurtured and cared for by black women, who might have been more like mothers to them than their own white birth mothers.

It is in ‘The Help’ that novelist Kathryn Stockett opens up old racial wounds and presents a deluded picture of hope for black people, who are still considered to be subhuman by mainstream white America.

And I am not amused.

I am not amused because Stockett has maligned the lines between black and white women in America and the Caribbean and it is not impolite of me to write about it. I did not experience slavery or the ravages of the civil rights movement but I am the offspring of slaves who left the same African port but anchored on a different shore, therefore I have the right to speak for I have no fear of being heard.

I do not speak African American vernacular English because I was born on a Caribbean island called Dominica, where vestiges of slavery still decorate the landscape. I was taught the perils of slavery by West Indian historian, Dr Eric Williams in the ‘Making of the West Indies’ and ‘Capitalism and Slavery.’

And I am disturbed.

I am disturbed because Ms Stockett has crossed a terrible line, writing in the voice of a black person. I speak a different accent and I do not understand that voice. The ‘infantilization’ of black women in ‘The Help’ also includes me and my Caribbean sisters everywhere, for we know what it is like to be told in America, “You have a different accent.”

Ms Stockett, Caribbean women may not have raised white babies to be racist like you but there are many Caribbean domestic workers living in the South. The brutal rapes and sexual harassment that they experience behind the iron gates and closed doors of white employers never make the headlines because they are denied the right to organize and bargain collectively.

Domestic workers are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act. They have little recourse to challenge abusive behavior and no union protection. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act bans sexual harassment in the workplace, but domestic workers do not enjoy this privilege because the private space of a home, behind closed doors or iron gates does not constitute a workplace.

Reports from the United Nations entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women concludes that half of all foreign domestic women workers in the South report that they are victims of verbal and physical abuse and rape.

Yes, Ms Stockett, their hushed violence continues in silence while you profit as the hero.

You have used racism as a means to engender white solipsism by allowing white women the power to make it seem that their experiences are wholly representative of all women’s experiences, thus resulting in misinterpreted myths and the advancement of your history by exploitation and greed.

And I am angry.

I am angry because you have made slavery appear as a convenient formula for others to follow. You have used racism as stigmata for entertainment and have belittled the experiences of domestic workers in America and the Caribbean.

But I’ll forever be a confident black woman.

I will be a confident black woman because I know my history and I have powerful black role models as my guide. You have used the dependable voices of Abilene, Minnie and Skeeter to further deify systematic racism in America.

But at the end, you still needed black women to tell your story. At the bitter end, Ms Stockett, you still need black women as your guide.

August 17, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Deconstructing the demise of prime ministerial nominees by the Haitian senate

By Jean H. Charles



The Haitian Senate has recently rejected Bernard H. Gousse as the next prime minister of Haiti. It is the second time the Senate as well as the House of Representatives have shot down nominees sent by the new president of Haiti, Michel Joseph Martelly, to form a new government.

The first nominee, Gerard Rouzier, was dismissed on the grounds of allegiance to a foreign country. Gerard Rouzier was the honorary Consul for Jamaica in Haiti.

The true reason was Mr Rouzier was a mulatto. The old political clan that still controls the Senate practices the political exclusion against the mulattoes from occupying high executive position in the government such as president or prime minister. The decibel level of racial insults has been elevated so high that the term “affranchis” has been affixed in the open debate onto a senator by another senator because of the light skin color of his epidermis.

Bernard Gousse did not get the nod on the spurious grounds that he did not receive a discharge from his old function as a former justice minister. He was discharged through a governmental decree used before to approve Jacques Edouard Alexis another prime minister.

Bernard Gousse was a no nonsense justice minister under the Latortue government. He pursued with diligence and with a firm hand, conspirators of the Lavalas regime bent on creating mayhem and violence under the logo Operation Bagdad in the country after the forced departure of their leader Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004.

Under the guidance of Aristide nemesis, Rene Preval, who ruled Haiti during the last eight years, those conspirators are now Senators of the Republic. They vowed to give Bernard Gousse his marching orders. He was dismissed in spite of the fact that all his documentation was in order. He could not even get to the stage of the normal constitutional process of presenting his political vision that could serve as the true template for decision making.

In his letter of departure, Bernard Gousse told his detractors from the GPR senatorial political platform that GPR -- the platform used by the clan Lavalas Lespwa -- will mean: Gousse Pi Red meaning Gousse will be there for the long haul!

This is the battle raging now in the country. Will the old clan that promised to remain in power for forty years (they have already concluded twenty years: 1991- 2011) continue to rule Haiti?

Using the lowest standard of evaluation, the Lavalas cum Lespwe cum Unity has failed Haiti miserably during the last twenty years. It is engaging today into a macabre dance of survival to continue the culture of corruption, complete disregard of the needs of the Haitian population and the misappropriation of the international cooperation resources under the guise of government.

The Martelly regime, elected in a plebiscite under the motto of change, is inflexible. His prime minister and his government must reflect the change brought about by the Haitian people.

Some twenty years ago, the Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide, who is the long hand behind the recalcitrant senators, defied the president of the Haitian Senate Eudrice Raymond to name his prime minister Rene Preval without consulting the president of the Senate as per the terms of the constitution.

On the day of the inauguration, on February 7, 1991, I had to restrain with both hands the president of the Senate, who was ready to fight physically with the newly elected president. I should have let the fight go on. Haiti would have saved the last twenty years of mayhem and misrule!

The fight to bring about a prime minister and a cabinet at the behest of the old regime is at the crux of the matter. The senators willing to facilitate the advent of the new order have forced a philosophical debate on the concept of nation building in Haiti. Should Haiti continue to be a pariah state in the midst of an avalanche of international cooperation?

The debate did not take place; on the strength of their numbers (16 vs. 14) the GPR senators defeated the motion to lay the nomination of Bernard Gousse on the table.

The OAS facilitated the will of the people of Haiti in forcing the withdrawal of Jude Celestin, the candidate of the old regime. This same OAS let in place the senators and the assemblymen selected by and forced upon the electorate through corruption and violence by the Preval regime. Was it by naiveté or by design?

The fact is three months after the inauguration of the new president they have succeeded in blocking the formation of a new government. The Haitian case need not arrive at the Somali situation for an opportune position. Good governance is at the root of all sustainable solutions for Haiti.

Helping Haiti to usher into the path of good governance will solve the drug transshipment business, the illegal immigration and the environmental degradation endemic to the country.

Haiti waited twenty years until the advent of a caring president; contrary to the Miami Herald’s editorial opinion, Martelly should take the time necessary to build a government willing to break away with the culture of corruption, the culture of predatory governance!

The resilient and gallant people of Haiti deserve a government at the scale of its mighty mission of freedom ring, torch bearers in this world!

August 16, 2011

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Bahamas Blog International