5th Summit of the Americas - commentary for BBC Caribbean forum (17 April 2009)
Until the day when the Caribbean can agree on/at firstly a summit of the Caribbean; CARIFORUM, CARICOM, OECS, CSME, until such day, we will only be pawns in other people’s games as we will be at this Summit! America and Cuba are already working towards a resolution. However, because it suits certain Caribbean and Latin American politicians to go on and on about this, we are quickly seeing a summit dominated by discussions on that American/Cuban relationship.
The fact of the matter is that by the end of Obama’s presidency America and Cuba would have normalised relations and this summit would have had nothing to do with it. Wake up my people, the world is moving quickly! Our leaders should be articulating the more urgent regional priorities. Just look, not too far back, on our handling of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the EU, not a very brilliant Caribbean performance.
Now let’s turn to the Americas long running dispute (between Caribbean and Latin America with USA interest) of import tariff on the region’s bananas entering the EU. That dispute is actually one of the Americas which has been left to the EU to resolve. Why can’t we resolve these issues amongst ourselves? Why are we fighting each other at the WTO and waiting for Europeans to resolve our problems?
Then there are the border issues, for example Venezuela’s encroachment on other countries sovereignty; the long running territorial disputes with Guyana and Venezuela’s claim to Dominica’s Bird Island. Then we have the Caribbean stuck between the drug games of Latin America and the USA with neither of these blocks truly appreciating and paying up for the detrimental impact that their drug business is having on Caribbean lives, instead we seem to get blamed by the Americans and totally ignored by Latin America on this issue.
Therefore until the Summit of the Americans can reach the level of maturity whereby we can resolve such issues ourselves then its resolutions remain insubstantial with no binding and lasting impacts.
We now know that the resolve from the recently concluded London G20 will impact negatively on several of our sectors, with the most direct impact being on the Financial Sector i.e. Off –Shore Banking; therefore we have gone into reactionary mode – trying to out the fire after the spread! But months prior to the London G20 we knew the G20 Agenda – but how much did we do to influence the outcome and have a positive result for our region? Nothing! Several of our members at the Summit of the America’s are members of the G20; Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the USA. So what did we in the Americas do prior to the G20 to influence the decisions there?
Until the day when the Caribbean can agree on/at firstly a summit of the Caribbean; CARIFORUM, CARICOM, OECS, CSME, until such day, we will only be pawns in other people’s games as we will be at this Summit! America and Cuba are already working towards a resolution. However, because it suits certain Caribbean and Latin American politicians to go on and on about this, we are quickly seeing a summit dominated by discussions on that American/Cuban relationship.
The fact of the matter is that by the end of Obama’s presidency America and Cuba would have normalised relations and this summit would have had nothing to do with it. Wake up my people, the world is moving quickly! Our leaders should be articulating the more urgent regional priorities. Just look, not too far back, on our handling of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the EU, not a very brilliant Caribbean performance.
Now let’s turn to the Americas long running dispute (between Caribbean and Latin America with USA interest) of import tariff on the region’s bananas entering the EU. That dispute is actually one of the Americas which has been left to the EU to resolve. Why can’t we resolve these issues amongst ourselves? Why are we fighting each other at the WTO and waiting for Europeans to resolve our problems?
Then there are the border issues, for example Venezuela’s encroachment on other countries sovereignty; the long running territorial disputes with Guyana and Venezuela’s claim to Dominica’s Bird Island. Then we have the Caribbean stuck between the drug games of Latin America and the USA with neither of these blocks truly appreciating and paying up for the detrimental impact that their drug business is having on Caribbean lives, instead we seem to get blamed by the Americans and totally ignored by Latin America on this issue.
Therefore until the Summit of the Americans can reach the level of maturity whereby we can resolve such issues ourselves then its resolutions remain insubstantial with no binding and lasting impacts.
We now know that the resolve from the recently concluded London G20 will impact negatively on several of our sectors, with the most direct impact being on the Financial Sector i.e. Off –Shore Banking; therefore we have gone into reactionary mode – trying to out the fire after the spread! But months prior to the London G20 we knew the G20 Agenda – but how much did we do to influence the outcome and have a positive result for our region? Nothing! Several of our members at the Summit of the America’s are members of the G20; Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the USA. So what did we in the Americas do prior to the G20 to influence the decisions there?
