(Editorial reprinted from yesterday’s Jamaica Observer)

We are intensely supportive of the concept of and necessity for Caribbean integration. But it does not stop us from facing bald reality.

Mr John Keynes, it was, who pointed to an eternal truth, that every statesman (a euphemism for politician) was unwittingly the “slave of some defunct economist”. This is particularly the case when the politician has an intellectual inferiority complex but yearns for acceptance by being a recognised disciple of known intellectuals whose ideas they repeat, even when they are of little or no relevance to the current policy dilemma.

In the Caribbean, President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana comes to mind. In this regard, he is maintaining a Guyanese tradition. Cheddi Jagan was an apostle of the Stalinist perversion of Marxism, which passed as the Soviet model. President Forbes Burnham, the Caribbean’s Robert Mugabe, was an unrepentant dictator practising a brand of fascism called Co-operative Socialism.

President Jagdeo, trained in the Soviet Union, believes in the developmental state, which plays the leading role in economic development. Like his predecessors, he does not believe in markets and regards private enterprise as a form of theft.

The extreme poverty of Guyana, a vast land blessed with abundant resources of every kind, is testimony to bad economic policy. Not content to preside over the steady impoverishment of his people (those who have not yet migrated) he now proposes the implosion of the few remaining economic activities.

Following the academic delusions of two prominent Guyanese, neither of whom have any practical experience in trade negotiations, he raised the issue of delaying the signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) at the recent Caricom summit in Antigua & Barbuda. None of the concerns he raised were found to be technically valid or politically feasible.

In embarrassing defeat, he protested that he must consult with the private sector and civil society. No explanation was offered as to why he had postponed these consultations since December of last year when the negotiations were completed. He now faces public humiliation by Guyana’s exporters of sugar, rum, rice and seafood whose survival and enhanced prospects depend on the EPA.

Among the many redundant proposals was the notion that CARIFORUM should postpone signing and wait to join with the African countries who, we note, do not have the same interests because most are least developed countries and already had duty-free quota-free access to the European market via the Everything But Arms Initiative.

We need the EPA to get that access. In any case, the possibility for joint ACP negotiations, preferential treatment in perpetuity for special commodities and the right to non-reciprocity were given up by our negotiators when they succumbed to the terms handed down by the EU in the Cotonou Agreement.

If Mr Jagdeo wants Guyana to opt out of the EPA to chase the mirage of a goods-only agreement, then the rest of CARIFORUM should go ahead without Guyana and sign the existing EPA.

The consequences would be dire for its exports to the EU and Caricom. Guyana would lose eligibility to the development assistance linked to the implementation of the EPA. It would slow down the already comatose Caribbean Single Market and Economy, which is likely to be rescheduled until the “Twelfth of Never”.