Evincing haste which has hardly been seen in the pursuit of other types of security legislation, the National Assembly last week unanimously passed three bills to enable Guyana to participate in regional security arrangements during the Cricket World Cup (CWC) 2007.
With the first balls already being bowled in the opening innings of the competition across the Caribbean, standing orders had to be suspended to hurry along the second and third readings of the Security Assistance (Caricom Member States) Bill 2007, the Visiting Forces Bill 2007 and the Status of Visiting Police Officers Bill 2007, and to permit their being piloted through their final stages after surprisingly scant and swift debate.
The bills are intended to give effect to the regional security plan that Caribbean Community Heads of Government approved to ensure the safety and security of the host countries, teams and spectators during the World Cup. But that plan itself has never been examined in detail and debated by the legislators. Ignorance and confusion about its assumed contents and conditions were evident last week.
The Security Assistance Bill, in particular, gives the force of law in Guyana to Caricom’s new Treaty on Security Assistance. It deals with organisational issues such as the establishment and functions of the Security Assistance Mechanism, Joint Strategic Coordinating and Planning Committee and Coordinating Secretariat; and the appointment and duties of a coordinator, for CWC.
But its most important operational objectives are not clearly defined. What on earth can woolly provisions such as “national and regional crises” and “serious crimes,” for which the treaty dictates the injection of the security mechanism for “expedition, efficient mobilization and deployment of regional resources,” really mean?
By passing the bill, Guyana has chosen to accept the RSS’s Central Liaison Office as the Coordinat-ing Secretariat of the Security Assistance Mechanism even though Guyana has never taken the trouble to become a member of the RSS. The Regional Security System was established in 1982 with its (apparently) permanent headquarters in Barbados and its co-ordinator has always been a Barbadian military or naval officer. In fact, non-OECS states including the Bahamas, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago in 25 years have never seen it fit to join the RSS. Perhaps with good reason.
There have always been deep divisions among Caricom states over security issues which the CWC will not magically mend. The failed response to the 1967 secession of Anguilla from St Kitts-Nevis; the lack of support to Trinidad and Tobago during the 1970 mutiny of the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force; and the 1983 US invasion of Grenada that was supported by Barbados and the OECS but not by Belize, The Bahamas, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, are three good examples of Caribbean non-cooperation in security.
The October 2004 deployment of over 100 GDF soldiers on a humanitarian mission to Grenada, also, spurned the RSS’s attempts to convoke a combined Caribbean response to the Hurricane Ivan disaster. The result was that at least three detachments – one from Barbados’s BDF and the OECS under the RSS, another from TTDF on its own, and the third from the GDF – remained separate.
Although spokesmen for the People’s National Congress Reform-1 G and the Alliance for Change identified the flaws and registered their concerns over the provisions of the Security Assistance Bill during the debate in the National Assembly, they passed them with a few superficial amendments, including sunset clauses in the case of the other two bills.
There is much to be said for the creation of a permanent mechanism for the coordination of security among Caribbean states. A truly effective structure, however, is unlikely to emerge from fluffy provisions and hasty discussions.
