Over the past months, particularly during the period in which CARICOM’s negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement(EPA) have been coming to a conclusion, there have been two undercurrents running through regional relations which give pause for thought. The first has been a sentiment emanating from Jamaica that those who have opposed the EPA as its stands today, are doing so because they do not wish to recognize that they can no longer stand in a “mendicancy” relationship to the United Kingdom and particularly the European Union, as far as their trade and aid relations are concerned.
The second has been a certain sentiment that academic contributions to assessment of changes taking place in international economic relations in particular, and to their implications, are antiquated in this era of globalization and liberalization. Included in the grouping of ‘academics” by their critics are advocates of a revision of the EPA lodged in non-governmental organizations and the so-called Civil Society Networks, many of which have international connections in the developed world.
These undercurrents emerged strongly as detailed criticisms developed from a group of University, or former University, academic economists led by the well-known Professors Norman Girvan and Havelock Brewster, who spent a fair portion of their early academic life at the Mona, Jamaica, UWI Campus. These two protagonists with substantial reputations beyond the Caribbean, subsequently joined by other economists and social scientists, seemed to strike a raw nerve in Jamaica itself, though neither of them reside in that country at the present time.
Their challenge to the agreement reached on behalf of the Caribbean Forum (CARIFORUM, which now includes the Dominican Republic) was met by a vibrant, sometimes acerbic, response from the technocrats of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM), Caricom’s negotiating institution. They have basically argued that the Agreement, initialed by Caricom Heads at the end of last year, was the best that could be got in the circumstances, from a European Union anxious to relieve the pressure that has been coming from both the United States and developing countries in Latin America. These countries have urged rapid reforms of colonial and post-colonial preferential economic arrangements, in conformity with the WTO rules on general trade liberalization, non-subsidised production and liberalized trade in services.
The argument of the “academics” found some favour with non-governmental groupings in the Region, as well as with some governments not satisfied that, first the agreement had kept to an original EU commitment to recognizing the still unequal relations between developed and developing countries, especially in the granting of rapid acquiescence to Most Favoured Nation (MFN) trading rules; and secondly, that it has kept to an original EU commitment that an EPA should encourage regional economic integration among developing countries and not permit openings for differential terms of access by industrialized economies and the markets of economies within a regional grouping.
The pro-academic arguments have found favour particularly with Guyana, though initially with smaller Caricom countries like Grenada, St Lucia, the latter concerned with the EU’s treatment of bananas in its urge, under pressure from the US and Latin American banana producers, to satisfy WTO requirements.
Other Eastern Caribbean countries, led vociferously by newly elected Prime Minister David Thompson of Barbados, and Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves (known for striking radical stances in many aspects of international relations), however, joined Jamaica in holding to the position advised by the CRNM technocrats. Thompson’s concerns seemed to be with striking what appears to Barbados to be a relatively favourable position on trade in services in the EPA – a position that is most likely to be that of Antigua and St Kitts and Nevis. Gonsalves, on the other hand, apparently anxious to maintain aid for new, major projects for his country, and not willing to fight with the EU lest they take an even more unsympathetic attitude to the status of ACP banana trade, seems to have settled for a position of “realism”. Finally Trinidad & Tobago, blessed by favourable foreign (American and European) investment trends relating to its natural gas, quickly settled for an EPA agreement which would not seem to inhibit her unduly.
What however has surely swung the debate, and decision, in favour of a broad – that is minus-Guyana – consensus in favour of signing the EPA has been the decisive and determined intervention of Prime Minister Bruce Golding, whose Jamaica Labour Party returned to office in Jamaica, in December of 2006, when the negotiations were moving to conclusion. Golding went, and has continued, on the offensive against the academics who had initially prompted opposition to the EPA as proferred by the EU, and then against Caribbean Governments who were prone to accept the academic critics’ advice. Golding has sought to paint the academic critics, many well-known for advocacy of a non-dependency approach to development as refusing to recognize the ending of the old colonial and neo-colonial relationships particularly between the Caribbean and Europe; and refusing, in turn, to recognize the implications of the new globalization and international economic liberalization. Reflecting the terms of an old (1960’s-1970’s) intellectual and political debate in Jamaica, and bolstered by the advice of the CRNM technocracy, he has sought to transform the critics of dependency into acolytes of dependency.
In doing so, Prime Minister Golding has also turned his fire on Governments opposed to signing the EPA, accusing them of an attitude of “mendicancy” inappropriate to present circumstances, of continuing to “bring out the begging bowl”. This latter criticism is no doubt related to those who have argued that the EPA, as it stands, does not have a sufficient “development dimension”, and sufficient support for regional economic integration, as originally promised in the EU’s Green Paper of 1996.
Naming no names – though the accusation is demonstrably pointed at the lead critical country advocate, Guyana – Prime Minister Golding “questions the self-respect of countries who beg” (in the words of a recent Barbados Advocate editorial , “Golding Tells Beggars to Stop Trend”).
In all of this no notice has been taken of the support for the pro-EPA-revision approach by the senior Caribbean diplomat Sir Shridath Ramphal, the de facto chief negotiator of the Lome-Cotonou agreements which gave CARICOM countries a substantial amount of comfort. Ramphal’s concern appears to have been to seek to attract support from within major countries of the ACP, in recognition of the fact that our relatively smaller countries-economies are hardly ever in a position to autonomously oppose the powerful, but that sophisticated alliances, worked out over time, can give us some possibility of attaining our objectives. Some of this approach may well be tested at the follow-up to the ACP Summit recently held in Accra, though it is fair to say that it has not had the vocal support of Caricom as a whole.
From a Guyanese perspective, what is interesting in this contretemps is the spectacle of a government of the party of Bustamante accusing a government of the party of Cheddi Jagan of mendicancy. Presumably no distinction is made between “bringing out the begging bowl” and the successful advocacy by President Jagan for the relief of debt for highly indebted developing countries.
Observers may well ask themselves what are likely to be the medium term effects of these cross-regional verbal attacks that seem to increasingly pervade Caribbean diplomacy. Not too long ago we witnessed them in respect of governmental discussions on air transportation and energy. Is it taken for granted by the combatants that Caribbean people and their leaders are easy with this kind of give and take, and forgiving and forgetting? What does this say about the machinery of regional diplomacy? And what does it say about the representation of Caricom’s image abroad.
