The sweeping victory of Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit’s Dominica Labour Party – 18 seats to 3 – in the country’s December 18th general elections, represents a substantial vote of confidence in the party’s tenure of government. A major challenge by the opposition parties, the UWP and Freedom, in the last phase of the campaign, dominated by charges of corruption, the bribing of overseas Dominicans and the fact that Skerrit was born in Guadeloupe, seems to have had no effect on the voters, with the leaders of both parties having failed to win their seats. This is Skerrit’s second victory at the polls since he assumed office as Prime Minister at the age of 31, following the death of his predecessor, then Prime Minister Pierre Charles.
The DLP’s victory, its third since it defeated Prime Minister Edison James’ UWP government in 2000, presents both the UWP and the Freedom Party formed by Eugenia Charles, with a challenge to their very existence. Pending a legal challenge, neither of the leaders of these two parties will be in the Parliament. And the odds certainly seem to be that Freedom will not survive this election as a viable contender for the leadership of Dominica.
Skerrit assumed office at a tenuous period in Dominica with a severe financial crisis that had forced the government of Prime Minister Pierre Charles to take recourse to assistance from the International Monetary Fund. The political situation in the country at that time was also cause for concern, since in rapid succession, Pierre Charles and Skerrit had succeeded Roosevelt Douglas following his sudden death – at a time when the country had seemed to repose much confidence in Douglas. At that time the banana industry in the country, its economic mainstay, had begun to experience decline, and unlike other OECS countries the promise of a viable tourism industry did not seem to be particularly evident. The decline of the banana industry itself contributed to a fiscal crisis with which Douglas’ successors had to come to terms. The situation at the time had been one which seemed to give rise, even in the case of the vibrant Douglas, to a degree of pessimism about the country’s future, this being reflected in his suggestion to French President Giscard d’Estaing, during a meeting with Caricom leaders, that consideration could be given to the acceptance of Dominica into the European Union.
Skerrit, Prime Minister at the early age of 31, facing the fiscal challenge, and much pressure as a result of unpopular economic measures which had to be taken, decided to persevere with the IMF during much of the decade. This was the first of a set of decisive measures which he has taken, directed at finding resources to sustain the economy over the years. Secondly, he decided to break with the Freedom Party and United Workers Party governments’ commitment to Taiwan, choosing in accordance with the trend among the larger countries of Caricom, to recognize the People’s Republic of China. In the OECS at that time, only Antigua and Barbuda and St Lucia had made the switch.
Secondly, Skerrit decided that he would more systematically engage the government of Cuba, something which had been anathema to Prime Minister Eugenia Charles in particular, and to seek assistance of various kinds from that country. That led him, thirdly, to follow other larger countries in establishing economic cooperation relations with Chavez’s Venezuela – accessing Petrocaribe and, like Antigua and St Vincent in the OECS, joining ALBA. This latter initiative has led to charges in the region that Dominica would seem to be aligning itself with Chavez’s radicalism, particularly in international relations, a situation to which significant forces in the American political system have been becoming increasingly hostile. Skerrit also joined St Vincent in formalizing relations with Iran, the kind of act also likely, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has recently warned, to be displeasing to the United States.
Arising from the relationship with Venezuela has been a charge that Dominica is being insufficiently concerned about that country’s alleged geopolitical ambitions in the region and hemisphere, with Dominica and some OECS governments being accused of ceding to Venezuela’s claim to Bird Rock (which the Venezuelans describe as an island) in the north-east Caribbean. Some critics have perceived this as providing something of a thin edge of the wedge in respect of Venezuela’s larger unfounded claim on Guyana’s territory, and therefore to be treated with suspicion. In response Skerrit, cognizant of the San Jose Accord that followed the first oil crisis of the 1970s, has asserted that oil cooperation agreements with Venezuela are nothing new, and that in a time of deep economic crisis, his country had benefited from needed assistance that was hardly forthcoming from other sources.
He certainly seems to reject the notion that such assistance compromises Caricom’s geopolitical position vis-à-vis Venezuela, implicit in this being perhaps his knowledge that it was the NATO powers, the United States, France and the Netherlands which, in the second half of the 1970s, signed delimitation agreements with Venezuela in respect of the Caribbean Sea. Those were, of course, the good old days of the Cold War, when the NATO powers saw Venezuela as a reasonable Cold War partner.
These concerns, however, probably seem a little distant from the Dominica Labour Party leadership as it continues to face what is admitted to be a severe test of finding alternative motors of economic growth to the relatively long-lasting banana industry. The challenge to Prime Minister Skerrit on the issue of his nationality, will surely serve as a reminder that the Windward Islands of the OECS in particular have still gained little from the location of ‘France in the Caribbean,’ even as France in the European Union has conceded the banana issue to the Latin Americans and the United States, in circumstances considered unsatisfactory by the banana producing countries. And this in turn will surely be a reminder to the Prime Minister of changing trends in regional arrangements as the EU induces Caricom to widen its geographical scope in the Caribbean Sea, and as WINFRESH (the former Windward Islands Banana Exporting and Development Company – WIBDECO) is stretching out to the Dominican Republic to help it, as necessary, with filling its banana quota.
In the face of his major victory, the third in a row for the Dominica Labour Party, Mr Skerrit must be well cognizant of the severity of the challenges still facing Dominica.
