The dominating thought in the minds of those who would have heard of an imminent meeting between the foreign ministers of Caricom and their counterpart from the United Kingdom, William Hague, a little over a week and a half ago, must have been whether he would be bringing fresh, positive news about what Caricom considers the exorbitant Air Passenger Duty (APD) imposed by the British. That he did not, and as it has become clear that the tax is higher than that imposed on traveklers to the United States, no change in the APD must surely be seen by our policy-makers, and by persons touched by the tourism industry in various ways, to represent a defeat for those who have emphasized our situation as small, vulnerable economies (SVEs). And it must have seemed, also, as a further defeat for those who have advocated over the years that increasingly, industrialized countries’ policies should be giving a more positive meaning to the content of what is summed up in the phrase ‘special and differential treatment.‘
It would be interesting to know how many Caricom foreign ministers took to heart the commitment of the UK to “continue dialogue on issues relating to the APD,” in the context of their other joint statement in the communiqué that, in advance of the G20 and OECD meetings, “the UK would engage” the Caribbean “so as to ensure that the decision-making in these bodies takes account of the special and particular circumstances of the small, developing Caribbean states.” They may well have wondered at the meaning of the statement “charity begins at home,” as the British were committing themselves to persuade others to take action in that regard, contemporaneously with unwillingness to make an example of the principle by way of their decision on the APD.
The failure of the diplomacy of Caricom states on this issue is in striking contrast to the eagerness of states like the United Kingdom and the United States to support our countries on the now burning matter of security. For them, security cooperation can be summed up as the task of the Caricom states and themselves having to cope with the multiple challenges relating to multinational criminal activity involved in the movement of narcotics, the prevalence of money laundering and the expansion of the stock of weapons among Caribbean populations. The problem seems to have attained major proportions, deeply influencing, in recent times, a government of Jamaica thought to have traditionally good relations with the United States, so that it came as a great surprise that the Dudus controversy could have so deeply shaken the government’s very foundations.
The British and the Americans have developed a deep, joint interest in security cooperation in our region and that is entirely welcome. But how aware are they that those populations in the declining areas of banana and sugar production are unlikely to be too impressed with those efforts, in the context of how they have been affected by negative trade policy action over the last twenty and more years. And if we are to take recent comments by Ian McDonald in this newspaper (January 1), on future trends for our, and other ACP countries’ sugar exports, in the light of new EU decisions, would our producers be wrong to be unimpressed by any new promises? For as Dr McDonald has observed, “This unexpectedly rapid transition – just over three years – to a free-for-all sugar market in the EU – would fly in the face of assurances given to the ACP and LDC that there would be time to adjust to the crippling loss of revenue resulting from abolishing the Sugar Protocol” and “would be a unilateral modification of the EPA.”
So if our citizens are unimpressed by these promises, how credible are they when their own representatives, in this case our foreign ministers, proceed to sign off on a new set of promises made by the British three weeks after Dr McDonald’s article? Should not our governments let the citizens have the benefit of a Caricom government (as distinct from Secretariat) opinion on their own assessments of the validity, or at least credibility, of such new commitments made by their erstwhile European allies? But indeed, is there, in our region, the institutional machinery for this?
Now twenty years ago, the West Indian Commission saw some virtue in recommending the establishment of a Caricom Parliament that could consider, for the benefit of regional citizens as a whole, the joint interests of the member states. Such a forum would have provided a most appropriate one for a consideration of our relations with the United Kingdom, given the continued fervent interests of our populations in sugar, bananas and tourism. But that was not to be, and a small minority of us are left to consider matters through the medium of reported debates in the European Parliament. That can hardly be good enough.
Many Caricom citizens are increasingly bewildered by the inevitable multiplicity of Caricom’s external relations. Is a Caricom communiqué sufficient to explain our position on the recent meeting with the UK? And of the extent to which UK positions are now increasingly influenced by the wider EU framework? Has there been any recent discussion, within Caricom councils themselves, on the efficiency of our diplomats in Europe still presenting themselves largely as representatives of national sovereignties, subject to a cooperative approach by the limited resources of the Caricom Secretariat in Europe? Is it not time to reassess this framework, and reconsider a more coordinated approach?
The simultaneous occurrence of the UK-Caricom Ministerial and the bad news from Europe on sugar reported by Ian McDonald should surely make us think.
