It is a sign of the continuing political and psychological distance between the English-speaking countries of the Caribbean and other states in the region, that there should have been so little commentary on the presidential election that has recently taken place in the Dominican Republic, a member-state of the EU-Caribbean Forum countries that are party to the Economic Partnership Agreement signed in 2007. And as if to reinforce this fact, a recent commentary by David Jessop in this newspaper has had to remind us that Caricom and the DR “should work more closely together.”
Since the establishment of the Cariforum in which the Europeans insisted that the Dominican Republic and Haiti should participate, it seems that our fear of the country, as both much larger in population and economic size than our Caricom states, has continued. A signal indication of that fear seems to have first come to the fore as the Cotonou Convention, successor to the Lomé Convention, was being negotiated. For then it was felt, not so much by the larger Caricom states, but by the smaller countries of the Windward Islands, that with access of the DR to the European market, their banana trade with the EU could possibly be wiped out by that lower cost producer.
But a reluctance to come to terms with the DR as a member of the Caricom family seems to have had a wider salience than that. The West Indian Commission Report, published in 1992, made a case for having a separate kind of relationship with the country, while taking a more favourable view of a closer relationship with its neighbour Haiti. In part the reluctance stemmed from a fear, this time by large and small Caricom countries, that the DR, well advanced in relation to Caricom in industrial development, could swamp our markets and diminish the growth of our own industrial sectors.
This was a fear that was extended to any possible free trade relationship between the Central American states and Europe. And sometimes it just seemed to rest on a sense of inferiority borne of a large difference in populations, the Caricom being about 5 million, and the DR being somewhat over 8 million.
In this period, however, it sometimes seemed that Trinidad & Tobago did not entirely share this view, its stance no doubt suggesting that its own natural gas endowment could give it a certain level of competitiveness with the DR. This was a view that Trinidad also seemed to hold vis-à-vis the countries of Central America, and that country became something of a driving force in pushing towards some kind of relationship with those countries, as well as with the DR. And it could not have been entirely a surprise that, probably in the face of Trinidad’s insistence, a free trade agreement was signed between Caricom and the DR in 1998, with a Memorandum of Understanding consolidating it being signed in 2000.
While hesitations still exist in terms of Caricom seeing the DR as part of a wider Caribbean sub-region, as indeed the Europeans have seemed to be insisting, and the DR became a party to what we now know as the Cariforum-DR-Economic Partnership Agreement of December 2007, the government of the DR still intimates, from time to time, a certain dissatisfaction with the state of things.
To that government, whose enthusiasm for involving itself in Caribbean relations has increased under the two-term (ten years) administration of President Leonel Fernandez that is just coming to an end, there is concern that the Cariforum arrangements are not as productive as they could be, suggesting that Caricom still appears to take a dilatory attitude towards maximizing the arrangement in terms of full DR influence over its administration.
It would not be surprising if the DR government still sees the Cariforum-EU-EPA as a halfway agreement in terms of extracting maximum benefits from participating in regional affairs. And as if to make its point more forcefully, it has demonstrated its willingness and negotiating capability by adhering to the free trade agreement offered to the Central Americans by the United States, transforming it into a US-DR-Cafta agreement.
Can the present situation continue to prevail? There is some sense that the DR, with its close relationship with the United States (reinforced by its large diaspora there) and its historical relationship with Europe, sees larger possibilities for itself in enhancing relationships with both these areas. At the time of the negotiations towards the establishment of a Cariforum, both Spain and Portugal were avid supporters of a widening of the UK-Caricom relationship to include the DR, and even Cuba if its situation should change. Today Cuba, while being a signatory to the Cariforum Agreement, though not participating within the framework of the EU-Cariforum operational relationship, has its own aid-development arrangements with the EU.
Would there be some virtue, and longer term benefit, in Caricom having a more open discussion with DR, within a context of the longer term relationships between the EU and the Caribbean and the US and the Caribbean? President Leonel Fernandez has, in the face of the Haitian earthquake, taken the opportunity to be seen as a significant participant in the reconstruction process of the DR’s neighbour. This strategy must certainly be intended to provide an impression as an important participant in wider and longer-term EU-US relationships with the Caribbean arena.
Should we not be thinking through these longer-term arrangements for ourselves, thinking more of the future configuration of our area, than of past, and even present, fears and hesitations about the relationships between ourselves and the larger Caribbean states? Surely if, even in the difficult circumstances of the last few decades, we did not hesitate to persist in defining a present and potential relationship with Cuba, could we not be more forthcoming in regard to the Dominican Republic?
There can be no escape from changing times and changing circumstances.
