Although adult male life expectancy in the Caribbean is little more than 70 years of age, Richard Bernal’s associates and colleagues were caught off guard by his sudden death over a week ago. Bernal was a colleague who seemed able to carry his burdens lightly without any of the telltale signs most of us mortals exhibit in the face of a life of stress.
Dr Richard Bernal was a Jamaican economist and diplomat who held a series of senior representative posts in and outside of Jamaica. It is arguable that his most influential regional post came as Director General (DG) of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) under which CARICOM and the Dominican Republic combined to undertake external trade negotiations. I first met Bernal whilst I was SG, ad interim, of the ACP Group and Director of the Technical Centre for Agricultural & Rural Cooperation (CTA). In 2008, I was invited by Minister Henry Jeffrey to an ACP-EU Joint Council Session. Bernal enquired during the course of lunch, whether I would be interested in contributing to the work of the CRNM. He later proposed more specifically that I join the team as an Adviser. I agreed.
Bernal himself had held a variety of senior representative posts on behalf of Jamaica, including Ambassador to the USA and Permanent Representative of Jamaica to the Organization of American States from 1991 to 2001. Prior to venturing into diplomacy, he had been an economics lecturer at UWI, Jamaica, and a banker for a short period. He then went on to lead the CRNM and subsequently became the organisation’s longest serving DG. Afterwards, Richard was appointed as Alternate Executive Director and then Executive Director of the IDB. Latterly, he served as Pro-Chancellor and Professor of Practice at UWI, and Research Fellow at the P.J. Patterson Centre for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy.
I believe that of all these posts his most significant contribution was made as DG of the CRNM and most importantly as our Lead Negotiator for EPA (Economic Partnership Agreement) and the World Trade Organisation) WTO . This was a position in which he succeeded the venerable Sir Shridath Ramphal (SSR).
It is whilst he was at the helm of the negotiating agency that the latter endured its most controversial and challenging phase and that is not to say that it was ever without controversy. From its very birth the agency was dogged by, if not immersed in, controversy. At its inception the Heads of Government let it be known that the late Hon Bernard St John, Deputy Prime Minister of Barbados, who had served as the ACP Ministerial Coordinator and Spokesman would head the negotiating body which was about to be established. In spite of this stated intention, they contrived to appoint Sir Shridath to the position. Notwithstanding his sterling work at the institution, Ramphal’s term was marked by an abrupt resignation widely believed to be a result of his dissatisfaction with the region’s mode of decision-making.
In appointing Sir Shridath Ramphal as head of the CRNM, the Heads had effectively taken it from under the umbrella of the Caricom Secretariat and the authority of its Secretary General within which it had been conceived. Sir Shridath, in effect, reported to the Heads directly thereby severely limiting the influence and control of the negotiating process exercised by the Secretary General of CARICOM/CARIFORUM. Therein lay the corrosive and intractable troubles of the body.
Bernal was not Sir Shridath and as DG of the Negotiating Machinery, Bernal’s mannerisms and his leadership style helped to attenuate this problem of reporting and control in the post-Ramphal era. He was a laid-back manager, soft-spoken and flexible but confident among Heads and untroubled by underlying challenges to his authority, perhaps buoyed by socio-cultural factors specific to the region. He allowed his technicians, led frontally by the late Henry Gill, Senior Director, considerable room to maneuver and confront organizational as well as technical challenges. The regional standing of the technicians was such that they easily networked effectively among the key advisers of the individual Heads. They rarely gave up an argument, and in the process earned the opprobrium of the SG of the Caricom Secretariat, in particular, as well as some of the venerable members of academia, who seemed sometimes affronted by Gill and his team’s strong and persuasive forays in the arena of international economics . This CRNM team was very effective and reminds me of the traditional ‘good cop bad cop’ combinations made immortal in gangster films like The French Connection in particular (Doyle and Russo), and Starsky and Hutch.
At the commencement of Richard Bernal’s term at the CRNM, the region’s leaders were committed to regional trade initiatives focusing primarily on reducing and removing tariffs and non-tariff barriers. The body established in 2007 was expected to negotiate the FTAA, WTO as well as the Cotonou Agreement with the EU, and associated trade and development initiatives. The importance of having articulate but tough and competent negotiators was recognized as critical to promoting and defending the region’s positions. In time however, the region was faced with new protectionism practiced by its OECD counterparts, including the EU. The latter were calling for tariff reductions and opening of developing country markets while they themselves were pursuing domestic restrictions and much of which, while they did not necessarily render the freeing of international trade redundant, sought to secure advantages for themselves vis a vis other states and the developing countries, in particular. Although Caricom/CARIFORUM states recognized these divergent and contradictory trends they never actually managed, with or without the CRNM, to address let alone decide from among alternative options to the existing regimes of preferential access. The late Owen Arthur, former PM of Barbados, pointed to the internal tensions amongst the Heads of Government arising from the difficulties they encountered when confronted by these hard choices.
The dilemma faced them in the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations with the EU, correctly described by one observer as, “arguably the most technically complex of the trade negotiations that the region has engaged in”. The conclusion of those negotiations in December 2007 (the Agreement was actually signed in October 2008) seemed to have taken many observers, by surprise. An alliance of critics, including many development NGO’s, attacked the agreement as well as CRNM staff. In the face of that onslaught, the region’s political leaders whose nominated spokesmen charged with oversight of the negotiations had cleared the agreement, feigned ignorance and practically disowned the EPA. The Dominican Republic (DR) which had earned the ire of the Caricom Secretariat for its strong advocacy of liberalisation throughout the negotiations, stood almost alone save for Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago in defending the package. Guyana which had been the country insisting that the EU’s inclusion of a development package would be a pre-condition for its approval of any EPA, also joined the critics in attacking the alleged independence of the CRNM although the package Guyana advocated had been secured.
Caricom Heads of Government meeting in Belize, urged on by the Caricom SG, dismembered the CRNM on grounds of the package’s content, being unsatisfactory. Henry Gill who succeeded Bernal as the new DG, and who had long been regarded by the Secretariat as the ‘bad cop’ was forced out during the subsequent 20th Inter-sessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government, Belize, 12-13 March 2009 and formally resigned in June 2009. The agency was effectively dismembered and parked under the SG as the Office of Trade Negotiations (OTN) of the Caricom Secretariat. This was exactly where then CARICOM SG had proposed it be located at the inception of the trade negotiations exercise.
Axing leaders of allegedly offending institutions and sidelining those institutions when the underlying problems to be tackled were inappropriate structures or crossed reporting lines are common reactions of the Heads Summit. The impact of that particular decision on the CRNM and the region’s capacity, or lack thereof, to effectively negotiate subsequent agreements would undoubtedly be a more appropriate topic for another time. Suffice it for me to say here that, shortly after the initialing of the pact, Bernal possibly in anticipation of that evening of ‘the long knives’ that was to ensue in Belize, resigned to take up a position at the IDB.
The EPA was the most visible and lasting achievement of the CRNM, and it was concluded under Dr Richard Bernal’s leadership. It was negotiated and delivered by the CRNM in circumstances under which, until the deal was announced, most observers, inside and out, believed would make a mutually acceptable outcome highly unlikely, if not impossible. The preparation for those and other negotiations involved long, extensive, expensive and careful preparation and completion of studies and the region had anticipated undertaking several other negotiations during Bernal’s tenure. Such preparatory work inherited by the Caricom Secretariat had been undertaken at Bernal and Gill’s initiative to facilitate these and succeeding negotiations especially because of the technical weakness and lack of adequate analytical skills in many member states.
Bernal, when he had time to reflect, would have looked back with pride on that preparatory work and the way he had managed his team with Henry Gill. Many of those with and against whom the CRNM negotiated speak glowingly of its technical capacity. Neither it nor its leaders were the source of the region’s problems in securing a more favourable agreement. For much of its lifetime the institution was regarded and envied as one of the premier regional negotiating bodies in the developing world, one of the outstanding examples of an effective regional technical competence. In fact, not long before Bernal invited me to join his team, I had completed a consultancy assignment for the West African Economic and Monetary Community (UEMOA) on an appropriate organizational and reporting framework within which that region could undertake their external economic and trade negotiations, particularly with the EU.
As it happens, Richard Bernal has shared some of his thoughts on the trials and negotiating challenges faced by the CRNM and the region.
Ric He lived long enough to have seen the role played by the Secretariat and its specialist institution in the negotiation of the Cotonou Successor Agreement which, although effectively concluded in 2020, has yet to be signed off by the EU. Under the new arrangement and under the oversight of Caricom, the region was unable to prevent each ACP region, including Caricom/CARIFORUM, having to negotiate individually with the EU and with region-specific provisions, although there remains an ACP-wide framework within which the regions were constrained.
At the same time, the provisions of the draft agreement can be seen as being more intrusive in many ways than its predecessor and especially the Lomé accords. The NGO and University Communities, which did so much to make life uncomfortable for the Heads and which proved to be the nemesis of the CRNM, has been ‘missing in action’ on the new terms negotiated. It is as though they had returned to the pre-Cotonou 2008 era when they took little interest in such matters. Trade and development issues are no longer sexy in those communities, unfortunately they are still very important to our economies.
Following Bernal’s resignation from the CRNM, and the previously mentioned Council actions, negotiations began with Canada on a CARICOM-Canada Trade and Development Agreement to replace CARIBCAN, Canada’s non-reciprocal free trade pact with the Caribbean. The region’s negotiating guidelines had, as before, been agreed by the Caricom Heads of Government and the Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on External Negotiations. Two rounds of negotiations were held, November 2009 and March 2010. They were suspended following Canada’s conclusion, as I recall, that the Caribbean ‘lacked ambition’ as regards its goals. In 2011, subsequent to my departure, the region negotiated an Additional Protocol to the CARICOM-Cuba Trade Agreement and a CARIFORUM-UK EPA consequent to the departure of the UK from the EU. Little of note has emerged from the CRNM’s successor and CARICOM since.
Conclusion
To the very end, Bernal remained a colleague who always lent a sympathetic ear to others and he often proffered suggestions and ideas which underlined his abiding interest in analytical writing. I recall that in 2022 during our penultimate discussion which touched on the Guyana-Venezuela case before the ICJ he asked why I had not published my observations about the predominant influence of the threat to Guyana’s borders on the formulation and direction of Guyana’s foreign policy.
I close with a personal reflection on the man himself outside of academia and the negotiating room. Bernal knew that I enjoyed playing squash and when he learned that I had sustained a severed achilles tendon and was hoping to quickly return to the game he went to the trouble of bringing from Jamaica, one of his highly prized squash racquets as a gift in order to encourage me to quickly get back on the court by joining and playing at the Barbados squash club.
Bernal’s commitment to exercise and sport was not the least of the reasons why the news of his demise took so many of us by surprise. We knew how committed he was to exercise and sport and if fitness alone was a sufficient shield against heart attacks he would not have left us for a long time. We shall miss him for those characteristics and also for his hallmark smile which was a prelude to either a joke or a profound observation.
