GUYANA recently celebrated 60 years as an independent nation. Among the A-list guests was Barbados’ PM Mia Mottley, who was indubitably Georgetown’s most honoured guest for the multi-day celebration. Her celebratory visit was significant for many reasons: standing out was the bringing into reality of passport-free travel between the sister CARICOM states with PM Mottley and her entourage being the first travellers. This is laudable, though 20 something years late, but you know what they say, better late than never. This is a big move towards making the CSME a real thing. I hope that at the upcoming July summit, other territories will just make the bold move and sign on.
I am an unapologetic integrationist. I am impatient with the length of time and ‘talk-talk’ associated with CARICOM integration. When regional leaders make these flowery integration speeches, I get really angry because I know that most of these leaders treat their own integration agenda as fairytales. They might as well start a typical speech with, “Once upon a time in a land far far away.” In the region, leader after leader come and go, they sign documents and make treaties then disregard them for decades.
There is a CARICOM malaise affecting the cycle of leaders we continually choose. I believe the issue is deeply psychological and is tied to the exercise of power. CARICOM integration is thought of as a supranational force that erodes local political power. Regional leaders already preside over very small physical spaces together with very small populations and turning some of that over to the invisible hand of economic and demographic integration is a big ask. No sane person signs away aspects of his own power. I don’t know what other explanation to attach to this phenomenon. They talk the talk when out of office. Once they taste local power it becomes intoxicating in ways they are unable to mentally extricate themselves. As such, they continually sign treaties, which they leave as a hot potato for the next leader to juggle.
How do you explain a CARIPASS treaty signed since 2007, and not a single CARICOM Travel Card has ever been issued anywhere in the region? Then we come almost 20 years later to jump and celebrate that Guyana and Barbados sidestepped their own multilateral treaty and CARICOM institution to forge bilateral co-operation. Because of its catalytic potential, I am with this initiative 100 per cent, but I am not at all enthused. Here is why.
Because of the region’s history of archiving documents before the ink dries and the history of disregarding its own treaties and agreements, I do not think the agreement between Guyana and Barbados has gone far enough. To make passport-free travel possible, it took an executive decision via a bilateral agreement. What this means is that any President of Guyana or Prime Minister of Barbados can stop the programme by a simple verbal command to their immigration chiefs. This platform is too shaky. I would be a believer when Bridgetown and Georgetown coordinate and take identical legislation to parliament, divesting politicians of some of that executive power and letting the programme function as an institution.
CARICOM leaders are seeking to retain too much state individualism inside of a movement that requires stronger supranational regulatory mechanisms. That is why I expressed deep consternation in the verbal emanations of a top Caribbean academic, Dr Kai Ann Skeete, because I believe when everyone else fails, our academics should uphold principles, facts, figures, law and institutions and uphold their integrity to the corollary conclusion.
So, when I hear our academics pander to political talking points, I feel a deep sense of trepidation and disillusionment for the future of the integration movement.
Amphisbaena is an apt representation of the majority of CARICOM leaders over our storied history. This trait has been our biggest self-warning, self-imposed stumbling block. Prime Minister Mottley is being struck by a bout of ‘Amphisbaenaism” relating to Guyana.
Just a few weeks ago, Venezuela’s Delcy Rodrigues walked into Barbados displaying a redrafted map of Venezuela that annexed two-thirds of Guyana in violation of international law. PM Mottley didn’t think she had a moral and legal obligation to slip in a word of affirmation of the only known borders.
CARICOM and its instruments, associations and institutions far supersede a regional trade agreement. It’s an integration movement. Because none of the partners to the agreement are stateless, the treaties and instruments bind each nation to defined physical spaces and defined nationalities of people. For the survival of the movement, any illegal annexation of any segment of physical space affects the entire founding agreement. So, PM Mottley cannot this week feel zero sense of obligation to affirm the physical space of Guyana and then the next week send her citizens to Guyana without a passport to inhabit the very space she has not displayed any conviction and courage of her conscience to affirm, not even in the slightest.
One head is for regionalism, and the other head is for nationalism. Sometimes they pull in the same direction, and without warning and without a modicum of yeomen kindred spirit, just pulls in opposite directions. Any depiction or gesture of annexation of any part of any member of CARICOM is an affront to the Treaty of Chaguaramas, an affront to the common market space, an affront to our regional institutions, including the Caribbean Court of Justice and an affront to the common economy we are attempting to build. If this implication is not evident, the summit in July might as well take an agreement to suspend the treaty until all border matters in all territories are permanently and unconditionally settled.
There is one main thing Guyana can do to assist regional leaders to manage their amphisbaena traits. Guyana should immediately place on the agenda and take affirmation text to the next Heads of Government conference that require all signatories to the regional treaty to affirm the existing iteration of all national borders as recognised by the UN. This is a basic low-hanging fruit that does not need further explanation.
It’s simple, we are in a regional agreement. What is the inventory we are dedicating to the agreement? A one paragraph text, when adopted, will set the ground rules of engagement with the rest of the world. This format of affirmation does not seek to make individual states into enemies of Venezuela, but to pursue friendship in mutual respect for established spaces, peoples and institutions already affirmed in both states.