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The ‘warning’ Mr Golding
Many questions on Jamaica PM’s stand
ON the eve of hosting last week’s special two-day meeting of CARIFORUM leaders and top officials of the European Union (EU) on a proposed Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe, Jamaica’s new prime minister, Bruce Golding, gave a surprisingly insensitive warning to this country’s Caribbean partners.
Both the nature of the warning and the platform used to deliver it have implications for the kind of relationship that Golding’s Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administration may be inclined to pursue within the councils of the 15-member Caribbean Community (Caricom) and the wider CARIFORUM grouping with the EU that includes the Dominican Republic and Cuba.
In addressing a gathering of businesspeople at the American Chamber of Commerce of Jamaica (AmCham) Speaker’s Forum Luncheon last Tuesday, Mr Golding, who is yet to complete even his first month in office as the country’s eighth prime minister, warned, according to last Wednesday’s Observer: “Jamaica’s Caribbean neighbours against falling prey to countries wishing to capitalise on the breakdown in preferential arrangements with the region’s traditional trading partners (read that to mean EU and USA — my note)…
“We (read ‘we’ here to mean his party and government) have seen signs already in this region to suggest that we have good reason to be concerned, that once that vacuum is created, once that kind of helping hand (the trade preferences) on which we have been able to rely for so long is no longer there… other forces may want to seek to fill and, within our region, right now there are forces at work…”
He did not identify “the forces” he felt compelled to warn Jamaica’s Caribbean partners against. There was, nevertheless, no doubt about the primary ‘force’ he had in mind, and as guessed in the Observer’s news report — Venezuela.
Its controversial president, Hugo Chavez, is currently systematically using his nation’s oil wealth to forge partnership alliances among Caribbean and Latin American states that have further aggravated the George Bush administration as Venezuelan economic influence spreads in the hemisphere.
In his anxiety to make use of the AmCham platform to telegraph his perceived “danger alert” about “forces seeking to undermine relations” with traditional trading partners, Mr Golding may have overlooked the fact that he was hardly projecting a neutral profile to chair the CARIFORUM/EU meeting for which arrangements were then under way in Montego Bay.
JLP/USA ties
It may not have been his intention, but impartial observers would have noted that Golding was evidently more concerned about perceived “forces of danger” waiting to fill “the vacuum” of disappeared trade preferences, instead of joining with others in the Caribbean, as well as the wider 79-member African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group, to warn the EU of the implications of what Shridath Ramphal had poignantly described last week as “pressure-cooker” political tactics to rush this region into an Economic Partnership Agreement that fits Europe’s agenda.
There was also a related issue of significance at that AmCham event that may have further contributed to concerns about the “ideological kite” Prime Minister Golding chose to fly.
Unprovoked by any media reporting, as far as I am aware, Golding thought it necessary to tell his audience that the foreign policy of his JLP administration, “especially as it relates to the United States, has not changed in 60 years...” (Jamaica Observer, October 3).
Such deep friendship, such wonderful ties, undisturbed over six decades, may be a remarkable feature for JLP policies and programmes.
I know of NO government, no ruling or opposition party within Caricom, either of the assumed conservative or liberal ideological school (leftwing is no longer in vogue), to have even vaguely suggested that the JLP change its relations with the USA — whether under the current George Bush administration or whatever is to come after the 2008 presidential and congressional elections.
Surprising flutter
Nor, for that matter, has ANY government of our Community — to which Prime Minister Golding has reaffirmed Jamaica’s commitment — been known to have said or done anything to warrant the JLP leader’s warning against relations with “forces” manoeuvring to “fill the vacuum” being created with expected end to various traditional trade preferences.
So why this agitation, this surprising flutter by Mr Golding in waving his party’s unwavering ties with Uncle Sam — irrespective of administrations in Washington — and, simultaneously, warning all and sundry to be on guard against a perceived disruptive force in our region, the naming of which courage failed him to identify?
It could not have been a warning to any extra-regional country or “force” that he thinks is moving to “disturb the business environment of the region”. But within the Greater Caribbean there is currently just one country to which Golding’s warning could be directed — Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.
If the argument is restricted to Venezuela which, within recent years, has entered into various bilateral and multilateral concessional trade and economic pacts with Caricom states, then the Jamaican prime minister should at least be aware of discussions held and agreements signed by the previous People’s National Party administration: For a start, the pact that was initialled by President Chavez and former Prime Minister PJ Patterson at the Ritz Carlton in Rose Hall in January 2006 when Jamaica became the first signatory to the unique Ve n e z u e l a - i n i t i a t e d PetroCaribe project of 2005.
Kingston/Caracas
If there is anything flawed in the aid and trade agreements signed between the Chavez administration and that of the PNP, which ended with the recent September 3 general election, then instead of emotional ideological kite-flying and warnings to other “sovereign states” of this region, Mr Golding should do the politically correct thing by speaking specifically to what’s wrong or perceived to be wrong in current Jamaica-Venezuela relations.
He has no mandate to offer pubic warnings to ANY government of this region currently linked in CARIFORUM/EU negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement with Europe that seeks to phase out traditional trade preferences.
This column was being written while Friday’s Caricom/EU meeting was still in session in Montego Bay. Therefore, like other interested nationals across our region, I am anxiously looking forward to being informed about the outcome of that meeting, chaired by Mr “warning” Golding.
GOLDING… has no mandate to offer pubic warnings to ANY government of this region currently linked in CARIFORUM/EU negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement with Europe that seeks to phase out traditional trade preferences
CHAVEZ… is systematically using his nation’s oil wealth to forge partnership alliances among Caribbean and Latin American states that have further aggravated the George Bush administration
Many questions on Jamaica PM’s stand
ON the eve of hosting last week’s special two-day meeting of CARIFORUM leaders and top officials of the European Union (EU) on a proposed Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe, Jamaica’s new prime minister, Bruce Golding, gave a surprisingly insensitive warning to this country’s Caribbean partners.
Both the nature of the warning and the platform used to deliver it have implications for the kind of relationship that Golding’s Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administration may be inclined to pursue within the councils of the 15-member Caribbean Community (Caricom) and the wider CARIFORUM grouping with the EU that includes the Dominican Republic and Cuba.
In addressing a gathering of businesspeople at the American Chamber of Commerce of Jamaica (AmCham) Speaker’s Forum Luncheon last Tuesday, Mr Golding, who is yet to complete even his first month in office as the country’s eighth prime minister, warned, according to last Wednesday’s Observer: “Jamaica’s Caribbean neighbours against falling prey to countries wishing to capitalise on the breakdown in preferential arrangements with the region’s traditional trading partners (read that to mean EU and USA — my note)…
“We (read ‘we’ here to mean his party and government) have seen signs already in this region to suggest that we have good reason to be concerned, that once that vacuum is created, once that kind of helping hand (the trade preferences) on which we have been able to rely for so long is no longer there… other forces may want to seek to fill and, within our region, right now there are forces at work…”
He did not identify “the forces” he felt compelled to warn Jamaica’s Caribbean partners against. There was, nevertheless, no doubt about the primary ‘force’ he had in mind, and as guessed in the Observer’s news report — Venezuela.
Its controversial president, Hugo Chavez, is currently systematically using his nation’s oil wealth to forge partnership alliances among Caribbean and Latin American states that have further aggravated the George Bush administration as Venezuelan economic influence spreads in the hemisphere.
In his anxiety to make use of the AmCham platform to telegraph his perceived “danger alert” about “forces seeking to undermine relations” with traditional trading partners, Mr Golding may have overlooked the fact that he was hardly projecting a neutral profile to chair the CARIFORUM/EU meeting for which arrangements were then under way in Montego Bay.
JLP/USA ties
It may not have been his intention, but impartial observers would have noted that Golding was evidently more concerned about perceived “forces of danger” waiting to fill “the vacuum” of disappeared trade preferences, instead of joining with others in the Caribbean, as well as the wider 79-member African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group, to warn the EU of the implications of what Shridath Ramphal had poignantly described last week as “pressure-cooker” political tactics to rush this region into an Economic Partnership Agreement that fits Europe’s agenda.
There was also a related issue of significance at that AmCham event that may have further contributed to concerns about the “ideological kite” Prime Minister Golding chose to fly.
Unprovoked by any media reporting, as far as I am aware, Golding thought it necessary to tell his audience that the foreign policy of his JLP administration, “especially as it relates to the United States, has not changed in 60 years...” (Jamaica Observer, October 3).
Such deep friendship, such wonderful ties, undisturbed over six decades, may be a remarkable feature for JLP policies and programmes.
I know of NO government, no ruling or opposition party within Caricom, either of the assumed conservative or liberal ideological school (leftwing is no longer in vogue), to have even vaguely suggested that the JLP change its relations with the USA — whether under the current George Bush administration or whatever is to come after the 2008 presidential and congressional elections.
Surprising flutter
Nor, for that matter, has ANY government of our Community — to which Prime Minister Golding has reaffirmed Jamaica’s commitment — been known to have said or done anything to warrant the JLP leader’s warning against relations with “forces” manoeuvring to “fill the vacuum” being created with expected end to various traditional trade preferences.
So why this agitation, this surprising flutter by Mr Golding in waving his party’s unwavering ties with Uncle Sam — irrespective of administrations in Washington — and, simultaneously, warning all and sundry to be on guard against a perceived disruptive force in our region, the naming of which courage failed him to identify?
It could not have been a warning to any extra-regional country or “force” that he thinks is moving to “disturb the business environment of the region”. But within the Greater Caribbean there is currently just one country to which Golding’s warning could be directed — Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.
If the argument is restricted to Venezuela which, within recent years, has entered into various bilateral and multilateral concessional trade and economic pacts with Caricom states, then the Jamaican prime minister should at least be aware of discussions held and agreements signed by the previous People’s National Party administration: For a start, the pact that was initialled by President Chavez and former Prime Minister PJ Patterson at the Ritz Carlton in Rose Hall in January 2006 when Jamaica became the first signatory to the unique Ve n e z u e l a - i n i t i a t e d PetroCaribe project of 2005.
Kingston/Caracas
If there is anything flawed in the aid and trade agreements signed between the Chavez administration and that of the PNP, which ended with the recent September 3 general election, then instead of emotional ideological kite-flying and warnings to other “sovereign states” of this region, Mr Golding should do the politically correct thing by speaking specifically to what’s wrong or perceived to be wrong in current Jamaica-Venezuela relations.
He has no mandate to offer pubic warnings to ANY government of this region currently linked in CARIFORUM/EU negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement with Europe that seeks to phase out traditional trade preferences.
This column was being written while Friday’s Caricom/EU meeting was still in session in Montego Bay. Therefore, like other interested nationals across our region, I am anxiously looking forward to being informed about the outcome of that meeting, chaired by Mr “warning” Golding.
GOLDING… has no mandate to offer pubic warnings to ANY government of this region currently linked in CARIFORUM/EU negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement with Europe that seeks to phase out traditional trade preferences
CHAVEZ… is systematically using his nation’s oil wealth to forge partnership alliances among Caribbean and Latin American states that have further aggravated the George Bush administration
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