Caribbean & Central America - March 2012 (ISSN 1741-4458)

The signing up of three English-speaking Caribbean nations to the 4 February declaration of the radical Venezuela-led integration bloc Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Alba) banning ships flying the Falklands flag from docking in their ports may have caught the headlines, but it was symptomatic of a wider malaise about the orientation of the English-speaking Caribbean that the Caricom (Caribbean Community) 8-9 March heads of government meeting in Suriname is hoping to address.

There was some shock in the Caribbean that Dominica, Antigua & Barbuda, and St Vincent & the Grenadines signed up to the Alba declaration. The eight-nation grouping includes the three small Caribbean island states plus Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Cuba. The Alba declaration ended by saying that member states “support the decision made by the countries of the region to ban ships with the colonial flag imposed on the Malvinas [Falklands] from entering their ports”.

The first of the Caribbean trio to back away from the statement was Antigua & Barbuda, which issued a statement on 8 February saying: “Antigua & Barbuda has never supported any call for the banning of flagships from any country in the region and therefore disassociates itself from any statement regarding the banning of ships carrying the flag of the Falklands (Malvinas) from entering our ports.”

Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent & the Grenadines was somewhat less straightforward in his denial, saying that his support for the declaration was “largely a symbolic gesture” as “we don’t have ships from the Falklands coming to St Vincent”.

Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit adopted a position somewhere between Antigua and St Vincent. On returning from the Alba summit he simply said that he wasn’t worried about the banning of ships point as there were no Falkland Island ships calling at Dominica. However, the government then hardened its denial, saying that it “has not granted its support to any call for the region to ban ships with the colonial flag imposed on the Malvinas from entering its ports, as stated in the said declaration”.

In another indication of distancing by the Caribbean trio from Alba, Skerrit has also said that they will not deposit reserves in Alba’s development bank, despite an Alba agreement for members to deposit 1% of their international reserves into a development bank. According to Skerrit: “What we have indicated to our friends in Alba is that countries like Dominica, St Vincent, and Antigua cannot participate in the arrangement because our monetary policy is governed by the monetary council of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank.” He also said that the three would not participate in the sucre, the currency Alba members have said that they will use for trade amongst themselves.

Just after these signs of backtracking, on 17 February, Grenada’s Prime Minister Tillman Thomas indicated that his country’s associate status of Alba is unlikely to lead to much more. He told a press conference in Toronto that Caribbean leaders should concentrate more on the Caricom than Alba, and (in a clear dig at those taking Venezuelan money) he said that a nation with strong values is more important than money.

The Caricom point is an important one. There is talk of a “crisis” within Caricom, and signs that Alba’s pull on member states might be diminishing, or at least not increasing, will be welcome. Three Caricom members signing up to the Alba declaration on the Falklands, for instance, goes against the treaty obligation under which Caricom member states are obliged to co-ordinate their foreign-policy positions. And when the foreign ministers of the 15 Caricom member nations gathered at the United Kingdom-Caribbean Forum in Grenada in January they agreed to “support the principle and the right to self-determination of all peoples, including the Falkland Islanders, recognizing the historical importance of self-determination in the political development of the Caribbean”.

The upcoming Caricom meeting will review an internal report on the group entitled: “Turning around Caricom: Proposals to restructure the Secretariat.” According to some sources, the crisis within Caricom is sufficiently severe to bring the organization’s existence into question. Organizational problems, slow progress on its objectives, and a lack of funding seem to be the main problems. The study on Caricom’s future warns that “Caricom could expire slowly over the next few years as stakeholders begin to vote with their feet.”

One of the most outspoken critics of Caricom’s performance has been Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent. He has written to Caricom’s Secretary-General Irwin LaRocque warning about the “inbuilt lethargy in our collective political leadership”. He called on Caricom’s heads of government “to move resolutely beyond minimalism in integration, which inexorably leads to regression”, and he warned that talk of “pausing” is “a euphemism for standing still, which, in a dynamic world, is sliding backwards”.