The reason why CARICOM is fulfilling the old joke about it actually being “CARI-GONE” was clearly brought out by the remarks of Barbados PM Mia Mottley at the conclusion of the 49th meeting of its Heads of Government (HoG) in balmy Montego Bay, Jamaica – with its sun-soaked white beaches on aquamarine seas. Here we are, two years after these HoGs had agreed that within months they’d launch a ferry service – starting between T&T, Barbados and Guyana – to ship goods and people between our islands, and with absolutely nothing done, Mia announced we should be acquiring a communications satellite!!
Now the ferry was supposed to’ve been supplied by T&T – as announced by then PM Rowley – since they’d bought one in 2018 for about US$19 million to ply the route to Venezuela, which had its own special challenges. Guns, criminal gangs and drugs were not the least of those challenges!! Communications satellites go for at least US$400 million – with about the same amount to launch them into geosynchronous orbit!! So, we can’t launch a US$20M ferry, and we want to launch a satellite for FORTY TIMES THAT?? As the Italians would exclaim, “Mama Mia!!!” At the HoG meeting a committee “was established to review presentations on ferries and report back to the HoGs.” The cost of a suitable vessel has been seen as an impediment!! So, your Eyewitness will now have a committee on satellites!!
Now why does Mia want us to have our own satellite that might just plunge the region into a deeper bankruptcy than it already is in?? Well, waxing lyrical about the right Honourable Marcus Garvey and his prophetic words echoed by Brother Bob (Marley) – about freeing ourselves from mental slavery – she said we won’t be able to do that until we stop getting all our information from those (imperialist running dogs?) who own the present satellites!! Pontificated she: “We have to generate our own content because it is only us who know our reality, and we cannot simply be the victims of other people’s judgement as to who we are and what we stand for.” I and I, sister!!!
Now let’s be honest. Isn’t this the grandiose, unrealistic assessment about our supposed needs and capabilities that has kept us as a Third World backwater? Decades ago, Singapore PM Lee Kwan Yu wrote in his book “From Third World to First” about attending Commonwealth conferences where his contemporaries Manley from Jamaica and Burnham from Guyana would wax as eloquent as Mia about creating a “New Global Order”!! They both led their countries into stagnation!!
No wonder T&T’s present PM Kamla – who’d once complained about T&T being Caricom’s ATM machine – was a no-show. Antigua wants the US$60M from T&T’s Clico bust!!
…our community?
One of the myths fellas like Manley and Burnham had spread was we in the British Caribbean were ONE PEOPLE!! And that one of the main reasons we should come together into a political union wasn’t just economic or political – but to realise our COMMUNITYHOOD!! The Caribbean Community, get it? Lee Kwan Yu had gone in the opposite direction – he declared Singapore DIFFERENT from Malaysia and went on his own!!
The result?? They both prospered!! Yet sixteen years after Caricom’s launch, the HoGs said since we were a community, we should form a Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) with the “free movement of peoples”.
Twenty years later Bajans were still keeping even Guyanese in-transit passengers on segregated benches!! But it seems the dream lives on. At the HoGs meeting, Barbados, Belize, St Vincent and Dominica agreed to free movement of all the Caricom mantra from October 1st! Guyana, which has come into some (oil) money, didn’t say nothing!!
They worry we’re now the new ATM machine??
