Your Eyewitness is pecking away at this piece after quite a restful (and extended!) sleep-in – this being Caricom Day, which is a public holiday!! So with all this time on his hands, he took to wondering where the heck this regional grouping of mini-states is going when their inspiration – the European Union – was tottering on the brink of irrelevance. Our erstwhile colonial overlord Britain – which was our chief inspirers – has even BREXITED the grouping!!
The fact that only tiny Antigua celebrates Caricom Day along with us as a public holiday might give us a clue as to the importance – or lack thereof – that’s given it by the other thirteen members. So let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?? Launched fifty-two years ago, one is hard-pressed to come up with even a single noteworthy success in any of the lofty goals the grouping had set itself in 1973. That’s when it purported to transmute itself from a Free Trade Area – CARIFTA formed in 1968 – into a more integrated “Community” like the European Community.
But even though the name change didn’t succeed in even some basic targets like the “free movement of citizens” among its members – the leaders blithely proceeded to establish an even more ambitiously cohesive, “Caribbean Single Market and Economy” – CSME. This has also gotten nowhere and the members have been backtracking on its targets. It would appear that we are back to repeating the history of the early Caribbean Federation – formed by the British in 1958 to get rid of us!! But Jamaica pulled out in 1962 for independence – which led to T&T’s Eric Williams’ famous quip – “1 from 10 leaves zero”!!
Of recent, the Caricom sub-group Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) – comprising Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – have been talking of going on their own. They’re already the most integrated members from colonial days – inheriting their common currency and all. Six of them – the exception being the non-independent Montserrat – are already members of the Venezuelan-led grouping ALBA – the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America This includes the leftist Latin American anti-American states led by Venezuela – Bolivia, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Like Caricom, it’s aimed at fostering political, economic, and social cooperation among its members. Presently, they have their Venezuelan Petrocaribe oil debt being written off and – led by St Vincent’s leftist PM, Ralph Gonsalves – slavishly toe Mad Maduro’s line!!
Your Eyewitness thinks last rites are prepared for Caricom. But there might still be some benefits from the corpse as in the now revised 25X30 food security initiative!!
We gotta be careful though: they see us as their ATM machine!!
…PNC/APNU
Your Eyewitness was quite chuffed at the launch of the PNC/APNU campaign launch for elections 2025 at the Square of the Revolution – under the watchful eyes of that old revolutionary house slave from Berbice, Cuffy!! He must say that – as he looked at Comrade leader Aubrey Norton – he could discern some resemblance to Cuffy?? Maybe he’s of Akan stock?? If your Eyewitness were him, he’d have done a DNA test to find out.
Anyhow, Norton was in full election mode in the expansive promises he made on everything under the sun – and some!! Mo’ money for all; higher tax threshold; stipend for higher education students – who’d be already getting free tuition; etc!! He then declaimed: “Guyana, we’re on a journey to return to honest government. We’re on a journey to restore law and order in Guyana”!
Yes…”law and order” and “honest government” from the PNC!! So is he saying that all those who were behind the old criminality in society and government have now defected to the AFC??
…our dual citizens
Quite a few of the twenty-four Jumbie Umbrella parties just launched received a blow to their solar plexus with GECOM’s announcement that dual citizens can’t even become MPs!!
So will half the field now wilt?
