AHEAD of the 36th Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Heads of Government Meeting slated to be held in Barbados in early July this year, President David Granger has hinted at Guyana taking a more aggressive approach of ensuring compliance with the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas by CARICOM member countries. Mr. Granger, Guyana’s 8th Executive President, was at the time speaking at an Independence Day inauguration ceremony in his honour at the Guyana National Stadium, Providence.
“We shall strengthen our ties with our neighbours, starting with the Caribbean. Starting with CARICOM and including the wider Caribbean,” Mr. Granger said. He noted that engaging the community remains a top concern for his administration which began operations less than a week ago following the APNU+AFC coalition’s success at the May 11 polls.
Since then, President Granger has appointed former Finance Minister under the Desmond Hoyte administration, Carl Greenidge, as Foreign Affairs Minister. President Granger upon the appointment of Greenidge said Guyana will assume the position of “economic diplomacy” in bilateral and multilateral relations.
As it relates to CARICOM, the Head of State said last night, “One of the first and foremost tasks of the new Minister of Foreign Affairs is to work tirelessly with every single state of the Caribbean Community and the wider Caribbean to ensure complete compliance with the Treaty of Chaguaramas to establish the Caribbean Community.”
The President made these remarks in the presence of the CARICOM Secretary-General, Ambassador Irwin LaRocque; Barbados Prime Minister, Freundel Stuart; and Cuban Vice-President of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Sugar and Agriculture, Ulises Rosales del Toro.
The Cuban vice-president met yesterday with Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, and Agriculture featured prominently on their agenda. The PM has since pointed to a reaffirmed commitment by the Cuban Government to aid Guyana’s sugar industry. Cuba, for decades, has remained one of the dominant sources of sugar in the global market.
The Guyana Chronicle caught up with former National Security Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Gary Griffith. When asked whether Trinidad’s Persad-Bissessar administration would support this new stance on CARICOM to be adopted by Guyana, Griffith responded in the affirmative.
The former National Security Minister, who also held responsibility for immigration, was asked to respond to the provision for free movement of people in the Region, which has remained a sore point for member states ; some states sometimes adopt policies contrary to the free movement of CARICOM nationals.
“No CARICOM state, no government should be concerned about that aggressive free movement,” Griffith said, adding, “What they would want however, is to show that there would be no aspect where persons can abuse the process, which is why we have the situation in Trinidad and Tobago now where over 100,000 persons are illegal immigrants.”
The former National Security Minister of Trinidad said, “This puts not just a burden on the country but on those persons when they get into the country, they have problems getting a fixed source of income and employers might abuse them.”
Griffith summed up that the Region should welcome aggressive free movement of CARICOM nationals among member states, but “whilst also ensuring that persons are not abused when they get to another country.”
Meanwhile, Guyana’s newly appointed Foreign Affairs Minister, Carl Greenidge clarified that the President’s comments on taking an aggressive approach comes on the heels of Guyana needing a clear direction for foreign policy, since there is no such foreign policy at the moment.
“We have to fashion a foreign policy, that is what he [President Granger] is saying, and it is more aggressive in the sense of having a goal and trying to ensure that we move forward [with] the project of CARICOM integration,” Minister Greenidge told the Guyana Chronicle in an invited comment.
When asked if his ministry has identified what strategic actions are to be taken to drive the call for greater regional integration, the Foreign Minister replied that the ministry has not reached that mark as yet, but he will be meeting with the technical team at the Foreign Affairs Ministry in achieving this goal.
President Granger, who holds a post-graduate diploma in International Relations from the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago, expressed hope for greater south-south alliances in the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), and the Organisation of American States (OAS),as Guyana joins her neighbours to boost the continent’s security and economic development.