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THE CHOICE of President Bharrat Jagdeo to lead last Friday night’s bilateral discussion between US President Barack Obama and the 15-member Caribbean Community was as much a credit to the Guyanese Head of State as it was for his CARICOM colleagues.
The credits could only redound to the benefit of our regional economic integration movement at this very challenging time of a worldwide financial and economic crisis.
The initiative could also be viewed as recognition of the efforts by President Jagdeo to willingly and consistently speak in the interest of the CARICOM region, and not just Guyana, while on overseas missions, and without a formal mandate, as given to him for Friday night’s bilateral encounter with the US President.
Whether the various international fora had to with trade and economic development for disdvantaged economies, climate change and the environment, or energy security, President Jagdeo found time and devised approaches to express a regional perspective without diminishing the specifics of a Guyana agenda.
Within recent months, he has been involved in international meetings focused on climate change which, like sustainable economic development, has seemingly become a major preoccupation for him, and could be quite rewarding for Guyana.
Climate change, for one, is among the major agenda issues of the Fifth Summit of the Americas that concludes today in Port-of-Spain.
Beyond the final approval of the ‘Declaration of Commitment’, we can only hope that the implementation process will prove more consistent and beneficial than have been the experiences with the previous summits, including that of the Fourth, hosted by Argentina.
Consistent with the tradition of CARICOM, there is a rotating chairmanship every six months.The current chairman is the Prime Minister of Belize, Dean Barrow, who spoke on behalf of the Community at the formal opening session of the Summit on Friday evening.
However, the honour of leading the CARICOM bilateral talks with President Obama went to President Jagdeo. He, incidentally, assumes the chairmanship of the Community for the next six-month period when he hosts the coming regular annual CARICOM Heads of Government Conference in July in Georgetown.
Although we had no confirmation of this at the time of writing this editorial, it would come as no surprise should CARICOM leaders collectively defer to the Jamaican Prime Minister, Bruce Golding, to have him lead the bilateral talks with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as scheduled for yesterday morning.
Such a gesture would have been in recognition of the lead role Prime Minister Golding undertakes as chairman of CARICOM’s Prime Ministerial Sub-committee on External Negotiations.
CARICOM and Canada are currently in the process of advancing arrangements for negotiations on a new Trade and Economic Development programme.
A date for the start of the negotiations, based on a ‘brief’ already endorsed by most CARICOM govenments, could well be forthcoming soon, depending on the outcome of yesterday’s meeting between Prime Minister Harper and his CARICOM counterparts.
In general, we look forward with hope to much improved relations between CARICOM and the USA and CARICOM and Canada that could result in practical benefits for the peoples of our regional economic integration movement.
