– when a ‘promise’ was not kept
Analysis
BARACK OBAMA’S meeting last Tuesday at the White House with President Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican Republic has revived memory of his failed promise to meet with Caribbean Community Heads of Government in the second half of 2009.
The US President had made that promise during an informal meeting that took place with the CARICOM leaders on the margins of last April’s Fifth Summit of the Americas in Port-of-Spain.
The leaders of the 14 independent CARICOM states were, and still remain, anxious to discuss with Obama critical issues affecting this region, as related also to the global financial and economic crisis.
The CARICOM leaders had patiently waited since then for the meeting. But, according to my inquiry, no official correspondence seems to exist at the Community Secretariat in Georgetown to offer even a brief explanation why it could not be held as intended.
Now, six months have gone by in 2010, and it is either the Obama administration has completely forgotten that promised meeting for 2009, or simply considers the region small enough to wait for an appropriate moment in the President’s calendar.
The thinking, perhaps, is that hurriedly arranged stopover meetings, as recently took place in Barbados between Defence Secretary Robert Gates and some Community leaders and cabinet ministers, followed by one at Foreign Ministers level with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, could suffice.
Until, that is, President Obama’s very demanding work schedule can permit squeezing in, for whatever period, his elusive promised session with CARICOM Heads of Government.
Like US Presidents before him, Obama had declared early in his historic presidency a recognition of CARICOM as an “important partner” of America’s ‘third border’ in matters of security, drug trafficking and issues of poverty, trade and unequal development.

Enter DR’s President

Then came last Tuesday’s surprise meeting at the White House between Obama and the Dominican Republic’s Fernandez.
The surprise resides in the assumption that perhaps the US President wished to have a full meeting with leaders of the wider Caribbean — as had taken place under the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George Bush — the sole exclusion, of course, being Cuba which remains a huge challenge for America’s political maturity.
Instead, President Obama chose to meet with ONE of FIFTEEN Heads of Government of the Caribbean — the DR’s Fernandez.
The DR is a partner of CARICOM in the context of its membership in the CARIFORUM group of states which has developed a collective, structured relationship with the European Union (EU), with which an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) of lingering controversies was signed in 2008.
Following an estimated half-an-hour meeting with Fernandez, that would have been preceded with exchange of relevant correspondence on USA-DR relations, President Obama was telling the assembled media of the “valuable role” played by the government in Santo Domingo in the critical initial phase of the earthquake devastation of Haiti.
The US President would also be aware that though comparatively miniscule in terms of resources to offer in the wake of the earthquake devastation, CARICOM was very much in the frontline to help assess emergency needs, and has since evolved as an integral and eloquent partner in Haiti’s efforts to mobilize external financial aid for emergency relief and rebuilding of a ‘new Haiti’.
As the first African-American President, Obama is yet to make even a brief visit — as the leaders of France and Canada and the UN Secretary-General have done — to bear a personal eyewitness account of the mind-blowing destruction of that first Black nation in this hemisphere to win its freedom from colonialism through a successful revolution by African slaves.
He could have done so, even if it meant being facilitated via the Dominican Republic — Haiti’s border neighbour that governments in Santo Domingo have been treating, for too long, with utter contempt, while preferring to project a cultural profile of being Hispanic and European in contrast to Haiti as black and African.

Haiti factor

Haiti is today a full member of CARICOM, a regional integration movement that, for all its challenging internal problems, continues to reflect unity in coordination of foreign policy, and in reaching out to states of the Greater Caribbean, including the DR. and, of course, Cuba, which is also involved in CARIFORUM.
However, for reasons not easy to appreciate, the DR has been increasingly absent within recent years, at leadership level, in attendance of CARICOM’s Heads of Government Conferences, as invited special guest.
This happened for the last three summits, including the 31st that concluded recently in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Why? It is a known policy of the DR that its President cannot travel overseas without prior permission of its Congress.
Is it that President Fernandez has been thwarted by domestic political considerations from leaving to attend all three of CARICOM’s premiere annual events (the Heads of Government Summit) since 2007, or a combination of clash of his work agenda plus personal disinterest?
In the meanwhile, given the oft-repeated commitment by the USA to post-earthquake rehabilitation and reconstruction in Haiti, President Obama’s advisers should remind him that America is among donor nations of the world that had together pledged some US$5.3 Billion aid at last March’s International Aid Donors Conference but are yet to deliver.
Last week, a CNN investigation revealed that neither the USA nor Venezuela had paid any money on their respective US$1.15 billion and US$1.32 billion pledges made to Haiti at last March’s Aid Donors Conference, but the Hugo Chavez administration has written off Haiti’s oil debt to Caracas.
CNN further reported that France, Spain and Canada are “also among the countries that have not yet followed through on their pledges.”
For its part, the World Bank has now disclosed that of the initial US$500 million pledged by donors for Haiti, only some 20 per cent has been honoured.
The $500 million fund is part of a five-year US$10 Billion (billion) aid package for rehabilitation and national reconstruction, as committed at the international donors conference last March.