FOR all the heat generated by some unfortunate and unnecessary emotional political comments in Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, including by a few Barbadian business people and media commentators, the controversies surrounding REDjet airline’s bid to access commercial markets in Jamaica and T&T should be resolved before month end.
This correspondent and columnist was informed by the Ministry of Transport in Port-of-Spain on Wednesday that “within the next 48 hours” legal advisors should be ready with their assessment of a draft agreement by aviation authorities, consistent with a mandate that had resulted from a special meeting of Transport Ministers from the trio of countries—Barbados, Jamaica and T&T.
The special focus of that June 15 meeting was on “safety” of aircraft to be operated by the owners of REDJet and not about any “feared competition” from the new low-fare airline. The Transport Ministers of the countries involved—Barbados’ George Hutson; Jamaica’s Mike Henry and T&T’s Jack Warner (since renamed Minister of Works in a cabinet reshuffle)—had concluded their meeting on a high note of optimism.
Minister Hutson was apparently so satisfied that he was to later tell a media briefing that “those discussions should have taken place earlier. Maybe if we had a meeting like this sometime last year it would have avoided some of what has been said in the press…..”
It’s now a matter for conjecture whether Hutson had in mind, for instance, the angry claims about “naked protectionism” and decisions of a “political nature” attributed to REDJet’s chairman Ian Burns and entrepreneur Ralph ‘Bizzy’ Williams, as reported in the Barbados media on May 17.
The Barbadian Transport Minister would not have known then of the stinging comments that were to flow some two weeks later from Prime Minister Fruendel Stuart during the recently concluded CARICOM Summit in St. Kitts.
For example, his remark about “the game” seemingly being played by Trinidad and Tobago over an operational licence for REDjet; or his more bitter observation that Barbados would “not be in the position of any mortician fighting for a corpse called regional integration movement…”
The applause in Barbados that such strident talk attracted in some circles, perhaps with the intention of arousing expeditious action for REDjet’s operational licence from Trinidad and Tobago, should not be confused with the harsh reality of the significant level of inter-dependence of the economies of these two Caricom states compared with what pertains between Port-of-Spain and any other Community partner.
Their commercial, investment and banking sectors know this only too well and the statistical divisions in both Bridgetown and Port-of-Spain will have no problems in confirming the practical realities of the significantly expanded ‘partnership’ between these two neighbours.
As founding members of CARICOM, they have to seek creative ways to resolve differences in their bilateral relations while, hopefully, inspiring new initiatives to invigorate the “regional integration movement” that has, undoubtedly, become too slothful for its own good, yet very much relevant and needed in a variety of areas—not the least being ‘functional cooperation’—as hope is kept alive for a promised seamless regional economy.
The crucial factor is the apparent lack of political will to IMPLEMENT decisions unanimously adopted and to keep the Community’s people properly informed of decisions made on their behalf.