PORT OF SPAIN, Mar (IPS) – When he visited Jamaica last year, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries to join his Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), seen as an alternative to the fizzled U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas.Chavez said that ALBA would provide a “socially oriented” trade bloc rather than one strictly based on the logic of deregulated profit maximisation, and would use more effective mechanisms to eradicate poverty within the hemisphere.
He dangled the proverbial carrot, saying that there were significant benefits to be had from the planned expansion of oil refineries, bauxite and alumina facilities, and petro-chemical industries under his new initiative. There would also be significant medical assistance. Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia have already signed on.One of the key aspects of ALBA, which Chavez first proposed during a summit of leaders from the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) in 2001, is the Petro Caribe initiative, under which several Caricom member states buy oil at below market prices.
Trinidad and Tobago had previously been the main supplier of petroleum products to the 15-nation Caricom, and had even established a multi-million-dollar regional development fund.Prime Minister Patrick Manning said that Port of Spain had agreed to waive the various Caricom regulations to allow countries to take advantage of the Venezuelan offer. But his administration “made it quite clear” that it would have had no problems with Petro Caribe had Caracas decided to use the existing Point a Pierre refinery here to produce the products for sale to the region.Manning has warned his
Caribbean colleagues not to come calling on his door if the Petro-Caribe initiative goes sour.“Once you become the dominant supplier, as Venezuela will become under Petro Caribe… a responsibility also goes with that to provide energy security to the region. Trinidad and Tobago will be unable to do that in circumstances where we are no longer the dominant supplier,” he told a news conference over the weekend.”That is the risk
Caribbean countries run and Trinidad and Tobago has made it quite clear that is going to be your risk,” Manning said.St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Antigua and Barbuda have signed the principles of ALBA but are yet to ratify the pact. However, in January, Dominica become the first, and so far the only Caricom nation to do so, with Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit deflecting criticisms by saying that his government would pursue a proactive foreign policy.“Dominica remains as committed to the Caricom and OECS (Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States) as we ever were and will ensure even as we pursue the tremendous potential of ALBA that we remain true to our Caricom partners and to the tenets of the revised Treaty of Chagaramaus,” he said in a radio and television broadcast ahead of the Mar. 7-8 Caricom inter-session summit in the Bahamas where ALBA will be discussed by regional leaders.
Vaughan Lewis, the former director general of the OECS, to which Dominica, Antigua and St. Vincent and the Grenadines belong, believes that Dominica and others who give their support to ALBA regard it as just another avenue for obtaining economic aid which is not available within the regional integration grouping.Lewis, a professor of international relations at the University of the West Indies (UWI), said that in the last few years
Dominica, for example, has had to follow a rigid International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme that had failed to adequately promote development on the island.Former ACS secretary general Norman Girvan has dismissed arguments within the region that Dominica‘s move into ALBA could undermine Caricom.”This is by no means the first time that a Caricom member state has acted in a way that might be at variance with its regional commitments and responsibilities. Back in the early 1990s,
Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago each acted unilaterally in attempting to qualify for ‘NAFTA Parity’ treatment by the United States by signing certain bilateral economic treaties with that country. I don’t hear people talking about that,” he said.Further, Girvan said that several countries also broke ranks with their regional counterparts in the 1990s by negotiating separately with the U.S. on the infamous drug interdiction “Shiprider” agreements, “and still later (2002) the equally controversial agreements to grant immunity for U.S. personnel from prosecution under the International Criminal Court.“These were egregious examples of failure to follow a unified Caricom policy and I don’t hear people talking about that either. Then there was Trinidad and Tobago’s agreement on an FTA with Costa Rica and Guyana’s with Brazil in the early 2000s, both of which, if my memory serves me right, were eventually disallowed by COTED (The Council on Trade and Economic Development-Caricom’s second highest decision making body)”.
In 1989, the regional leaders adopted the Grand Anse Declaration, agreeing to establish joint diplomatic representation in foreign capitals.
“This decision, it can be said, is more honoured in the breach than in the observance,” Girvan added.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, also the lead official for governance within Caricom, has declined to ratify the ALBA agreement, saying he could not “go and do something unless all the juridical arrangements are in place”. But he wanted to remind the Caribbean that when Chavez came to power, trade between Washington and Caracas was valued at 19 billion dollars and “last week it was 34 billion dollars”.“Man cursing but man trading, so what happen to me?” he asked, adding: “There is no contradiction in being part of ALBA and being part of Caricom.”
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