OLIVER CLARKE, chairman and managing director of The Gleaner Company Ltd., has questioned the wisdom of the Caribbean Community's (CARICOM) inclusion of Haiti as a member.
He has also called for the CARICOM Secretariat to be shifted from Georgetown, Guyana.
Mr. Clarke, the immediate past president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), was addressing the annual dinner and awards presentation of the Guyana Manufacturers' Association (GMA), held Saturday at Le Meridien Pegasus Hotel in Georgetown, Guyana. During his presentation, he said it was inappropriate for small countries in the Caribbean to be expected to solve Haiti's problems.
Those problems, according to him, are probably unsolvable "when we have so many of our issues which go unresolved." He said the inclusion of Haiti, which became a member of CARICOM in 1998, should be reconsidered.
"The other member states have so many problems of their own that dealing with a civil war in a failed state, wherever geographically located, should not take up so much time," he said.
Mr. Clarke suggested it may have been better if CARICOM had signed a trade agreement only, as was the case with the Dominican Republic, Haiti's neighbour on Hispaniola.
With a population of over seven million and the lowest per capita income in the region as well as a long history of democratic failure, Mr. Clarke noted that Haiti's French-speaking population is greater than that of all of the other CARICOM member states. "What does its inclusion in CARICOM add to the other members?" he asked.
LIST OF MEASURES
On his list of measures proposed for improving the standard of living in the region is the re-evaluation of the viability of many of the regional states.
Mr. Clarke also noted that there were still many CARICOM states which are economically, and in terms of governance unviable. "I doubt that states with a population of less than 500,000 - to choose an arbitrary number - have a future in tomorrow's world unless they are sitting on top of concentrated natural resources," he said.
He argued that "...It is important to establish a Caribbean Free Trade area quickly even if this is just a warm-up for the FTAA. To do so the efforts of the Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM) and the CSME unit at CARICOM should be combined."
During his speech, Mr. Clarke questioned whether Guyana was the best location for the CARICOM Secretariat. Adding that the organisation was the driver for regional integration and the creation of the CSME, he said: "To locate it in a country that is not near to the geographic centre of the region, in a country that is gaining so quickly such an unfortunate reputation for crime ...and in one that is not the best exemplar of economic growth ...does not appear to be the most rational decision."
Guyana President Bharrat Jagdeo, who was also at the dinner, in a spirited response, said: "I will fight the removal of the CARICOM Secretariat [from Guyana] tooth and nail."
