NOT UNEXPECTEDLY, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders agreed at their summit in St. Kitts last week to back Venezuela's candidacy for a seat on the United Nations (U.N.) Security Council.
From a Jamaican perspective, there are two immediate, and related, issues to be considered in the wake of this decision: the likely response of the United States (U.S.), as well as that of the domestic political Opposition. The latter is the easiest for the Jamaica Government to deal with. The Jamaica Labour Party apparently did not gain much traction when it launched a campaign against Jamaica supporting Venezuela and is unlikely to do so now. Further, the decision by CARICOM to act en bloc in support for Venezuela will have blunted the arguments of the Jamaica Labour Party that the Government acted impulsively and undermined its claim that Kingston sold its foreign policy for "a few barrels of oil".
Similarly, by acting in concert, the CARICOM states have provided themselves with some insulation against the peeve in Washington and its translation into policy. For clearly, CARICOM's decision will not find favour with the U.S., which had made it known to the region that it backed Guatemala and was looking for the Caribbean's support. The arm-twisting was not always very subtle.
Indeed, relations between Washington and Caracas are hostile. Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is a venomous critic of the Bush Administration, which he believes supported a coup attempt against him and whose foreign policy he opposes. On the other hand, the Bush Administration argues that the leftist Chavez is eroding democracy at home and is using his windfall earnings from oil to do the same abroad.
This newspaper, as it has said before, has deep concerns that President Chavez's actions have substantially narrowed the democratic space in Venezuela and have weakened the private sector. We believe that these are issues on which our Government, as well as civil society in the Caribbean, can engage Mr. Chavez. However, Jamaica and the rest of the region, in arriving at a decision on which country to support for the U.N. seat had to act in their best interest. Support for Guatemala was not in their best interest: and it has to do with more than the concessionary PetroCaribe oil agreement provided by Venezuela.
The region does not see Guatemala as a natural ally. Guatemala has, in the past, pursued with great hostility its claim to all of Belize, the English-speaking CARICOM member in Central America. It behaved in the same fashion at the World rade Organisation against the preferential access to the region's bananas in the European Union's market. The ruling in its favour is disastrous to some Caribbean economies. Guatemala's social policies also do not sit well with the Caribbean.
While Venezuela maintains a claim to two-thirds of Guyana it has not pursued the claim with the same hostility, even extending the PetroCaribe benefits to Georgetown. Indeed, Venezuela is seen as a reliable partner.
It is important for Jamaica and other CARICOM governments to explain to the U.S. what it already knows in the realm of foreign policy: that support for Venezuela does not weaken respect for the U.S. and ought not to weaken the deep, underlying relationship.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
