How much rent is Caricom paying for this thing?

Jul 08, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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When the Caribbean Heads formed Carifta, the forerunner of Caricom, it was decided to locate the secretariat in Guyana for two reasons.

One was that even if the West Indian Prime Ministers didn’t want to have the headquarters here, Forbes Burnham would have successfully swayed them in his favour. Mr. Burnham had that uncanny ability to penetrate the minds of people and win them over. This was definitely one of his talents.

I remember Lloyd Seawar once told me that if a friend walked into Cheddi Jagan’s office, he would leave as an enemy. If an enemy walked into Burnham’s office, he would leave as a friend.

Burnham got Prime Ministers Eric Williams and Errol Barrow to agree to have the Carifta Secretariat in Georgetown.

Burnham also promised to build a permanent structure for the integration movement, after giving it temporary space in the Bank of Guyana.

The second reason for choosing Georgetown was because both Williams and Barrow, sensing that Guyana was not a Caribbean island but, nevertheless, was a quintessential West Indian territory identical in culture and sociology to all the Anglophone countries in the Caribbean, wanted to use the location of the secretariat to retain Guyana in the family of the British West Indies.

Burnham was sincere in his integration wishes; but, for some strange reason, he never used the fantastic foreign exchange earnings in the seventies to keep his promise to erect the Caricom Headquarters.

So the PPP completed the task. The Japanese agreed to give $US6M if the Guyana Government would match that amount.

After the building was completed, there were whispers among Caricom staffers that it was too small. It is a lovely piece of architecture. Only a narrow-minded person would deny the aesthetic attractiveness of the Caricom Secretariat in Liliendaal.

From speaking to Caricom staffers without any interest in Guyanese politics, they did admit that it was indeed small so that another part of the Secretariat business had to remain in downtown Georgetown. A strange thing happened soon after the Secretariat took up residence.

A large building directly opposite the Caricom Headquarters started construction. I live right next door to the Caricom Headquarters so I literally watched the birth of this new structure.

It sits on about half an acre of land. It has five levels, and it is huge. Owned by a private entrepreneur, it will be rented by Caricom for the additional office space it needs.

Three sordid circumstances surround this Caricom annex. One is the failure of the Guyana Government to build a larger complex when the space for doing so was there. Secondly, the rent for the annex will be unspeakably prodigious.

Thirdly, how can a group of mini-states (except Guyana), poor and so desperate for international aid, spend so much money each month paying rent when Guyana is superbly endowed with land space?

V.S. Naipaul is not someone I like at all. I find him offensive and would not talk to him if I ever meet with him, except to tell him what I think of him. But I share Naipaul’s disgust with the inability of the leaders of the West Indies to think creatively.

Let us not dwell on the first factor — Guyana not building a larger Secretariat. The PPP was never an integrationist advocate.

Cheddi Jagan turned his back on the West Indian Federation and the University of the West Indies. Race was the factor. The PPP under Jagan was not pro-Caricom. The present PPP regime has Freudian contempt for Caricom.

Let us collapse the second and third circumstances. How can Caricom leaders agree to pay rent for such a large structure?

You are talking about millions of dollars monthly, paid in foreign exchange, of course. This makes no sense in economic studies.

In five years’ time, what Caricom would have paid out in rent, it could have bought acres and acres of land in Liliendaal and built a version of the Eiffel Tower. Whoever secured that deal got a piece of magic.

The banks would have loaned the investor any billions he/she wanted because the return was guaranteed since Caricom had agreed to pay once the building was done.

In five years’ time, the investor will repay the banks and would have that Herculean edifice for him/herself.
You can’t blame the entrepreneur for securing a fantastic contract, and this writer is not doing so. My Naipaulian disgust is with the Caricom leaders.

Surely, they must know that they preside over small economies that are yet to achieve significant growth rates in a world where the larger powers are hell bent on exploiting them. Why spend money so foolishly?

But, I guess VS Naipaul has the answer — foolish people spend money foolishly, then when they are out of it they go and beg. Naipaul’s greatest book is “The Mimic Men.”

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