PNCR’s impulsive and belated concerns about the EPA

Sep 19, 2008 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
I refer to the PNCR statement of September 15, 2008, where it implicitly calls on Guyana and CARICOM to ink the EPA.

The PNCR Press statement exposes that party’s impulsive and belated concerns about how the logistics of the EPA negotiation process may have impacted people’s feelings; the PNCR suddenly realises that the EPA negotiations may have concluded!

Where was this opposition group during this process? And so to come out now frantically and emotionally waving arms could be construed as deception.

The Government of Guyana cannot spend its precious days focusing on how the PNCR Executive in the present and future will feel; any government must be concerned about what the ordinary people will become, and not how a party’s executive feels about this or that.

The ordinary people are astronomically more important than any party’s executive; that goes for their mouthings, too!

That is why this Government has expressed concerns on behalf of the Guyanese people about the initialed EPA.

And so let’s not dwell on deception and excessive emotionalism because these characteristics underpin the PNCR’s statement.

And I believe that Guyana does not have that many therapists to address the PNCR’s or any other political group’s need for catharsis.

On issues of national interest and national sovereignty, all stakeholders including governments and oppositions, generally, would close ranks and present to the world a collective front. But the PNCR still engages itself in debating ‘feelings’.

Many respected Caribbean academics as Girvan, Brewster, Lewis, Thomas, among numerous others, have attested to the deficiencies of the initialed EPA. Clearly, the EPA has some good points of light, but the deficiencies outweigh the goodies.

This is what Girvan had to say on the EPA: “EPA contains a degree of ‘supra-nationality’ not even present in the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas establishing CARICOM and the CSME. At the apex will be a Joint Cariforum-EC Council…(the decisions of which) are binding on the parties that are obliged to take all measures necessary to implement them.

This gives the joint council greater legal powers over member states than the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM, CARICOM’S Council for Trade and Development and any other organ of CARICOM…

There will be a Trade and Development Committee under the Joint Council…also endowed with specific legal powers over the actions of member states.”

Is this initialed EPA, then, not an assault on Caribbean sovereignty? On this count alone, all forces, including the PNCR and its opposition mates, should join forces to fight the good fight, that is, to secure renegotiation of the EPA.

Even at the EPA National Consultation in Guyana, Chairman of the PNCR Mr. Winston Murray noted: “…It is our respectful view that time should be allowed because since the initialing of this Agreement through the work of NGOs and researchers in the region, interesting people like Dr. Clive Thomas, a lot has come to light which suggests that all that glitters may not be gold in the content of this Agreement; and our support will be for time to be permitted with the consent of the European Union for there to be widespread consultations that lead to some consensus within the region as to where we go from here…

We would be supportive, Sir, if we have to move forward in the presence of…a ‘goods-only’ arrangement which will satisfy, which will make for compatibility with the WTO requirements…as I understand it other countries, although many of their Leaders and Cabinets don’t fully appreciate the full impact of what is contained in the Agreement, they are ready to sign.

And Sir, I hope when you meet with them shortly hereafter that you will be able to convince them to wait a little…” Anyone would think after reading Chairman Murray’s statement that this was the PNCR’s line on the EPA. But this was not to be.

After a long sojourn, the PNCR seems to be experiencing some kind of reawakening and catharsis; and had used its Press Statement to vent opposition to the Government of Guyana’s line on the initialed EPA.

This PNCR’s statement totally refuted Chairman Murray’s views expressed at the EPA Consultation, unabashedly assaulting his integrity. =Murray’s position on the EPA is more in sync with appropriate protocols, political maturity, and political professionalism within the context of protecting general national interests and more, specifically, national sovereignty.

There are politicians who ‘live for politics’ and there are politicians who ‘live off politics’. You make your own judgment. Then consider Murray’s position in the context of Girvan’s statement on sovereignty.

Chairman Murray may have displayed three preeminent qualities critical for a politician and for sustaining his country’s interests: passion, feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion at a decisive time.

The PNCR’s statement, by disavowing Chairman Murray’s views, could have bared itself to indifference, unreliability, and no sense of national bonding.And then the PNCR’s statement apportioned some unjustifiably defensive but gleeful remarks on the CRNM.

The CRNM did not acknowledge the politics of colonial arrogance that influenced the framework for the EPA negotiations; and the CRNM did not aggressively request more time for negotiations as Africa did, given the divisive moments in CARICOM; the CRNM has not satisfactorily responded to questions on national and regional sovereignty, and on the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, among others.

The CRNM may have more to answer for in the days to come, especially in relation to its new political embodiment.

Let’s be clear that all processes of economic development, as the EPA, are struggles for power; and so the formation and the consummation processes also are struggles for power; and within the context of the EPA , the balance of power is tilted in favour of the European Union, and not CARICOM.
Prem Misir

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