Who is ‘we’?

Mar 09, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

---

(Kaieteur News) – President Irfaan Ali recently did an interview with Fox News and delivered a pronouncement about the political destiny of Cuba that was as startling as it was unexplained.

The President declared:

“We all agreed that the status quo cannot remain. We agreed that there must be an attempt to have the status quo changed. We all are aware that it will take time and be incremental and there must be dialogue but that those changes must lead to the improvement of the people of Cuba, must lead to better conditions for the people of Cuba, must lead to a society in which the rule of law in which democracy, in which freedom is freedom is celebrated. So, as I have said we have discussed this only recently at the CARICOM Heads of Government Meeting. So yes, a transition… and I think this is what the President is referring to: a type of transition that allows the people of Cuba to benefit from prosperity and democracy.”

President Ali’s remarks unfortunately collide with the stubborn text of the official communiqué issued by CARICOM after its recent Heads of Government meeting.

That document, which inconveniently exists in print, says the following:

“The matter of the challenging situation in Cuba was also discussed. All parties recognised that there should be efforts to address the growing humanitarian crisis. The Caribbean Community, cognisant of its very close relationship with both Cuba and the USA, and mindful of the extent to which the Region can be negatively affected, is willing to participate in any way that will redound to the benefit of the Cuban people, while maintaining regional stability.”

No thunderbolt there. No declaration that “the status quo cannot remain.” No call for “transition.” No Caribbean chorus demanding the renovation of Cuba’s political architecture.

The discrepancy invites the obvious question: when President Ali says “we,” who precisely is included in that pronoun?

Is the “we” the collective voice of CARICOM? If so, where in the communiqué is this dramatic consensus recorded? Or does the “we” refer to Guyana and the United States?

Pronouns in diplomacy can be treacherous things. A misplaced “we” has been known to start wars, topple governments, and occasionally embarrass those who utter it too casually.

What makes the President’s remarks particularly perplexing is that he is not wandering through the unfamiliar corridors of Caribbean diplomacy. This is his second term in office. He has stood year after year at the podium of the United Nations to condemn, in language both eloquent and emphatic, the American embargo against Cuba. He has joined the near-unanimous chorus of nations insisting that the policy amounts to an act of economic strangulation inflicted upon a small island for the crime of choosing its own political path.

For more than sixty years Washington has kept its boot firmly pressed upon the Cuban windpipe. Trade is restricted, finance obstructed, fuel shipments throttled, commerce policed. The purpose has never been hidden. The embargo is designed to suffocate the Cuban economy until the Cuban state collapses.

One would think that this context might find a place in any serious discussion of Cuba’s present difficulties.

History also has its inconvenient chapters. When the government of Fidel Castro first emerged from the revolutionary fervour of 1959, it did not immediately resemble the one-party state that critics now denounce with ritual indignation. In its early days there existed the outlines—however fragile—of a more plural political order. It was the shock of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, a violent attempt to overthrow the revolutionary government, that hardened the Cuban state and pushed it toward the centralised system that persists today.

Political systems, like geological formations, are shaped by pressure.

And if President Ali wishes to lecture Cuba about democracy and freedom, he might also recall the era of Fulgencio Batista, the American-backed strongman who ruled the island before the revolution. Under Batista’s watch, Havana acquired the unflattering nickname of the “whorehouse of America,” a playground for gangsters, gamblers, and tourists seeking pleasures unavailable at home. That was the democracy the revolution replaced.

One wonders whether that is the “status quo” anyone now wishes to restore.

CARICOM heads of government should therefore clarify the matter without delay. Did they agree that “the status quo cannot remain” in Cuba? Did they endorse a “transition” in that country’s political system? Or is President Ali’s declaration merely indicative of where Guyana now stands in relation to Cuba?

The leadership of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic must also decide whether this is now the official policy of Guyana. If the government has abandoned the traditional Caribbean position that Cuba has the sovereign right to determine its own destiny, then the Guyanese people deserve an explanation.

Foreign policy, like language, should be used with care. Words spoken too lightly can carry the weight of unintended alliances.

And when a president says “we,” the public is entitled to know exactly who is standing beside him.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

---

• CARICOM, Cuba, Peeping Tom, President Irfaan Ali

---