Editorial | Allen Chastanet’s folly

Allen Chastanet, the St Lucian opposition leader who has served as the country prime minister, may have temporarily lost track of time and space – as well as his common sense – and found himself in a twilight zone.

How else could you explain Mr Chastanet’s choice of this time, in the current global circumstances, to essentially float the idea of dismantling the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and of St Lucia and the rest of the organisation, as a group, finding their separate ways, in an increasingly dangerous world.

“So imagine if we had the tenacity to pull out of CARICOM and renegotiate bilateral agreements with Jamaica; bilaterals with Trinidad; bilaterals with Guyana,” Mr Chastanet told an assembly of OECS politicians in St Vincent. “Would we be better off?”

It matters little that Mr Chastanet claimed he wasn’t staking out a definitive position, but was merely raising questions. Because issues like these, once the Pandora’s box is opened, have a way of unleashing dangerous forces that can be marshalled by the self-interested, the consequences often can’t be managed.

Recall Jamaica’s 1962 withdrawal from the West Indies Federation. It led to its collapse.

The OECS has seven full members, which, individually, are members of CARICOM, a trade and functional cooperation group that is attempting to transform itself into a single market and economy. In many respects, the OECS has achieved a higher level of integration than CARICOM. It has long allowed free movement of labour, and its members share a single currency and a central bank.

FRAUGHT RELATIONS

But, according to Mr Chastanet, a former vice-president of the defunct Air Jamaica when it was under Butch Stewart’s ownership, OECS states had fraught relations with CARICOM larger members when he sat in its councils.

“... Certainly, when I was prime minister, I felt we were ignored,” he said. “I felt we were disrespected. I felt many times we went to meetings at CARICOM and listened to larger countries debate among themselves, as if we were not even there, and reached no conclusion.”

It would be useful to hear the assessment of, say Ralph Gonsalves, St Vincent’s long-serving prime minister, who shared the forums with Mr Chastanet and in whose country the opposition leader raised his lament.

It is known that OECS countries, individually, and as a group, have had concerns with the operations of CARICOM. As have the community’s larger members. And this newspaper has often expressed its frustration with the slowness with which the community gets things done – CARICOM’s notorious implementation deficit.

But, our own concerns notwithstanding, and whatever may have been the past experiences of OECS members with the community, this is hardly the time for the members of CARICOM to consider removing themselves from the community and dismantling the institution.

LITTLE INSULATION

If St Lucia felt naked as a member of CARICOM, imagine what it might feel like with the little insulation provided by the institution, facing, on its own, not Jamaica, or Barbados, or Guyana, but the United States under President Donald Trump.

Mr Trump has not hidden his indifference to small, poor countries like those in the Caribbean. Indeed, he often disparages even large and important neighbours and trading partners like Mexico and Canada. He has imposed tariffs on the world, including rescinding trade preferences the United States afforded to Caribbean countries. On the evidence so far, an individual country or leader attempting to cosy Donald Trump, given the president’s mercurial personality and transactional instincts, is unlikely to be on to a winning strategy.

CARICOM is an imperfect institution, but it is the best that the Caribbean has. Unless Mr Chastanet knows, or plans, something of which no one else is aware.