Guyana needs to put political woes behind, form social contract
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Guyana needs to put political woes behind, form social contract
-- advises PM Arthurby Wendella Davidson
Guyana Chronicle
May 7, 2000
GUYANA in the 21st century can lead the rest of the Caribbean in every index of development.
But for this to happen, the country must be prepared to put its political difficulties behind it and find the political solution in the formation of a social contract subscribed to by every class and creed willing to work for success.
In no way will the solution be found in any Herdmanston Accord or in the role of any CARICOM-appointed mediator, Prime Minister Owen Arthur of Barbados observed Friday.
Mr Arthur was addressing participants of the Third Annual Caribbean Media Conference at Le Meridien Pegasus Hotel. Admitting to feeling an overwhelming sense of sadness, the Barbados Prime Minister said that elsewhere in the Caribbean, a state of such utter despair has been reached regarding the prospects for national development that some are now proposing variants of recolonisation, such as applying to join the European Union, as viable options in the Caribbean at the start of the 21 century.
Mr Arthur's forecast of the future of the Caribbean Community is not one that is very promising.
According to him, "the distressing circumstance in which CARICOM now finds itself, and the very fearsome prospects which lie ahead, do not create any grounds for the optimism that these are the best of times."
CARICOM, Prime Minister Arthur added, is confronted with considerable uncertainty, and a tendency towards disorder in just about every sphere of political, social and economic life.
Alluding to the political sphere, he said, the region which traditionally stood out as a beacon of democracy and political stability, has of late become the location for political developments which run counter to the tradition.
He cautioned that those developments should not be contemplated by the faint-hearted and cited as examples some Caribbean countries and the difficulties they face.
According to the Prime Minister, Haiti, CARICOM's newest member, is experiencing the gravest difficulty in establishing its rendezvous with democracy, likewise, political unrest plagues St Vincent, Suriname and Jamaica.
In terms of international relations, PM Arthur said the Caribbean is possibly the only region of the world that has not reaped a dividend from the end of the Cold War.
Nevertheless, the spectre of international marginalisation stalks the region to the extent that the rest of the world no longer sees the Caribbean as a special or unique case deserving of special treatment and assistance.
"Our searches for empathy or goodwill as we seek stays of execution in carrying out actions arising from our international commitments which can have painful consequences for the survival of Caribbean societies, are now perceived as yet other rearguard actions, not dissimilar from other such actions on our part over the last three hundred years.
"The powerful states with whom we have maintained strategic and friendly relations, have either relegated the Caribbean region to a status of benign neglect, or have sought to forge with us a unidimensional relationship, which draws its bearing entirely from our unsolicited and uncomfortable position as one of the world's premier transit points in the traffic of illegal drugs," the Barbados leader said.
He argued that the start of a new century, and at the start of a new millennium, the Caribbean Community of States faces a situation of being small states, standing virtually alone, with only a few firm or reliable alliances in an increasingly unsympathetic and hostile international environment.
In the social sphere, Mr Arthur said, it is not the best of times, as the Caribbean ranks high on the list of those countries which face the threat of being overwhelmed by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
He noted that new forms of crime and violence, linked closely to an insidious new drug centre which threatens to undermine the integrity of the institutions of our civil society, and linked to the behaviour of Caribbean nationals deported from the USA, have and are taking root.
The new fads are also representing themselves as the most modern forms of social disintegration in a fragile region.
The region, which is rich in its cultural and ethnic diversity, faces too, the spectre of cultural absorption, that of being just another victim of a monolithic process of globalisation which promotes homogeneity rather than diversity.
Mr Arthur charged that if the situation goes unchecked, a world would be created in which Mickey Mouse, McDonalds and Michael Jordan, will be the only cultural icons with which the region can or will identify.
The Barbadian Prime Minister further contended that "For a region whose major contribution to the development of the human condition in the 20th century has been the products of its creative imagination, expressed in terms of the work and worth of its poets, novelists, music and calypsonians, cricketers, and the Free Spirit of Caribbean people expressed wherever they have happened to be located in the Diaspora, the monolithic levelling social and cultural impulses of globalisation are a threat which can diminish the Caribbean and take it backward.
"In what sense is McDonalds superior to a fish fry at Oistins, or Jerk Pork in Jamaica, or Labba and Creek Water in Guyana.
"Why should we yield on the preservation of our cultural icons, that traditional way of life inherent in small states which is so relaxing and rewarding, and which makes living in a small state such an unforgettable experience, to become just another cultural and social statistic in a world made safe for the domination of powerful but socially and culturally insensitive transnational conglomerates?" the Barbados Prime Minister wondered.
