IN Washington DC this week, the country's Minister of Foreign Affairs passed the baton on the Summit of the Americas from Port of Spain to Cartagena, Colombia. That country on the South American mainland which has been doing more and more to demonstrate its Caribbean character, will host the next gathering on a date and time to be determined.
The occasion, held under the auspices of the Organisation of American States, presents a time for reflection, on the wildly conflicting positions between the Government and others, as to whether or not it provided value for the money spent.
Jose Miguel Insulza, the OAS Secretary General, said at the baton-passing ceremony on Monday, that it was "a great success''. It is a position he held on local soil, before the event closed at the Diplomatic Centre on April 19. "The summit of Port of Spain has set the tone for future hemispheric relations and I am honoured to attend the passing of the baton to the next Summit,'' he said, repeating himself almost literally, from five months ago.
For her part, Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon said the event's "success,'' would not have been possible were it not for "the invaluable spirit of partnership and co-operation of each member state and our other hemispheric partners.''
It was said in the wake of the confusing Declaration of Port of Spain-the outcome document which was signed by none of the leaders but the host, after all the effort put into presenting it as one that had absolute buy-in-the summit generated history-making goodwill and consensus among the leaders who attended.
Within days, however, this began to evaporate into business as usual. The President of Honduras was hounded out of office and was forced to flee his country, in a coup d'etat still in effect. All the efforts of the OAS have failed to secure a reversal.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has continued to threaten aggression against Colombia, accusing his neighbours of kow-towing to American interests. There have been the acrimonious recall and then re-assignment of ambassadors between Bogota and Caracas.
Chavez, Nicaraguan President Manuel Ortega and Bolivia's Evo Morales, used the moment to further promote their marriage to the idea of an ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America, Chavez' own brainchild counterproposal to the now dead Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
The FTAA, the ALBA club of countries have been insisting, is founded upon the models born of the Washington consensus which they scorn as being the newest fashion of neo-liberal economics which have done nothing but damage to working and poor people all over the world.
And as they were gathering in Port of Spain for the April Summit, several Caricom leaders came here direct from an ALBA gathering in Venezuela, to the surprised reactions of some of their colleagues in the sub-region.
If ALBA, as host Prime Minister Patrick Manning is on record as having said, is a counter-scheme to the FTAA, the question left open at the end of the April summit has always been on what basis would the countries involved go ahead with seeking common ground in the variety of issues on which they pledged to work together, for the collective betterment of their peoples!
This is separate and apart from the list of items on which there is on-going tension, disagreement and divergence, as with Venezuela/Colombia, or even the immigration issue which pitted Guyana against Barbados at the July Caricom Summit.
How is the search for common ground in seeking sustainable energy solutions to be found. What is the basis on which the partners will establish a single platform for treating with the impact of climate change, or on other contributors to environmental degradation. How will they get around Bolivia's accepted rejection of the "co-operative policies and arrangements'' intended to expand biofuels in the hemisphere?
None of this has been made clear in the five months since the scene on April 19 when the leaders seemed to have simply dispersed on the steps of the Diplomatic Centre. And this is just a single dip in the brand-tub of aspirations from the tortured "Declaration of Port of Spain''. It states early in the preamble, the leaders' commitment to "fight against'' social exclusion among a host of other social ills. It contains their pledge to "promote social inclusion and cohesion''.
Here in Port of Spain, the government has just partially released the long contentious National Gender Policy. It leaves gaping holes on the very question of social inclusion, in the area of sexual orientation.
