Opinion
- Editorial- Commentary
Andy Johnson
:
Summit ambitions
THERE are some "key issues", the Foreign Affairs Minister said on the TV6 Morning Edition programme yesterday, around which an agenda is being fashioned for direct talks among the leaders coming here next month for the Summit of the Americas.
Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon was not yet in position to identify what exactly those would be, but a hopeful reading, both of the text of the Declaration of Port of Spain and the report of the Partnership for the Americas Commission, suggests the possible pool from which they are being drawn.
And whereas Prime Minister Patrick Manning, who was off again yesterday on a reported four-nation swing through Latin America, presumably on pre-summit finalisations, spoke more than a week ago about physical preparations being way ahead of schedule, the substance of the discussions is still under deep massaging.
The Foreign Affairs Minister hoped yesterday that the distillation process on those issues which will form the agenda for the discussions between April 17 and 19 could, in fact, be completed by the end of this month.
Mr Manning had deflected one of the questions put to him about assessing the possible outcomes from the summit to Ambassador Luis Alberto Rodriguez, the diplomat who is national co-ordinator for the summit's secretariat.
In preambling his answer to whatever the question was, the ambassador kept saying, "If you look at the declaration...". Fact is, however, that what existed as the Declaration of Port of Spain eight months ago has apparently undergone such substantial revisions, in style, language and perhaps context, that the updated document on the eve of the summit is now a well-guarded secret.
It is not yet ready for public consumption. Assuming huge leaps of faith in the circumstances, it remains useful to draw on what is already stated as some of the areas in which the participants have pledged to work together for the improvement in the standard of living of the more than 800 million people in these Americas.
They have committed themselves collectively to addressing such ills as poverty, hunger, social exclusion, discrimination and inequality. They have put time-frames on getting improved systems relating to building stronger democratic institutions, promoting good governance and social inclusion, upholding the rule of law, increasing access to justice, protecting human rights, combating crime and violence, the illicit trade in drugs and in guns, fighting terrorism and achieving broader civic participation among these populations.
"We commit," they say for example, "to exchange information on policies, experiences and good practices in order to support our national efforts to reduce disparities and inequality and halve poverty by the year 2015."
This means, theoretically, that where either of Ecuador, El Salvador or Dominica may have a problem with addressing this item alone on its own, it can count on commitments from its partners in this club to help in the process.
We are all in these things together-that's the unambiguous message from the summit declaration which will eventually be arrived at.
The report of the commission, on the other hand, provides a clear, graphic blue-print as to how the process of engagement can actually work towards achieving these goals.
And as the minister said again yesterday, the desire by each and every country in the grouping for safe, reliable, sufficient, clean and affordable energy supplies can trump whatever ideological differences that will continue to exist, say, between Caracas and Washington or Managua and Ottawa.
Where there is a definite link between poverty in one part of the region and migration to other parts, the report proposes a formula for addressing it. On climate change and its potentially devastating effects on development and progress, it spells out how this can be tackled to mutual benefit.
In many ways, the report says, the core of the relationship between the United States and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean is economic, putting the US at the centre of the ongoing efforts at integration in the region. More than 17 million people from Latin America and the Caribbean visit the US each year, and more than 18,000 US companies invest in Mexico alone, representing a fifth of all US investment in the rest of the region.
Economic integration, whether among countries in the English-speaking Caribbean or between Caricom and those others in Central America and the Southern Cone, cannot go on without full embrace of these realities. They include, likewise, increasing involvement of Canadian enterprise, Canada being the other big country to the north which has historically played the role of good brother when the US has, in the past, behaved badly towards us.
Outlined here, therefore, are some of those numerous ways in which Port of Spain's Summit of the Americas can, in fact, be held to bring benefits, not just to us, but to as many of our brothers and sisters across the region.
Andy Johnson is a columnist of the Trinidad Express . Petroleumworld does not necessarily share these views.
This
commentary was originally published by Trinidad Express,
Thursday, March 19th 2009
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