The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

A scant 54 days into his Prime Ministership in 2017, a buoyant Hubert Minnis went to Grenada on what was his foreign policy debut.

Giddy from the adulation he got from his fellow University of the West Indies graduates as they welcomed the Bahamas (a petulant prodigal son) back into the fold, Minnis declared to the 38th Conference of Heads of Government that he was hitching our horse to Caricom’s wagon. “Our people need us to work together to harness the tremendous mutual potential of the region while facing shared challenges,” he declared.

As he spoke those words Foreign Minister Darren Henfield must have been outside the hall because Henfield’s actions recently only prove he is either tone deaf to the agenda set by his PM (and presumably the Cabinet) or he thinks Caricom is a sacrificial lamb that can be offered up whenever we are stuck between our brothers to the south and our cousins to the northwest.

The Bahamas has had a love-hate relationship with Venezuela that goes back decades. We loved it when they invested in BORCO on Grand Bahama via their national oil company and we hated it when the renegade coup leader Hugo Chavez tried to buy Caricom’s love by splashing out oil revenues. But we remained friends with Venezuela and interacted with them on both the bilateral and multilateral levels.

Venezuela shares a somewhat contentious land border with Caricom, the origins of which date back to 1841 and Britain’s then colony of Guyana. Trinidad and Tobago is less than seven miles off the northeast coast of Venezuela. On a good day you can stand at Chaguaramas, site of the signing of the original treaty of Caricom, and peer across the Gulf of Paria into the Peninsula of the Paria National Park in Venezuela.

Equally disturbing is that in July 2001 the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, the legal basis for Caricom, was signed in Nassau. That revision contained the Treaty on Security Assistance Among Caricom Member States. It’s a loose adaptation of the three Musketeers principle – one for all and all for one.

The Treaty has provision for 21 “Forces Commanders” inclusive of the Chief of Staff of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force and the Commissioner of the Royal Bahamas Police Force. The situation on Caricom’s southern border has been deteriorating for some time, and thousands of Venezuelan refugees have flooded into Guyana and Trinidad.

Days after he was installed to a second term as President of Venezuela in January, the inept Nicholas Maduro faced a domestic kerfuffle when the elected leader of the National Assembly declared that as leader of the opposition, he was the new leader of Venezuela.

On most days this would be a laughable prank. There is no provision for it in international law. By Venezuela’s constitution the next in line to the President is the Vice President and after the VP then the head of the National Assembly.

If he was a true democrat, he would realize that toppling Maduro only opened the door for the Vice President and, presumably, a continuation of the same failed policies that have impoverished Venezuelans.

But in the era of Donald Trump in the US, anything is possible. Mr. Trump, beset with personal legal problems and presiding over a completely dysfunctional government bickering over the lockout of some of their employees, decided to distract the world by recognizing this jokey Venezuelan who crowned himself King.

Caricom was having none of it and immediately sprang into action. Currently, the Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis sits in the chair of the Heads of Government Group, but he wisely deferred to Trinidad and Tobago to take the lead in drafting Caricom’s response, since they were close to the problem.

Dr. Keith Rowley organized a video conference with all Caricom leaders but surprisingly only two countries didn’t join the call – us and Haiti.

Without us Caricom is resolute in staying out of the internal affairs of a sovereign country. Strangely this was, until now, the settled foreign policy of The Bahamas.

But then our clueless Foreign Minister “recognized” the opposition leader as President of Venezuela and upset the whole diplomatic apple cart. We will never know what led to this ridiculous decision, but we do know that the government must reconsider its position and the Prime Minister must take direct control of what comes out of the second floor at the Goodman’s Bay Corporate Centre.

A comedy of errors must have led to this decision which is the biggest post-independent stain on our foreign policy. How could a country that is a champion of human rights for all, so carelessly stomp on international law? Where were the diplomats who ought to have talked Mr Henfield out of this lunacy?

In one stroke Mr Henfield undermined the leverage the Prime Minister won in Caricom. This is far worse than when Fred Mitchell attempted to split Caricom over his reckless support of a British woman who became secretary general of the Commonwealth over a more qualified Caricom diplomat.

Without us Caricom is pursuing a thoughtful policy with two prongs -- non-intervention in Venezuela alongside robust Caricom diplomacy, joined now by Mexico and Uruguay.

When they went to New York to brief the UN Secretary General on the matter Dr Minnis was absent. Now Trinidad’s diplomacy is gaining traction with the international community and we are on the outside of our own club, looking in.

PM Minnis needs to fix this. Embarrassing though it might be, we need to reverse course and observe non-interference in the affairs of others. At the same time our advocacy for the poor and starving people of Venezuela must be relentless.

Perhaps there is a Cabinet shuffle coming soon, but at the very least the PM must dispatch a minder to the Foreign Ministry to prevent Mr Henfield tripping over his shoe lace again.

THE GRADUATE

Nassau

February 3, 2019