What Will the president Do If His Consultations With Stakeholders on the EPA Reveal Dissatisfaction?

(Published in Stabroek News' Letter Pages on July 11, 2008)

Dear Editor,

I have to disagree with President Bharrat Jagdeo’s position as it relates to the signing/non-signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).

The negotiations of the EPA took place on three levels: ministerial, principal negotiators and subject-specific negotiators.  Dame Billie Miller, Senior Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade-Barbados, led the negotiations on the ministerial side of things while Director General of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM) Dr Richard Bernal served as the Principal Negotiator.  The subject-specific issues were conducted by members of the EPA College of Negotiators. The Caribbean negotiating team comprised some of the finest minds in the Caribbean on international trade issues and were tasked with the responsibilities of “forging an agreement on the structure of an EPA, consolidating the outcome of discussions on the priority issues for Cariforum regional integration, and agreeing on an approach to trade liberalization” (source: CRNM).

Since 2004 and after three years, the Cariforum EPA negotiations were finally completed in December of last year. At that time Dr Richard Bernal had said: “This is a momentous and proud achievement for the region. Our success in completing this agreement, though hard won, has secured opportunity for trade expansion, economic development and the improvement of the welfare of the Cariforum people. What we have attained within this agreement is unprecedented within the region.

“Certainly, the Cariforum region is the only of the six negotiating ACP groups to successfully complete a comprehensive EPA with Europe. The stewardship of the heads and the active, robust participation of our region’s stakeholders, including the technicians, the private sector, the officials and civil society have made this possible.” (Source: CRNM)

There is no doubt in my mind about the hard work put in by the negotiators and I must applaud the outstanding job they did. The RNM got the best agreement they could out of the negotiations. As with any integration movement, with many sovereign nations involved, each member state is not going to receive whatever demands it requested. Even during the negotiations, concessions are as common as the sunrise is in the morning, and negotiators often have to compromise to arrive at win-win situations for all parties concerned. Moreover, member states cannot subscribe and fully endorse a process (the RNM) and then when some aspect of their individual preference does not pan out, they cry foul; it is just undiplomatic and betrays the whole spirit of the integration movement.

It is also baffling why the President took so long to object to the contents of the agreement and why did he delay for such an extended period his decision to engage in consultations with local stakeholders before signing the agreement. Even before the completion of the EPA negotiations in December, the government must have received information flows as to what the draft and final outcome of the negotiated agreement was going to look like and should have taken steps immediately to address its concerns.

Regardless of the answers to those questions, the President has said that consultations will begin. What if those consultations reveal dissatisfaction with the EPA? What does the President do next? Refuse to sign on with the rest of his Caricom brothers? Come up with some new negotiating arrangement to engage directly with the European Union? Or will he just be satisfied with the fact that history’s footnote will record that he made a bold objection to the agreement? I don’t have the answers but I would surely love to have a response from the President on this one.

Yours faithfully,
Clinton Urling