A Response To Stabroek News on the "Ideal Caribbean Person"

Defending CARICOM: A Response to the Stabroek News’ Editorial “Ideal Caribbean Person”!
September 26, 2008

Dear Editor,

I had alluded previously to the dangerous and culturally toxic rhetoric that now pervades the social and political athmosphere in Guyana, and had hopefully addressed some of its recent EPA-driven manifestations in "A Deadly Storm of Rhetoric in Guyana About CARICOM and the EPA" (http://rogerwilli.blogspot.com/2009/07/deadly-storm-of-rhetoric-in-guyana.html )

But now, an astonishingly crude effort at editorship (using as its foundation another article by one BC Pires in the Trinidad Express) raises the ante even further. Not since the debacle of its sinister and racist "Cockroaches" editorial has the Stabroek News exhibited this degree of chicanery!

An elitist segment of the Caribbean population seems to have declared war on CARICOM ... for all the wrong reasons. If we must offer a critique of CARICOM and its institutions, then let's focus on the factual evidence, not sophistry.

Without reading BC Pires’s treatment, I had to read this SN editorial of Friday 26th September 2008 several times over. For good reason. The editorial clearly outdistances any of the recent event-reactive gibberish that usually flows from the pen of some of our Editors, and sets new standards of pettifoggery and witlessness.

It seems to effortlessly achieve its reckless launch … by validating someone called BC Pires without bothering itself with the necessary trouble of reflective thinking. This is plagiarist insensitivity and intellectual incompetence at its worst.

I promise to read BC Pires later and comment appropriately, but am very glad that I skipped immediately to the Caricom-webpage to see what the furore was all about. My initial reaction (to the CARICOM descriptive) was very positive!

One sincere conclusion is that this SN editorial is testimony to the cake-shop mentality that has replaced erudition in our society today, and the generous nonsense that has replaced the capacity to abstract, and to articulate a higher ideal.

I almost gagged when I saw that the SN Editor had replaced CARICOM's lofty effort at disavowing abortion and war (”… imbued with a respect for human life since it is the foundation on which all the other desired values must rest…”) with the careless and infantile insinuation of “… we think that the ideal Caribbean person is someone who loves his or her family and country, life and a good time, not necessarily in that order…”

Now this last is the thinking of an eighteen-year old, pure and simple … and is trite and shallow. It exemplifies the trendy rubbish of the language of the beer-commercial on TV. Repeat it often enough and you will see what I mean.

Who is this “we”, then, referred to in the editorial … does the writer speak for the ownership of Stabroek News? Or is this Editorial licence gone amok?

If that was not shocking enough, the editor then refers to the clear language of the descriptive “… is emotionally secure with a high level of self confidence and self esteem ...” with the arrogant, even asinine, comment: “... what’s the real difference?...”

If this had come from anywhere other than a respected newspaper, I would simply have ignored it.

But this is the Stabroek News, people, the Stabroek News! Here's a point that should not have to be made ... the editorial staff should have taken the time to acknowledge that there IS a subtle yet distinct difference in the meaning of “self-confidence” and “self-esteem” ... a realistic confidence in one’s own judgment, ability, power, etc. as against a realistic respect for or favorable overall impression of oneself. The latter leads to the former.

Now any dimwit of an editor should have checked the dictionary before making that dismissive a statement, but in a seamless moment of arrogance and childishness born out of a rage to discredit CARICOM on this non-issue, the staff writer opted for the easy way out.

Now if the above made us uncomfortable, the next should make us see red.

The rabid snarling in the SN editorial thereafter focuses on transforming CARICOM's next four ideals of the ideal Caribbean person ( “… sees ethnic, religious and other diversity as a source of potential strength and richness; is aware of the importance of living in harmony with the environment; has a strong appreciation of family and kinship values, community cohesion, and moral issues including responsibility for and accountability to self and community; has an informed respect for the cultural heritage;… ") into the awesome and fathomless drabness of its own jaundiced vision "… The ideal Caribbean person is someone who holds fast to whatever faith she or he believes in …. We are talking about a force that comes from within… ”. This is a case study in heady high-school logic in the absence of moral suasion.

Does “… whatever faith she or he believes in … ” include murder, violence, anarchy, atheism, racism, nepotisn? Because these are relevant concerns where an intense and overt moral sanction or restraint is absent in the belief system.

Do we really need to go back to a time when (Hindu Guyanese) Rhyaan Shah interpreted the Guyana National Motto "One People, One Nation, One Destiny" to mean " ... a racist creed of oneness ..." to see what this " ... force that comes from within ..." could mean to those with the same diseased outlook.

Now, we Christians of the Caribbean look to Jesus the Christ, and find no distress therein, no trouble with reconciling democracy with our religion ....

Despite the oil-shocks of the 70s, the debt-trauma of the 80s, the social and political upheavals of the 90s and the economic imperatives of the first decade of the new century, the hopes of CARICOM that a post-1997 “Ideal Caribbean Person” could bring to bear vision and wisdom as he or she “… demonstrates multiple literacies, independent and critical thinking, questions the beliefs and practices of past and present and brings this to bear on the innovative application of science and technology to problems solving …” are lost on SN’s Editor … and we are all the poorer … as a people and a region … after this latest bit of intellectual mischief and skulduggery (... what's the real difference?).

This staff writer should cease and desist!

Yours faithfully
Roger Williams

September 26, 2008

A DEADLY STORM OF RHETORIC IN GUYANA ABOUT CARICOM AND THE EPA

13th September 2008

Dear Editor,

There is a deadly storm of agitated political talk abroad today, and Guyanese must pause and ask deep questions.

Like many other Guyanese, we may have thus far considered the issues at a distance, and must now familiarize ourselves with the detail. However, it is obvious that some recent comments are cause for alarm!

Smarting under the chagrin of a stupendous difference of opinion with fellow CARICOM leaders about the EU’s EPA, Bharat Jagdeo and Peter Ramsaroop have now transported an otherwise valiant stand on principle to the extreme of overtly proposing that Guyana “realizes its continental destiny”.

By any standard, this notion stretches the bounds of reason, and obvious questions arise:

1. To what end is this sudden, drastic overreaction in efforts at disowning CARICOM? Surely local opposition parties never envisaged (in their support for President Jagdeo’s initial position) that rooting for fairer treatment under the EPA would suddenly turn into a smear campaign against the CRNM. Having been slapped by the EU, Jagdeo is unwisely venting his anger on CARICOM and, by implication, fellow CARICOM heads. This is short-sighted, even foolish, for the short and medium term. A calm but intensely overt effort at out-and-out lobbying before the ACP meeting might bear more fruit, much like his initial presentation at the Lilliendaal "consultation".

2. What, exactly, is this “continental destiny” of which Jagdeo and Ramsaroop now speak? Does it include the fact that "continental" Venezuela, Suriname, and possibly Brazil, all have their eyes on Guyana's territory?

3. Is it the fact that Guyana is increasingly seen as drifting towards its drug-cartel destiny a la Colombia, even as the latest grisly stories from the USA about Robert Simels’ and Shaheed Khan’s efforts to “neutralize” witnesses shake the territory? What part, if any, does the soon-to-be-released report by the Jamaican forensic team on the Lindo Creek issue have to do with any of this? Or investigations into torture by the Guyanese government? If this latest move is nothing more than political grandstanding by a beleaguered political apparatus, then it establishes new depths of debauchery and irresponsibility for us as a maturing democracy.

4. If the CRNM has served us well in the past, why abandon it now with such careless talk? What, exactly, is the tangible evidence of a “next generation” left to face the EPA-tragedy? It is indeed strange that a government that imposed a 16% hangman’s noose “without consultation” over the heads of Guyanese citizens without heeding the pleas of the opposition, and that is now being called to account by its traditional union-ally GAWU because of the disastrous effects that VAT has had on their members’ standard of living, now has the interest of a “next generation” on their minds. Will the next generation of CARICOM states HAVE to be beleaguered by poor capacity and mono-crop exports? Does the agreement in fact give us time to establish this capacity and further diversify our economies?

Everyone talks about their being “some goodies” in the EPA, but no-one, least of all Jagdeo and Misir, bothers to tell us what they are! Are there exception clauses in the agreement? And are their other social issues in, or attendant to, the EPA that we should know about, much like a recent and astonishing Brazil-generated OAS-resolution on sexual orientation last June 3? Is this part of the “continental destiny” Ramsaroop envisages? Guyana's OAS-representative Dennis Moses now either refuses, or is incapable of, or has been otherwise not instructed, to respond on his lack of “consultation” with Guyanese citizenry on this issue. The potential consequences are truly enormous, and may span generations … but no answer from Jagdeo or Ramsaroop on that one. Obviously times have changed, but the questions in the article “Response to OAS and PANCAP on Sexual Orientation, and Decriminalizing Homosexuality and Prostitution” (http://rogerwilli.blogspot.com/2009/07/response-to-oas-and-pancap-on-sexual.html ) will not go away, and still demand an answer!

The church and citizens generally need more time to consider these EPA-related issues carefully at this time, and not blindly follow heady political rhetoric! What has caused this new and strange alliance of political forces in Guyana, and to what end this foolish talk?

5. Where and when did the hastily arranged “consultation” session at the Conference Hall translate into a promise to validate the political rhetoric and insinuation of abandoning CARICOM?

6. Where did opposition support for Jagdeo on an issue of principle become a national referendum on dismissing, or separating from, or vilifying CARICOM? The PNC and the AFC need to let us know!

Then there is the rather dubious notion that whereas Guyana stands as a relative giant in CARICOM, we as minnows in the "continental destiny" would fare better in terms of having our own way with our South American counterparts. This would be foolhardy logic, since our language and our history immediately puts us at odds with continental neighbours. Surely active and intense diplomacy and lobbying with ACP heads before the signing in October is the answer, not the demeaning of the institution of CARICOM. Guyana must take on this task of lobbying single-handedly with the aid of the CARICOM Secretariat if necessary.

The failure of other CARICOM heads to await the ACP-meeting in Ghana next month before consensus is very disturbing, but we are premising our denouncements right now on the prospect that other African and Pacific nations will not do as the rest of the Caribbean has done. What, if anything, have our diplomatic feelers told us about the likely position the African and Pacific nations will take at their upcoming summit? If indeed they feel inclined to sign, then does that mean that the Caribbean including Guyana never had a choice in the first place? On the other hand a victory at re-negotiation by an AP/Guyana alliance on behalf of the entire ACP would do the region well.

Now someone educate me: If indeed the EU can now take issues taken off the WTO agenda back to the WTO through lobbying, then what stops CARICOM at that time from itself lobbying the WTO against same effort?

There is a lot of reckless talk abroad, and more questions than answers available at this time. However, one thing appears clear.

We should all stand up and declare that Guyana’s historical destiny lies with the Caribbean archipelago and its tradition of democracy and conservativism, not with Colombia’s drug-saturated legacy or Brazil’s sheer dominance and liberal agenda, nor with the deranged and anti-American demagoguery of Venezuels’s Chavez, nor India’s ambitions of empire in Latin America, and certainly not with Morales’s socialist retrogression or some leaders’ visions of third terms in office. It is indeed tragic that it is the EPA-event that has finally caused Guyana's head of state to finally meet with opposition leaders on the way forward for "One People, One Nation, with One Destiny".

An initial decision by President Jagdeo to not sign unless forced to do so seemed prudent until this escalation of rhetoric. Both Jagdeo and Ramsaroop should keep focused.

Until we know differently, the EU is the enemy here, not CARICOM!

This should be our initial starting point.

Now let’s all assess the evidence and pronounce on these issues (the EPA, and the EU) in the following days!

Yours faithfully,
Roger Williams
13th September 2008