T&T: Caricom's backing Kerry

Selywn Ryan takes a long look at Caricom's moves in relation to Venezuela, Haiti, and the U.S. Read the entire.

To his fervent supporters, he's a new Simon Bolivar, the man on the white horse who's come to rescue them from decades of corrupt governments and irreversible poverty.

To his detractors, he's Hugo the Horrible, the man who's driving his critics up a wall, at home and abroad, even as he makes a mess of one of the richest countries in South America.

He, of course, is Hugo Chavez, the irrepressible President of Venezuela who last week also virtually let the Caricom cat out of the bag by declaring that he was recognising Jean-Bertrand Aristide as the lawful President of Haiti.

Just prior to Mr Chavez's declaration, he had a fleeting visit from Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Patrick Manning who, over dinner at Mira Flores, the presidential palace in the heart of Caracas, discussed the aftermath of the sudden, though hardly surprising, downfall of Mr Aristide.

Caricom is to declare its own position on the new Haiti government this week (even though that government has threatened to pull out of Caricom) but it's very likely that Mr Chavez has already broadcast that position on his own.
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There was a time, not that long ago, when the politics of Venezuela mattered very little, if at all, to Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Caribbean.

Those times are changing. Mr Chavez's stance on Mr Aristide could be the beginning of another and very serious row between Venezuela and Washington.

And it will be interesting to see how far Caricom is prepared to go in backing that fight.

People who think that Mr Manning might have a problem on his hands with the resignation of his labour minister Larry Achong (whose resignation Mr Manning says he's not accepting) don't know the half of it.
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If Washington decides to get even tougher with Mr Aristide, and his supporters, there's no telling where the dice might fall.

One hint of that also came last week when it was announced that the US was seeking to extradite one Oriel Jean, 39, from Canada. Mr Jean is a former top security aide to Mr Aristide who arrived in Canada recently with US$10,000 and apparently on the run from the turn of events in Port-au-Prince.
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If there are signs of a serious and brewing international row over Mr Aristide's fall from power, the US could respond by getting rougher-and where that will leave Mr Aristide's backers is another story.

In any event, does Caricom really want to go to the mat with the US?

Mr Chavez obviously has his own agenda -and it's hardly just about uplifting the poor and ennobling the disenfranchised. He has promised to remain in office long after his constitutional term limit is up-which, of course, has simply infuriated the opposition even more.
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For the first time since Venezuela's return to democracy in the 1950s, there are hints of a return to the instability and upheaval that characterised Venezuelan politics for decades.

Mr Chavez also obviously takes pleasure, if not pride, in attacking the old Goliath to the North-something that endears him even more to his supporters and makes his opponents even more furious.

But is Caricom seriously prepared to go along with the Chavez agenda? Are regional governments prepared to risk decades of their own favourable relations with the United States in order to throw their support behind the maverick Mr Chavez?

Or is Caricom betting heavily that come November, there will be a new tenant in the White House?

That Caricom would align itself with Chavez, who is busy running Venezuela into the ground and despises the rule of law, believing that GWB will not be re-elected is an indicator that Caricom believes there will be no repercussions from the U.S. in a Kerry administration. What Caricom, along with the rest of the world, does not take into consideration is that, where the rubber meets the road, Americans will not elect a president who is weak on national defense. The mantra around the globe may be that Americans need to get past 9/11; however, that is not the sentiment in this country. Caricom heads watching the Democrats bash GWB, over the past six months and more, may have erroneously got the impression that GWB is weak, when, in fact, he had no intention of responding until there was a clear Democrat nominee. Furthermore, we're now in March, and poll numbers don't mean anything much. Come October, the picture changes.

Therefore, Caricom would be unwise to develop alliances based on its misconceptions of who the victor will be in the American political process. A look at GWB's initial campaign speech in Florida, the link for which is on this blog, will demonstrate clearly that Kerry will have a hell of a fight on his hands. GWB, using a mixture of facts and humor, has already succeeded in painting Kerry as an indecisive waffler (yeah, a redundancy) who is at war with himself. Worse yet, GWB is laughing at Kerry and cleverly letting America in on the joke. There is no more potent tool than ridicule, and GWB is employing it to great effect. It doesn't help that Kerry is acting his usual pompous and condescending self. Worse yet, for Kerry, he is as humorless as he looks, and has been making statements (foreign leaders, anyone?) which have fed GWB's humorous ridicule mill.

Caricom would be wise to forget its pique over Haiti, and not let Venezuela dictate its relationship to the U.S.