Economy & Trade, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean, North America

CARIBBEAN: US Election Spurs Hope – Tempered by Realism

Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Oct 28 2008 (IPS) - The results of the opinion poll published by the Observer newspaper in Jamaica last weekend perhaps underscore the feelings of most Caribbean nationals.

According to the newspaper, out of 5,526 people who were asked to give an opinion on the Nov. 4 U.S. election, an overwhelming 94.3 percent gave the thumbs up to Barack Obama of the Democratic Party, who is the first ever black presidential candidate of a major party in the United States.

His Republican opponent, John McCain, polled a mere 5.7 percent.

“Anecdotal evidence suggests that Jamaicans have always shown a preference for the Democratic Party, even when the former Edward Seaga administration enjoyed very close relations with the first Ronald Reagan Republican government,” the Observer said in an accompanying editorial.

Charlene Sharpe-Pryce of the Northern Caribbean University said, “The Caribbean region for the most part is enthralled and hopeful, especially after Obama outlined his foreign policy intent towards the region in May 2008.”

Obama said then it would be impossible to continue ignoring the “suffering to our south, nor stand for the globalisation of the empty stomach,” as he pledged his administration’s support to substantially increase aid to the Americas and embrace the Millennium Development Goals of halving global poverty by 2015.

“We’ll target support [for] bottom-up growth through microfinancing, vocational training and small enterprise development,” Obama said. “It’s time for the United States to once again be a beacon of hope and a helping hand.”

Many Caribbean countries, especially during the Cold War, benefited from Republican administrations in Washington. For example, it was under the Reagan presidency that the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) came into effect in 1984, allowing for duty-free access to the U.S. market for most goods.

The Bill Clinton presidency (1993-2001) was hampered in its attempt to renew the legislation, and it was under the present George W. Bush administration that the U.S.-Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act (CBPTA), which was due to expire on Sep. 30, 2008, was renewed.

But even as the Caribbean revels in the prospect of U.S. citizens electing their first ever black commander in chief, regional leaders are being warned not to expect too much – no matter which candidate emerges victorious next week.

“I don’t know that there is that much commitment to this region anymore from Washington by either party. The Cold War is over, so the political interest that was there has waned,” warned Seaga, who in 1986, along with regional leaders like the late Dominica Prime Minister Dame Eugenia Charles, formed the Caribbean Democratic Union, a regional affiliate of the International Democratic Union that was closely aligned to Washington.

“It seems to me that there will be a modicum of continuing assistance with the policy directives coming from Washington as to how they should assist, but I really don’t see any sizeable increase in that interest from whoever wins,” he told reporters.

Former St Lucia prime minister and senior lecturer in international relations at the University of the West Indies, Prof. Vaughan Lewis, believes that the world’s changing social and economic environment would also dictate Washington’s relationship with the region.

“It is clear to me that we have to have specific plans for our countries’ adjustments to the international situation, so that we can persuade international players like the United States that certain special consideration be given to us in order to effect our process of adjustment as an economic region,” Lewis told IPS.

“The general popular assumption is that a black person would have some understanding of the needs of the Caribbean, but with the Congress and the White House operating independently, the president is always required to negotiate his way through,” Lewis said.

He added that the next occupant of the White House would also clearly be preoccupied with “getting things right in the United States”.

Last week, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, called the U.S. financial crisis a “once-in-a-century credit tsunami” and said it had “turned out to be much broader than anything I could have imagined”.

In 1996, then president Clinton met with Caribbean leaders in Barbados and although he was considered a “good friend” by regional states, Lewis recalls that Clinton had to adopt a “particularly hard stand in the complex relationship of the banana industry” due to the positions adopted by the Congress and the U.S. private sector that owned the banana plantations in Latin America.

“He was forced to let us down on the banana industry,” Lewis stressed.

On the question of Cuba and the U.S. embargo, Lewis noted that Raul Castro has shown a tendency – unlike his brother Fidel, whom he succeeded – to lessen the grip the state has had on the social and economic policies. “If we make an assumption that the Cuban political system will be stable (under Raul Castro)… then I think we will have to think of a loosening up of present U.S. policy,” he said.

“If that is going to take place, I think it will be for the Caribbean to define what its relationship with an economically evolving Cuba will entail,” said Lewis, who is heading a committee established by the governments of Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada, examining a closer political and economic union between the uib-region and Port of Spain.