By Kenton X. Chance
KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent (CMC) — St. Lucia’s Opposition Leader, Allen Chastanet, Tuesday said the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Assembly has become too ceremonial, adding that the challenges to citizenship by investment programmes (CBI) is an opportunity for the sub-regional grouping to prove itself.
Addressing the Seventh Meeting of the OECS Assembly here, Chastanet said that the relationship between the OECS and the larger regional integration grouping, CARICOM, was not working and suggested that OECS leaders imagine what would happen if they break away from CARICOM and negotiate bilateral agreements with the other member countries.
The OECS groups Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis, Montserrat, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands. It includes an economic and currency union, and there is free movement of OECS nationals within the union.
CARICOM includes the OECS as well as Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.
Chastanet, a former prime minister, suggested that the OECS leaders should imagine what would happen if they break away from CARICOM and each OECS country negotiates bilateral agreements with the remaining CARICOM member states.
The Assembly is also being attended by both government and opposition legislators from the sub-region, and Chastanet shook things up by challenging the speeches by government legislators during the debate of five bills that the Assembly went on to forward to the OECS Authority for proposed implementation in each member country.
Former SVG government minister, Rene Baptiste, who was re-elected Speaker of the Assembly, had invited the host Minister of Finance, Camillo Gonsalves, to wrap up the debate on the bills when Chastanet was given the floor.
He said he had listened to heads of government from the OECS “speak philosophically” about the OECS during the sitting.
“… we speak for the need for deeper integration because of what is taking place outside of our region and outside of our control,” said Chastanet, who served as prime minister of St. Lucia between 2016-2021.
The 64-year-old Chastanet said, “we have this event once every two years, and I think that it is fair to say, Madam Speaker, and that is no disrespect to you and what you’re doing, but it’s become ceremonial.
“And I would like to think, with what is taking place in the world today, that we would have understood a need for change,” he said, noting that the St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister, Terrance Drew had spoken about a need for governments and oppositions to be at one on certain national issues.
“I don’t need any answers. But the question is, did the opposition and the governments meet before they came here and discuss these motions and these bills? Did we do that and, therefore, we came here with a country position?” Chastanet said.
“Were the documents circulated in sufficient time for persons to have absorbed it?” he said, adding that leaders of the opposition do not have sufficient staff “to keep up with the general legislation, far less have the ability to absorb this and would have welcomed the opportunity to have shared that”.
What if OECS exits CARICOM?
The St. Lucia opposition leader said he shared the host Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves’ view that the OECS has repeatedly proven to be useful.
“Are we going to strengthen that?” Chastanet said, adding that he was telling some colleagues earlier that “sometimes you have to take a very radical position to start appreciating whether, in fact, it is a greater opportunity to be had”.
He noted that the OECS Assembly was discussing bills about trade integration, “yet we are members of CARICOM in which that is not working, and all the leaders sitting around this table all know that our relationship with CARICOM is not working.
“So, imagine if we had the tenacity to pull out of CARICOM and renegotiate bilateral agreements with Jamaica, bilaterals with Trinidad, bilaterals with Guyana and bilaterals with Barbados.
“Would we be better off?” Chastanet said, adding that he was not saying that the OECS should do so.
“But, sometimes we have to ask ourselves that question. Because, certainly when I was prime minister, I felt that we were being ignored. I felt we were being disrespected. I felt so many times we went to a meeting at CARICOM and listened to the larger countries debate among themselves as if we were not even there, and reached no conclusion.”
He said that members of the OECS Assembly travelled to St. Vincent “with the great expectation by coming together that we resolve something … to the benefit of the people”.
Chastanet said that while this is often repeated, “it’s not sufficient to see it anymore. … We must act on it.
“I look at the bill, I ask myself, ‘Is it reasonable?’ Are we all going to sit here and try to suggest that we are going to have a common policy on the value of tariffs?
“Really? We all are at different stages of development. And worse yet, when we hear, in my mind, we were talking about common internal tariffs, common VAT rate? Are we ready for that?”
He said that while the Revised Treaty of Basseterre, which established the OECS Economic Union, speaks about deeper integration, “it also maintains our own independence, and that recognises that we are at different stages of development.
Chastanet calls of unity on CBI
Five of the six independent OECS countries have CBI programmes, which Gonsalves, the incoming chair of the OECS, opposes.
Under the CBI programme, the countries involved provide citizenship to foreign nationals in return for making a substantial investment in the socio-economic development of the country.
Earlier this year, there was a public spat between Gonsalves and his Antigua and Barbuda colleague, Gaston Browne, after Gonsalves suggested that CBI programmes are inherently corrupt.
Browne said that Gonsalves was adopting the language of the developed world, which tries to eliminate any advantage that would help to wean developing countries from overdependence on richer nations.
Chastanet told the assembly that the CBI is “a vexing issue”, adding, “we have a great opportunity to prove that all the things we’re saying is correct.
“Our CBI programme is being challenged. How is it that we don’t understand and appreciate maybe exactly what was being said by my colleague from St. Kitts, that by coming together that we’re going to be more united?”
He noted that the OECS countries with CBI programme have signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) “but the MOA is not sufficient.
“Why can’t we have one CBI unit? Why can’t the money go to the OECS? Why can’t we use some of the CBI monies that we’re collecting to strengthen the integration of the OECS?”
Chastanet said that there is “a win-win situation” if the CBI programme are integrated at the level of the OECS and then the leaders decide how to divide the money.
“But I can assure you that if we don’t do that, and we find ourselves wanting to complain about what people are doing to us, we’re going to lose and in us, losing this game of losing a great resource of our CIP program, is to all our detriments,” Chastanet said.
He noted that Gonsalves does not support CBI, “but I keep saying to him, St. Lucia got into the CBI programme because we realised that everybody who was becoming a citizen in the other countries was benefiting from the Basseterre Treaty.
“So over 200,000 new citizens have come in and have access to all of our markets, and the more we integrate, the more that they have access to,” Chastanet said, adding that all OECS countries are involved in CBI because of the nature of the union.
“… we were all involved, and if we’re all involved, because what people are benefiting from is a common market here, but most of our passports have the same value in the international market.
“But I genuinely believe that we need to take our region more seriously, hold it up as a great example, and be proud of what we’ve been able to achieve so far, and press on even harder to integrate this region in order that we could negotiate better terms for the businesses and the citizens of our country.”
OECS, unlike CARICOM, proven to be ‘on the right track’
Chastanet said the meeting was an opportunity for the OECS to write its own history, adding that he was not calling for legislation passed there to be binding on member states.
He said the bills that were being debated “only tokenise” what the OECS should be doing even as the assembly owed it to citizens “to get past this being ceremonial”.
“I think we need a much more deeper integration. The OECS has proven without a doubt that we’re on the right track. CARICOM has not.
“Can we continue to respect our CARICOM colleagues when they’re not integrating? Is it right that a supplier from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, or from St Lucia, is selling products into Trinidad and cannot get currency, and in fact, their businesses have time to go out of business before the matter is even resolved?
“Or are we getting free access into those markets? And that’s why I say sometimes to really to find out the answer to that question is to take an extreme case and say, imagine if we could sit down and renegotiate with Jamaica on a bilateral basis, negotiate with Trinidad on a bilateral basis, negotiate with Barbados on a bilateral basis,” Chastanet said.
He said that Barbados has a population of 250,000 people while the OECS has a total population of between 650,000 and 750,000.
“So, is there a better opportunity for us? Because OECS has done the heavy lifting, and I think we need to reward ourselves for that heavy lifting and continue our movement of integration,” Chastanet said.
“So, I end by saying that these bills are good bills, like many of the other ones that have come but in my humble opinion, have not gone far enough, and we have to look at the enforcement, the implementation of these bills and the implementation of those bills if they’re going to work…,” Chastanet added.