By Stephen Kangal
April 24, 2009
The hosting of the recently concluded Fifth Summit of the Americas was portrayed as a CARICOM initiative and, as usual, T&T bore the full costs involved.
I am very disturbed that T&T/CARICOM did not act collectively in an effective manner to maximize returns on T&T’s huge and staggering investment. The CARICOM meeting that was scheduled for Thursday 16 April was not held. No effort was made to concretize a CARICOM strategy at the Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Heads of Government held in Belize prior to the Summit.
Continue reading Lack of a CARICOM Strategy at the Fifth Summit
Some of the things that Daniel told me would be hard to believe if it was not him who told me them and it was not at a Summit of the Americas where they occurred.
Venezuela and the countries of the Bolivarian Alternative to the Americas (ALBA) decided not to sign the final document of the Summit of the Americas held on April 17-19 in Trinidad and Tobago, saying it excluded Cuba and offered no viable solution to the current economic crisis.
BY the time this column appears in print the Summit will be almost over. The 34 heads of governments will have had their say, hopefully in a civil manner. Hugo Chavez has indicated he would insist on the US trade blockade of Cuba be addressed in the document. Canada, too, is not happy with it, albeit for other reasons. What I found distasteful about the media pre-Summit hype was the focus on Chavez and US President Barack Obama at the expense of other leaders.