Even more discouraging and disheartening, however, was the singular purpose with which regional ambassadors to DC were jockeying amongst themselves to ensure that their head of state would be guaranteed the dubious honor of shooting the breeze for a few minutes with (lame-duck) US President George W Bush….
Nevertheless, I hope the well-intentioned attendees derive some benefit from this week’s conference. Although I fear the only benefit will be their belated realization that these conferences amount to little more than talking-shop opportunities for political and academic elites.
Meanwhile, it is an indication of the fecklessness of leaders of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) that they are taking credit for the US government’s decision to extend the deadline (by six months to 31 January 2008) for when Americans returning from Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean will be required to present passports. After all, everyone in America knows that this deadline was extended only because of (typical) bureaucratic incompetence at the US State Department. In fact, passport processors there were drowning in such a deep backlog of applications that this extension was mandated as a life raft for them…not us!
To reinforce the point, however, it should be noted that this extension pertains only to Americans traveling by land and sea, which benefits Mexicans and cruise liners more than CARICOM countries; whereas, those traveling by air must have passports in hand by this September 30.
Of course, CARICOM leaders had vowed to prevail upon Bush to extend this deadline, which would benefit regional tourism tremendously. But the fact that this issue was not even raised during their pow wow with him yesterday betrays the hollowness of their vows. (A fact, incidentally, that is confirmed by the conspicuous omission of any reference to this hot topic in the boilerplate joint communiqué that was issued following their meeting.)
Related Articles:
Fecklessness of CARICOM, marginalization of the Caribbean
Bush-CARICOM Joint communiqué re: Conference on the Caribbean
Caribbean Conference Washington, DC
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.