Yesterday’s now annual vote at the United Nations on the crippling and pernicious US embargo against Cuba has again laid bare the farce of CARICOM unity. The long-cherished goal of a single position on important foreign affairs matters and no less on the plight of a sister Caribbean nation crumbled at the altar of craven supplication to Washington.
The leading Trump whisperer in the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago voted grotesquely with the US in opposition the resolution condemning the decades-long embargo. Port-of-Spain’s vote increasingly puts at risk any prospect for the region’s collective engagement with Washington on any number of matters including Haiti whose long awaited elections were yesterday postponed to July 2027.
Not far behind Port-of-Spain in betraying Cuba was Guyana which abstained after a long tradition of voting in favour of this resolution. In recent years, at votes at the UN and elsewhere, Georgetown has increasingly shown ingratitude to Cuba for all the years of free assistance on many fronts including medical assistance, scholarships, cataract surgeries and a host of other help that Havana itself could hardly spare.
The conduct of Guyana and Trinidad yesterday further sullied the memory of the historic opening up of diplomatic relations with Cuba – in defiance of the United States – on December 8, 1972 by Guyana’s Forbes Burnham, Trinidad’s Eric Williams, Barbados’ Errol Barrow and Jamaica’s Michael Manley.
Joining Guyana in abstaining from the vote were Haiti and Jamaica. Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and St Lucia didn’t show up at all to vote.
It was left to Barbados, The Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, St Kitts-Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Suriname to uphold the dignity of the region.
As they have already shown by joining the Shield of the Americas initiative, Guyana and Trinidad have demonstrated that they intend to continue in alignment with Trump’s policies in the region including aggression towards Cuba and the extrajudicial killings that the US Navy has been engaged in. Trinidad’s motivation is likely for the purposes of marketing and developing its energy assets while Guyana’s is believed linked to its expectation of continued support by Washington for its position on the border controversy with Venezuela, a hope that frays with each passing day as the US deepens its oil deals with Caracas.
Former leaders of CARICOM who this week made a global appeal for support for yesterday’s resolution would be appalled at the yawning division in CARICOM and what it portends for the future.
The 10 former leaders including Guyana’s Donald Ramotar had said: “The vote on this UNGA Resolution this year is more urgent and important than ever before. In recent months, the US government has further ramped up its illegal embargo against Cuba in an attempt to starve the Cuban people into submission through the imposition of third-party sanctions against any government or entity which grants, sells or transports energy products, including gasoline and diesel, to Cuba. Surely, such US conduct is inhumane, and undoubtedly contrary to international law.
“Accordingly, it is imperative that the blandishments and pressures currently being deployed by the USA to derail and defeat the proposed UNGA Resolution must be resisted. The US embargo continues to be a threat to hemispheric and international
peace and security; the embargo is a brazen violation of Cuba’s right to sovereignty and independence; the embargo derogates from the most elemental human rights of a people established and declared by international law. The unilateral, coercive actions of the USA against Cuba represent the law of the jungle, and can in no way be justified by the Charter of the United Nations or any other source of international law and justice”.
The “blandishments and pressures” clearly carried the day in some regional capitals. What a shame.
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