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By Everson W. Hull |
April 5, 2005: The Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas of St. Kitts recently announced that he held talks with a representative of the Ottawa-based Forum of Federations on the future relations between St. Kitts and Nevis. As is normal and customary, he made no mention of any one from Nevis participating in last week's meeting. This practice is deeply troubling. It continues the offensive practice of having those who were not elected by Nevisians, speaking for Nevis on the single most important issue that affects the welfare of Nevisians.
What is equally troubling is that the Forum is a deeply biased organization. It represents the worst possible entity who any one could possibly dream of, for addressing the political issues that deeply divide Nevis and St. Kitts. The raison d'etre of the Forum, as clearly spelled out in its Mission Statement, is the promotion of Federalism. This mission is at the opposite polar extreme of the revealed preferences of the vast majority of Nevisians. At the last officially documented count, a full 62 percent of Nevisians voted in favor of ridding themselves of the deadweight burden of a Federal Government that does not serve the interests of Nevisians.
They voted in favor of removing the Central Government of Basseterre fully and completely from any involvement whatsoever in the affairs of Nevis. They voted against a continuation of a Central Government that raises 95 percent of its long term capital investment dollars from outside of the federation. They voted to bring an end to an abusive federal structure that has allowed Nevis, which has 20 percent of the population, a measly 2 percent of the free grant money that has been donated by the OECD countries to both St. Kitts and Nevis over the past 33 years.
Assigning a body that has no interest or regard for the welfare, goals and aspirations of Nevisians; and which has no knowledge of the continuing litany of abuses to which Nevisians have been subjected is tantamount to placing a mongoose in charge of a chicken coop. There is no reason to expect that the interests of the chickens will be well served. Given the avowed mission of the Forum, it cannot be considered a body that is capable of rendering, or even expected to render, an unbiased opinion in this matter.
The difficulty is that federal governance is simply not well suited for each and every country. It is far better suited to large counties, rather than small. Of the 193 countries in the world, only 26 have established a federal form of governance. It has been rejected outright by a full 167 countries. It has been a disaster in St. Kitts and Nevis, the only CARICOM country that has experimented with a federal political structure that is fully inappropriate for developing countries.
On the African continent, only three countries, Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Africa, have a functioning federal government. Each was established and maintained by the force of brutal dictators, or by an inhumane and wicked white racist apartheid regime. In all of the Western Hemisphere, only five countries, the USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, have a federal form of government.
Almost 50 years ago, our own West Indies Federation rejected this form of administrative political arrangement for developing countries that are heavily-dependent on foreign assistance dollars. They opted instead for the far more sensible and practical economic integration arrangement that CARICOM represents. Our non-political CARICOM and OECS economic structures have served the region well. There is no bickering among member states regarding who grabbed the OECD free grant money.
Similar in construct to NAFTA, the European Union and the Asean Union, the CARICOM economic union seeks to promote the more realistic and attainable objective of a common global economic space for the purposes of facilitating regional trade and commerce. Within this global construct, each member stands as a political equal. The Barbadians do not speak for the Guyanese. Each member state has an independent vote and seat at the table and speaks for itself. And, so must the People of Nevis.
The Forum's imperial arrogance has no bounds. If its own economic worth test were allowed to serve as the standard for nationhood, there is no country in Africa that would be independent today, none in Central America and very few in the Caribbean. More than 40 years ago, the United Nations passed Resolution 1514 that rejected the Forum's suggestion that only rich and economically viable countries should be allowed to elect from among them those who would speak for them in the international forums of the world. It said very explicitly that "ALL PEOPLES" have the right to full self-determination. The Forum must not be allowed to single out Nevis for disparate treatment and impose its own "size and richness" constraints on the People of Nevis to satisfy the biased objectives set forth in its Mission Statement.
If the Forum would allow itself a momentary leave from its biased objectives, it would quickly come to realize that Nevis has a higher per capita income than each and every country in Africa, as well as each and every country in South and Central America, with the single exceptions of Brazil and Argentina. It would come to realize that Nevis has balanced its budget on current account in 9 out of the last 11 years, producing a debt to income ratio that is a respectable 72 percent, when compared with its peers. There are few developing countries that can boast this outstanding and consistent record of fiscal prudence and responsibility. By contrast, St. Kitts has failed to balance its own budget in each and every year of the 9 years of the Douglas Administration, and now has a debt-to-income ratio of 186 percent, among the highest in the entire world.
The Forum of Federations is a biased organization that is promoting a form of political federal governance that has been rejected by each and every one of the 15 member countries that form the CARICOM regional economic union. Driven by its mission objectives, it can only serve its own warped sense of administrative convenience, totally oblivious to the abusive struggles that Nevisians have endured over the past 100 years. It must be utterly rebuffed.