FIRST, there was that little clinking of concord from Prime Minister and Opposition Leader in their counsel to Barbadians: we must be careful and responsible in what, as a people, we do. In their Independence messages to the nation both Mr Freundel Stuart and Mr Owen Arthur were of one mind on clarity, prudence and devotion.
Now, the sound of harmony rings louder – if Opposition Leader Arthur stays true to his word and Prime Minister Stuart accepts it. And why should they both not?
No single proud Bajan can be happy with this state of affairs vis-a-vis the accommodation, or lack thereof, of our fishermen in the waters of Tobago, where the flying fish are copious – not after all these years of presumed negotiation, toing and froing and broken promises, interspersed with long bouts of dead silence.
There is more to this unhappy circumstance than the anxiety and fear suffered by their families when Barbadian fishermen are caught illegally harvesting the other half of our National Dish off Tobago. Mr Arthur puts it succinctly.
“That there’s no fishing agreement is not because of the behaviour of the fisherfolk themselves. They are being made the victim of a failed process . . . .”
And Mr Arthur ought to know, his administration having “tried everything possible” during its 14-year tenure to put a fishing agreement in place – to no avail. The skilled negotiator Robert Morris, our new Ambassador to CARICOM, looks forward to greater success and better days.
We wish him well, but we are under no illusion that the task will not be mammoth, for all the promise by Trinidad’s Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr Roodal Moonilal to raise the issue urgently with Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
In perhaps what has been the clearest official statement from Barbados yet on our challenges with Trinidad and the sea is that our neighbour’s “position has been obstinate and contrary to the spirit of true negotiations”. Trinidad surely doesn’t see a single thread to the claim of Barbadians that we have fished off the coast of Tobago for centuries.
Au fait with what the Stuart administration must now face, Mr Arthur has pledged his support of the Government in its “every reasonable endeavour”. There will be “no political divide in Barbados on partisan grounds on the issue of a fishing agreement with Trinidad and Tobago”, so far as Mr Arthur is concerned; and indeed there must not be.
And it may not be amiss if ordinary Barbadians show their very own support of this bipartisan gallantry by, as Mr Arthur put it, “letting the Trinidadians know that we’re not banning anybody’s goods, but that we can exercise the discretion as to who we buy goods from”.
Prime Minister Stuart will certainly give all this profound thought. We have no doubt that clarity, prudence and devotion will win out.