IT CAME as no surprise that Jamaicans called for a boycott of imports from Trinidad and Tobago, in the wake of the latest deportations last week from Port of Spain of 13 Jamaican nationals, among them an 11-year-old schoolgirl.
Deportations of CARICOM citizens from a member state of the Community – following denials of entry, often without any official explanation – generally evoke outcries for retaliation with the weapon of a trade ban as priority. At times this clamour is accompanied with demands for retaliation against nationals of the region claimed to be among “undocumented foreigners”.
However, serious as the current scenario appears, Jamaica’s Minister of Foreign Affairs A J Nicholson and his twin-island state counterpart Winston Dookeran have quickly opted for restraint.
Neither the weapon of a trade boycott nor expulsion of undocumented CARICOM nationals would be pursued. The mutually preferred option is for the administrations in Kingston and Port of Spain to engage in constructive dialogue. This approach would include sensitizing representatives of the vital business sector as well as relevant civil society organizations of approaches being pursued to effectively address this recurring sensitive problem.
By such a constructive approach, the ministers are revealing a level of political maturity in the wider interest of regional unity and, evidently, avoid offering encouragement to those who, too often, seem eager to spill their bitterness with CARICOM and behave as if they have better alternatives for regional economic integration and functional cooperation.
Nevertheless, what’s particularly disturbing about last week’s denial of entry and subsequent deportation of the 13 Jamaicans – for which no serious public official explanation has yet been offered – is that it had the effect of contemptuously flying in the face of the landmark ruling of last October 4 by the Port of Spain-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).
Like Barbados, Jamaica and other Community partner states that signed the treaty providing for the establishment and functioning of the CCJ, Trinidad and Tobago has more than a moral obligation to uphold judgments of this regional court which, incidentally, is also empowered with original jurisdiction for settlement of intra-regional trade and other disputes.
In the circumstances, those who are in the habit of urging trade boycotts and other negative non-cooperation demands need to remind themselves that Trinidad and Tobago would have the right to access the CCJ’s original jurisdiction in challenging the validity of a ban on its exports. All exports revealing a “CARICOM origin” are entitled to duty-free concessions.
Similarly, Trinidad and Tobago and other member states of CARICOM would be expected to demonstrate their awareness of the implications of the CCJ’s judgment in the case involving Barbados and the aggrieved Jamaican national Shanique Myrie.
