Jagdeo mek his his followers ( Ken, Nehru, Rama & Dave) look phaglee, dotish and stupidee in the eyes of others.....

http://www.stabroeknews.com/news/lets-sign-epa-with-or-...ut-president-jagdeo/

Editorial reprinted from Yesterday's JAMAICA OBSERVER.....
President Jagdeo, trained in the Soviet Union, believes in the developmental state, which plays the leading role in economic development. Like his predecessors,he does not believe in markets and regards private enterprise as a form of theft.[/ B]

[B]The extreme poverty of Guyana, a vast land blessed with abundant resources of every kind, is testimony to bad economic policy.
Not content to preside over the steady impoverishment of his people (those who have not yet migrated) he now proposes the implosion of the few remaining economic activities.

Following the academic delusions of two prominent Guyanese, neither of whom have any practical experience in trade negotiations, he raised the issue of delaying the signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) at the recent Caricom summit in Antigua & Barbuda. None of the concerns he raised were found to be technically valid or politically feasible.

In embarrassing defeat, he protested that he must consult with the private sector and civil society.

No explanation was offered as to why he had postponed these consultations since December of last year when the negotiations were completed.

He now faces public humiliation by Guyana’s exporters of sugar, rum, rice and seafood whose survival and enhanced prospects depend on the EPA.

Among the many redundant proposals was the notion that CARIFORUM should postpone signing and wait to join with the African countries who, we note, do not have the same interests because most are least developed countries and already had duty-free quota-free access to the European market via the Everything But Arms Initiative.

We need the EPA to get that access. In any case, the possibility for joint ACP negotiations, preferential treatment in perpetuity for special commodities and the right to non-reciprocity were given up by our negotiators when they succumbed to the terms handed down by the EU in the Cotonou Agreement.

If Mr Jagdeo wants Guyana to opt out of the EPA to chase the mirage of a goods-only agreement, then the rest of CARIFORUM should go ahead without (Jagdeo) .....Guyana and sign the existing EPA.

Let them go ahead and sign. Jagdeo is CORRECT not to sign the agreement as it currently is. We were Colonised once before but will NEVER be Colonised again. Those RACIST in Jamaica and elsewhere can put the agreement up their ASSEs!!!!

Do you see what disappointment, humiliation, and dejection for a simple minister jab can cause one to do? Canecutta, now that you have edited the article in red, you can now put your name in pink under the minista jab portfolio.

We need to have the advantages and disadvantages of signing this signing this agreement outlines in layman terms.

TK

Can you help?

Name and nature, Anger and Passion dont solve problems or make you eligible for Minista Wuk.

Girvan: EPA bad deal for region
Published on: 4/4/08.

by TRACY MOORE

THE DEVIL is in the detail.

That is how former secretary general of the Association of Caribbean States, Professor Norman Girvan, has described the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the European Union (EU) and CARIFORUM countries (CARICOM and Dominican Republic).

Contrary to former Prime Minister Owen Arthur's recent view that the current EPA was "good enough" for Barbados and the region, Girvan said
it would lead to disintegration of CARICOM.

Arthur, delivering a lecture on March 11 on the same subject, said while some of the EPA's provisions amounted to "works in progress", it was good enough to assist the region in building a post-colonial economy, and could help Barbados' economic situation in trade and services.

However Girvan, speaking Wednesday night on The EPA And The CARICOM Single Market And Economy at the Mount Restaurant, University of the West Indies' Cave Hill Campus, called for the EPA signing to be postponed so it could be revised.

The EU, he stressed, would have the upper hand in this free trade agreement."It seems to me that CARICOM will have no chance but to adapt its own regimes to the requirements and compliances of the EPA.

"In fact, why go through all the trouble and expense of having CSME . . . [because] the policies, laws and practices would have been changed to suit the EPA. What really will be left of the CSME?" he queried.

"We would have surrendered our autonomy and policy-making in these areas to the requirements of the EPA compliance and with it much of
our ability to pursue a development path."

The EPA provides for nearly full reciprocal trade liberalisation over 25 years, the majority within 15 years, and considerable liberalisation in services and a host of other commitments in areas like intellectual property, investment and trade.

Girvan said while CARIFORUM states would receive market access for goods and services and the promise of development support, they would also face obstacles like "rules of origin, technical barriers to trade, and sanitary and phytosantiary standards", all of which, he added, needed fuller explanation for the smaller Caribbean countries, which were not as developed as Barbados.

"I have heard that the commitments made in these disciplines are commitments we would have been willing to make, in any case, to one another as part of the CSME.

"I am sorry, but this sounds suspiciously like an argument of convenience.

The very inclusion of these commitments responds to the EU's own stated agenda for trade agreements and the details contain provisions that are obviously first for the Europeans," he said.

While Arthur noted that the EPA would set the benchmarks in negotiating "modern mature economic relationships", first with Canada and then the United States, Girvan argued that when this legally-binding and difficult-to-amend document was put in place, there would be limitations on CARIFORUM governments' ability to change future policies in several areas, especially with the pending North America agreements.

The EPA signing is due at the end of June, with the signing ceremony more than likely taking place in Barbados.

*tracymoore@nationnews.com

Thanks Daren.

Anything more specific to Guyana?

quote:

Originally posted by BLACKBEARD:
Thanks Daren.

Anything more specific to Guyana?

Check here:
http://www.normangirvan.info/
http://www.normangirvan.info/statement-by-concerned-caribbean-citizens/

quote:

Originally posted by Nehru:
We were Colonised once before but will NEVER be Colonised again. !!!!

Good. Now when the Europeans stop buying Guyana sugar, rum and rice hopefully you will feed the thousands facing unemployment.

And they will because with the tariffs that Guyanese products will face they will not be competitive in the EU.

Where was Jagdeo when the negotiations were proceding and why didnt he aggressively raise his concerns then?

quote:

Originally posted by Nehru:
Let them go ahead and sign. Jagdeo is CORRECT not to sign the agreement as it currently is. We were Colonised once before but will NEVER be Colonised again. Those RACIST in Jamaica and elsewhere can put the agreement up their ASSEs!!!!

dude the bilateral agreements GOG signed with international companies has been pitiful . Omai the waters are contaiminated , the non disclosures of actual harvests , the private planes flying in to pick up non declared product . Foreign companies investing and buying out local state and public companies with GD$'s leveraged to the hilt and loacl consumers paying the excesses . Rasul created by led by one of russia's most notorious russian mafiosas , married to Yeltsins granddaughter , cannot be touched by the law in russia , puts out contracts on leaders of companies and executives and law makers ...and now the Turk !

quote:

Originally posted by BLACKBEARD:
Thanks Daren.

Anything more specific to Guyana?

Response from a former QC boy although it does not delve quite into the details of the EPA:

Dear Sir:

I write to register my personal disgust that the sentiments expressed by the authors of the Editorial from the Jamaica Observer of July 9, 2008 reprinted in the Stabroek News of July 10, 2008.

Its tone belittles a proud and committed CARICOM Member State and insults, unnecessarily, three important CARICOM Statesmen. It would have been unacceptable if it were accurate. But it is not. It is misleading, inaccurate and patently revisionist on important CARICOM history. It serves no useful purpose. It may have been useful to hear the anonymous editor’s views on how the EPA will temper Jamaica’s own murder rate, brain drain and crime-ridden garrison communities.

When the history of CARICOM is written, Forbes Burnham will be recorded as one of the great leaders of the region’s integration movement. Guyana picked up the pieces of Federation after Jamaica turned its back and Trinidad and Tobago buckled and bailed. The CARIFA exercise LFS led is the integration precursor to CARICOM and later the CSME. Externally, Jagan and Burnham made important contributions to the region’s foreign policy initiatives.

Burnham is no Mugabe, unless of course the author intends to compare LFS to Mugabe who supported the ANC’s resistance of South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime. In using the cheap analogy the editor belittles the plight of the Zimbabwean people and disrespects two countries.

In the 1990s long after Burham exited the stage, marketism and its trade liberalism imperatives assumed an unexpected dominance. Jagan scarcely had much time to come to grips with overwhelming international acceptance of liberalism as an imperative policy pill shoved down the throats of developing countries. To suggest hat either could have been President’s Jagdeo’s beacon for international trade policy is a non-starter. Further, it is truly incredible that that anyone in a post Washington consensus world could still believe that international trade liberalisation is the antidote for development malaise.

Shifting aside the writer’s clever words and weak analogies the only criticism of Mr. Jagdeo is that he wants to consult his people now that a final EPA agreement has been presented for ratification. To say that he should have engaged them earlier this year would have been a fair and reasonable criticism. That he has decided to do so now is still important. The people may very respond better to an arrangement they understand.

President Jagdeo is not the first economist or politician to question whether the region will be committing itself to an unsustainable regime. He is in good company in Guyana, CARICOM, the ACP and in the EU itself. In the pages of the Jamaica Observer itself, he finds support for EPA scepticism. The Jamaica Observer of 27th November 2007, a columnist, derided the EU’s EPA demands as for market access as akin to asking for a basket to carry water.

The EPAs will require changes in production and trade structures in CARICOM that will cause severe dislocation and economic pain. Since the EPAs were negotiated, the region has been under increasing pressure from runaway energy prices and food costs. Our capacity to bear even the short term economic costs of adjustment to the EPAs is severely weakened. Guyana has just implemented the VAT, a wicked creature of the International Financial Institutions that continue to dominate our economic policy landscape. Important changes to the environment facing national producers of goods and services must be undertaken carefully.

Since 2002 the Regional Negotiating Machinery has been feted by the EU Trade Commissioner behind closed doors. What they presented to the CARICOM’s Heads of Government must be reviewed carefully. No one could seriously expect a fait accompli. The RNM may have consulted. Widely, they say. But the RNM does not speak for CSME legislatures. Unlike the EU, CARICOM cannot legislate for each country. Like CARICOM, the United States Trade Representative which no longer has fast track authority and will never again have it, cannot bind Congress with any trade agreement it negotiates. Is debate by the people’s representatives and review of negotiator’s efforts now unwise?

The European Union and CARICOM have not demonstrated any dexterity at transforming promises for development assistance into real change. There is little reason to hope that this will change. The promise of EPA based development assistance is a pie in the sky. The EUs indifference to development is reflected in its treatment of sugar farmers in the ACP facing massive cuts in prices over a short period. In contrast EU corporate sugar traders will get generous transformation support.

Has the region considered properly the implications of the EPA’s widely defined Most Favoured Nation clause? Is there any real benefit to be realised by the region from the much touted provisions for the region’s ‘cultural industries’? Is there really any cultural industry currently excluded from the EU market that will benefit if the EPA is signed tomorrow? Where should the Guyana expect to be led by CARICOM and the RNM on Government Procurement and Investment? The WTO has long jettisoned these issues from its negotiating agenda, yet, the EU will demand on their inclusion in ACP negotiations.

Last year the EU Trade Commissioner has threatened the ACP with fire and brimstone on 1 January 2008. He suggested that unless new EU ACP agreements are in force the EU will impose GSP Tariffs on ACP countries. Sure. The WTO waiver may have expired, but that’s not how the institution works. The Membership and the Dispute Settlement Body have not unleashed any economic wrath on the EU and the ACP today. It was negotiating fear-mongering at its best. Someone in Jamaica has fallen for it.

Many non-LDC countries that do not benefit from the Everything But Arms Initiative are yet to sign EPAs because they honestly believe that better can be done. And their negotiators are honest enough to tell Governments just that.

CARICOM may well turn out to be the forerunners in a race to the edge of the cliff.

This editorial is disrespects all of Guyana and should not be taken lightly. We should support his initiative for EPA consultations. It may start something useful.

Ronald G. Burch-Smith

Kaieteur News
July 11, 2008 | Editorial
Guyana will not return to being a colony

Whatever personality complexes the Jamaica Observer may feel our President possesses, they were certainly not at work in terms of the position adopted by Guyana in respect to the Economic Partnership Agreement negotiated between CARIFORUM and the European Union.

In an ugly editorial this week, the Jamaican Observer made a number of unfounded, irrelevant and irreverent charges against our President.

That editorial, we believe, was more concerned with buttressing support for the EPA rather than engaging in an objective analysis of the merits of our President’s arguments, which we insist have not been technically or otherwise invalidated.

It was a sad day for the Caribbean to witness a regional newspaper descend to the depths to which that particular editorial fell.

Amongst the charges leveled against our Head of State was that he embraces a development state and does not believe in markets.

Nothing could be more ridiculous, unless of course if the person that scripted that editorial was living perpetually in virtual space, devoid of any understanding of the economic policies of the Jagdeo administration. Guyana has a more open market than any regional government.

And certainly it was an insult, one that Guyanese should vehemently protest, to suggest that our President is a slave to local economists.

The President hardly bothers with these voices when it comes to local matters, much less to pay heed to what they say when it comes to regional and international issues.

Long before anyone had the gumption to speak out against the betrayal of the Region in those negotiations, President Jagdeo had publicly indicated that this was not the best deal for the Caribbean.

When many others were willing to accept the failed negotiations, President Jagdeo stood up and indicated that he was far from pleased with what emerged from those negotiations.

While all the other leaders of the Region have been diplomatic in their comments about the EPA, the President of Guyana has been forthright and candid, bold enough to admit publicly that he felt that the negotiations were highly flawed and indicating that Guyana would not sign until it has fulfilled certain obligations.

We congratulate our President for his boldness in speaking out against an agreement that is a disgrace to the Region. If the Jamaican Observer feels that it is in that country’s interest to sign to EPA, it is free to so lobby its government.

In fact, as it has done, it is equally free for that newspaper to urge regional heads to accede to another betrayal by the Europeans. Guyana will live with its self-respect and will only sign after there have been consultations with key local stakeholders.

We do not agree that the Region had no choice during these negotiations. We believe that these negotiations were conducted in a manner that left much to be desired. We believe that better could and should have been done by our negotiators.

Instead of taking umbrage at the comments of our President, we feel that the Jamaican Observer should have called for a forensic audit of the entire negotiating process so as to appreciate where things went wrong and determine whether there were other possible options open to the region during the course of these negotiations.

We in Guyana should never accept that a bad deal is better than no deal. We are emerging at a new juncture in the history of the region, one where the region needs to assert that it will not be pawns in global trade negotiations, one where we do not have to simply roll over and accept what the more powerful blocs of the world dictate.

If the countries of the Region adopt the position that we should simply accept the crumbs that are thrown to us by our former masters, we shall have receded once again to the status of colonies. A return to the status of serfdom is not desirable ever.

It may be something that may excite the editorial tastes of the Jamaican Observer, but it certainly will not go down well with our Caribbean people.

We congratulate the Guyanese President for having the courage to denounce an agreement which insults our intelligence.

Correction...EPA website

Admin, if you can, please remove my post of 10:24am. I posted an incorrect site.

quote:

Is debate by the people’s representatives and review of negotiator’s efforts now unwise?

DG,the problem is that the horse is already out of the stable on this.Sometime last year Peter Mandelsohn came to the Caribbean and lectured and demanded an immediate sign on, and there was precious pushback from these now voices.
Oxfam and other NGOs were begging many of these leaders to hold fast and it all fell on deaf ear.

quote:

Originally posted by Ireton:

quote:

Is debate by the people’s representatives and review of negotiator’s efforts now unwise?

DG,the problem is that the horse is already out of the stable on this.Sometime last year Peter Mandelsohn came to the Caribbean and lectured and demanded an immediate sign on, and there was precious pushback from these now voices.

Oxfam and other NGOs were begging many of these leaders to hold fast and it all fell on deaf ear.

Understandably so, Ireton. At times, though, even if the horses have left the stable, there could still be opportunities to salvage something.

Example ... Kyoto Accord. That was arrived at by representatives, yet the agreement had to be debated and ratified by each country's legislature. We know what developed regarding the original Kyoto Accord.

I am quite interested to see how things will unfold regarding the Ecomonic Partnership Agreement.

As rightly pointed out, the functions of the EU and CARICOM are quite diferent.

quote:

I am quite interested to see how things will unfold regarding the Ecomonic Partnership Agreement.

The fix is already in and they will sign on to this so-called progressive agreement.There has to major re-think on the part of the third world on how devise and sign on to these agreement which in the long term will do more harm that good to their respective economies.Lome and Cotonu served it purpose for to some extent,we got our special market access and aid and Europe was able access our markets with zero tariffs with their goods and services.
Those agreements gave our leaders a false sense of security and thus many if not all failed to make the hard decisions and diversify their economies,because they were fooled by the guaranteed price agreements,now the chickens are coming home to roast.

quote:

BlackB: We need to have the advantages and disadvantages of signing this signing this agreement outlines in layman terms.

TK

Can you help?

BlackB and everyone, the mistake our government made was to enter these negotiations without have a clear vision of development.

The EPA is based on the fundamental assumption that within 12 years we will be on equal fooling with the EU. We will be able to compete with the EU. Twelve years because that’s when full reciprocity kicks in. Now that’s nonsense. Guyana needs about 30 years of trade protection within the context of nationally sanctioned, transparent and inclusive industrial policy framework.

That’s why I said on another thread Jagdeo is unto something. He probably picked up some whispers somewhere that this EPA can lock us into a particular development path where we will grow things and extract minerals and sell to the EU while we import all technological and manufacturing stuff. That’s a recipe for permanent adverse terms of trade outcomes and permanent underdevelopment. We will have to keep producing a lot of vegetables, gold and sugar to buy the high value added European goods. But agriculture and mineral extraction can only take one so far since these are inherently diminishing returns productive activities while manufacturing and technology goods are more prone to increasing returns. Jagdeo apparently finally picked up this fact.

But the Jagdeo Administration never had a holistic view of development strategy…I have been giving hints here and there what I mean by a holistic view. Check out the thread dealing with the teachers’ issue. And it is beyond me how one can have a National Competitiveness Strategy when your only university is decimated. All of our technical schools are decimated. And nothing is said about addressing the acute human capital shortage. And what about the Diaspora Mr. President?

What the PPP did instead was pump US$200 mill into the ultimate diminishing returns production activity-sugar! They chose that development path and now they want to pull out! You know what it shows…a lot fiddling and wiggling along the way! Apparently it finally hit them! The Christopher Ram exposed another episode of the wiggling and fiddling recently vis a vis concession issue and tax laws.

As I said, President Jagdeo has to say why he wants to hold back? Until then we can all watch the show…

BTW, that Jamaican editorial was very poorly done!