Caricom’s hands may be tied on Cuba, says Skerrit

Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Do­mini­ca Prime Min­is­ter Roo­sevelt Sker­rit says Cari­com is not hid­ing be­hind diplo­mat­ic lan­guage on Cu­ba but has lim­it­ed pow­er to in­flu­ence de­vel­op­ments there, as pres­sure mounts from the Unit­ed States, which has im­ple­ment­ed a block­ade on that is­land, for Caribbean gov­ern­ments to re­assess ties with Ha­vana.

Re­gion­al lead­ers have con­tin­ued to ex­press sol­i­dar­i­ty with Cu­ba, par­tic­u­lar­ly as sev­er­al ter­ri­to­ries re­ly on the Cuban med­ical pro­gramme. But Sker­rit ac­knowl­edged that the bloc’s in­flu­ence is con­strained.

“One has to ap­pre­ci­ate that the dy­nam­ics are dif­fer­ent from oth­er times and that you will have to ap­proach things dif­fer­ent­ly and be more con­so­la­to­ry in your ap­proach. There are is­sues that are not re­al­ly in the con­trol or do­main of the Caribbean, of the Cari­com lead­ers. We are just on stand­by, on the side­lines rather, look­ing in like every­one else.”

He en­cour­aged Caribbean cit­i­zens to raise their own voic­es, even as gov­ern­ments nav­i­gate a shift­ing geopo­lit­i­cal land­scape.

Sker­rit al­so de­fend­ed Cu­ba’s role as a crit­i­cal source of doc­tors and nurs­es for Do­mini­ca and oth­er small is­land states, es­pe­cial­ly as wealth­i­er coun­tries re­cruit health­care work­ers from In­dia and Nige­ria. He said Cuban med­ical sup­port helped sus­tain re­gion­al economies af­ter nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Train­ing med­ical pro­fes­sion­als is cost­ly, he not­ed, and small­er states can­not com­pete with salaries of­fered abroad. While In­dia and Nige­ria have sup­plied doc­tors to the re­gion in the past, he said Niger­ian doc­tors are in­creas­ing­ly be­ing re­cruit­ed else­where, leav­ing Cu­ba as the most con­sis­tent part­ner.

“It’s al­most like a dog-eat-dog world. And how do you sur­vive in this very pre­car­i­ous en­vi­ron­ment?”

De­spite un­cer­tain­ty, Sker­rit in­sist­ed Cuban med­ical per­son­nel will re­main in the re­gion, even if the struc­ture of agree­ments changes.

“The pres­ence of the Cuban doc­tors will con­tin­ue to be there. Ob­vi­ous­ly, we are all talk­ing about a dif­fer­ent make-up of it or a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to it.”

Grena­da Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell said Caribbean lead­ers share con­cerns about Cu­ba’s eco­nom­ic strain and the risk of a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis that could trig­ger in­creased mi­gra­tion. He said dis­cus­sions with US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio on Wednes­day sig­nalled that Wash­ing­ton does not want to see con­di­tions de­te­ri­o­rate fur­ther.

Mitchell said re­gion­al gov­ern­ments re­main in close diplo­mat­ic con­tact with Ha­vana and are aware of the pres­sures caused by fu­el short­ages and eco­nom­ic hard­ship. He ex­pressed hope that di­a­logue be­tween Cu­ba, the US and re­gion­al part­ners could ease ten­sions.

Mean­while, St Lu­cia Prime Min­is­ter Philip J Pierre said he ex­pects on­go­ing en­gage­ment be­tween Caribbean lead­ers and the US to strength­en re­la­tions, even as sen­si­tive is­sues such as med­ical co­op­er­a­tion with Cu­ba re­main un­der dis­cus­sion. He said small is­land states must con­tin­ue fo­cus­ing on pri­or­i­ties at home, in­clud­ing agri­cul­ture, cli­mate re­silience and pub­lic health, while nav­i­gat­ing ex­ter­nal pres­sures.