Professor Hamid Ghany: T&T Has The Right To Determine Its Position On Cuba
Every government has the sovereign right to chart its own foreign policy.
That is the view of Political Scientist Professor Hamid Ghany, who weighed in on Trinidad and Tobago’s decision to vote against a United Nations resolution calling for an end to the United States’ economic embargo on Cuba on October 28th.
Trinidad and Tobago abstained from voting in 1992, the first time the UN voted on the issue, but voted in favour of lifting the embargo in the years that followed.
Professor Ghany offered his perspective on the long-running vote.
« The whole question of what happened at the UN is one where every government is entitled to determine its foreign policy. There is no one size that fits all. And to think that we have to be bound by what others have done in the past, even though some of those others may have been from the other side, or even though there might have been an earlier incarnation of a government led by her in which she had one view at an earlier time and a later view. Every government is entitled to change its position. »
On October 28th, Trinidad and Tobago joined the United States and fifteen other nations in voting against the United Nations resolution seeking to end the US economic embargo on Cuba.
« What happened before, and what is happening now, it’s an evolving situation, and if it is that the government has taken a position that it is going to uphold democratic regimes and take that kind of position, it is entitled to do so. And it can state its policy very clearly and I think the policy has been stated very clearly. »
Professor Ghany argued that Cubans do not enjoy the same rights and freedoms typically associated with democratic societies.
« Cuba is a socialist regime. Socialism is a failed ideology and the reality, we’ve seen it in the Caribbean. It was tried in Jamaica, it failed under Michael Manley. It was tried in Guyana under Forbes Burnham; it failed. It was tried in Grenada, and that was a catastrophic end to a failed revolution in 1979 that collapsed by 1983, and it’s a failed ideology. What is happening in Cuba, the US embargo on Cuba is not in any way causing Cuba’s economy to falter. Cuba’s economy is faltering because of socialism. »
Trinidad and Tobago was the only CARICOM Member State to vote against the UN resolution. Member States either abstained or voted in favour of lifting the economic embargo.
