More than MERCOSUR on My Mind: Goodbye to the OAS?

Is there something about Cancun?

First, WTO trade talks collapse there in 2003. Now, seven years later it is playing host to the birth of a new regional organization—the putative Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.

Truth be told, given the gargantuan size of the 32-member RIO group (comprising Latin American and Caribbean states) that has been around since 1986, it was only a matter of time before a formal name be ascribed to the grouping!

As an ardent regional integrationist, who is also a citizen of the Pan-African grouping (that comprises no less than 53 member states), this proposition looks like a delicious response to not just the US and Canada, but the paradigm of uniting under a regional umbrella.

More importantly, it looks to me like members of the Rio group have looked left and right, seen the EU, and the AU, probably heard of developments in East Asia of a Community , and thought "why not in Latin America?"

In my view, the reason why this Community would work is because AU countries, with their eight UNECA-mandated RECs are managing very well, thankyou! Xinhua thoughtfully provided a list of sub-regional organizations in that region—and it’s quite impressive. There are some nine around, with the oldest(Latin American Parliament) having been established in 1964 and the youngest as recently as….

If what I am reading is correct, then the RIO group is keen to have an economic community that would not just comprise 32 members of the Latin American and Caribbean states, but exclude the US and Canada (unlike the OAS). I am sure sometimes AU states have been keen to have an AU without some North African countries that make up the members of the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU)!

But on the specific issue of regionalism in this region, I foresee this Community to be more akin to that of an AU in the way it both accepts and accommodates the sub-regional groups, but contemporaneously dissimilar in the way it has been explicit about excluding Canada and the United States.

Honestly speaking, I do not foresee the AU excluding North Africa [especially because of the instrumental role played by Libya] anytime soon. Libyan leader al-Qaddafi’s pivotal role in the AU has perhaps put paid to the desire to jettison any element of the Arab contingent!?

Will the Real "Regional Integrationist" Stand Up?

Rare is the "regional integrationist that will not concede defeat against what I consider the Eurocentric paradigm of the EU being the de facto trend-setter of global regional integration. Even more rare is the one that will openly advocate "the possibility of a UN reform in which regional organisations would be given seats in the Security Council along with states."

What is not strange is who is doing the advocating -- none other than Luk Van Langenhove of the United Nations University Comparative Regional Integration Studies [UNU-CRIS]. It is a delicious irony that the Belgian be based at a research institution on regional integration that is also home to one of the most advanced regions in the West--Flanders.

This ostensible little detail about the regions is important, in my view, because as I read the article linked on the UNU-CRIS website, I could not help but mull over the use of the word regions, especially in the context of EU integration.

Langenhove makes an interesting an important point that:

The EU is the world's most advanced form of supranational regionalism. It has managed to develop a model that incorporates political elements in a deep economic integration, and challenges existing assumptions about governance.

.

This level of sophistication seems to have a lot to do with the EU's Committee of Regions that has played an important role in cementing this so-called "deep economic integration." One website describes the CoR as:

The Committee of Regions is a new advisory body established by the
Maastricht Treaty, to take into account the views of regional and local
government in European decision making. The advisory Committee of Regions is
a compromise between the aspirations of powerful regions in federally
organised member states (such as Germany, Spain and Belgium), which have
long asked for direct influence on EU decision making, and the views of much
more centralised member states (such as the UK, Denmark and the Netherlands)
whose regional governments have only derived powers from a strong central
government.

A very superficial response to the EU's Committee of Regions was to think how one could be replicated elsewhere, say, in the African Union countries, where a number of countries--say many along the West african sub-region--fall under the ambit of regions. In my own country of Ghana, there are no less than ten regions, with regional ministers and district chief executives of those regions. This all for a country of roughly 22 million!

So, I can most definitely conceive of an AU that has a system like the EU's CoR, where regions are twinned and affiliated in a manner that they act as separate entities within the states they are part of.

But the operative word, today, is "states".

Van Langenhove prefaces his article with some history about states and the Westphalian order. As regards the latter, he maintains:

The Westphalian order that emerged in Europe and now spans the world proved to have a stabilising effect, making it difficult to change borders to create bigger units, especially now that war has largely been abandoned as a means of expanding territory. But some existing states are under pressure to split up as a result of nationalism and calls for cultural autonomy.

The alarm bells that the author gives about the stability of the Westphalian system--and how that is is danger is more relevant, because it means that the system is imperfect and can be modified. But does that mean that regions are the answer to resolving those potential dangers?

The author does not go this way in saying the region is a panacea. Rather, he argues that:

I myself believe that an announcement of the "death of the state" is – to paraphrase Mark Twain – gravely exaggerated. In the foreseeable future, states will remain important centres of governance. But in an attempt to face the challenges of globalisation, states can – on a voluntary basis – turn to world and local regions to complement and even strengthen their power. As such, the world of states would gradually become a world of states and of regions.

Regions as Complementary Roles
So, in fact, regions are complements to the nation state--and not substitutes. World and local regions helping to complement and strengthen the power are important in going this way. Note what Van Langenhove says about the EU:

European integration has been accompanied by "de-federalisation": the emergence of sub-national regional governance. The EU is not just a collection of 27 member states; it is also an association of hundreds of local regions. Regions can be found at all territorial levels. One could organise nice academic debates about what a region actually is, but a more pragmatic approach is just to accept the plurality of the concept and focus on what regions are not. They are not sovereign states!

In my own country of Ghana, the Ashanti region--the second biggest region after the Northern region--is renowned for having called for independence from Ghana many years ago. Belgium's own recent troubles that lasted more than six months when the relatively stronger Flanders region wanted to do what looked like a split from Bruxelles-capitale politicking is a testament of the potential divisiveness of ensuring strong regions within states.

States won't disappear
Thing, though, is that states are not going to go away any time soon--neither will regions. Extrapolate this to the international level, and it seems likely that most regional organisations that we know will not go away any time soon either! Rather, I foresee that they will do the natural thing of evolving and transforming into bigger entities, such as ECOWAS Secretariat into an ECOWAS Commission, and the former OAU into the African Union in 2003--very much modelled on a hybrid between the United Nations and the European Union.

That ASEAN now has a charter, where the EU does not is not necessarily an indication of the sophistication of that ten-member grouping, but rather one of the decision to evolve into a more supra-national entity with what is considered legal personality.

These are certainly big ideas coming from a big article, and a lot more could be said. In the interests of time, I will broach this article at another time, for the ideas have tremendous resonance in the regional integration paradigm. That the EU is to play a greater role in the development of regional integration worldwide is a palatable idea.

It is a shame, therefore, to see it using the Economic Partnership Agreements as a stick to disrupt the regional integration initiatives of the AU countries.

Still, Van Langenhove's point here is not to be sneezed at, and I sincerely believe that it is providing the grounds for a critical and progressive look at regional organisation as well:

The multiple world of regions could be a way to replace the illusion of a single national identity with the more realist view that people hold plural regional identities. As such, the world of regions might not only be a more complex world but also one with more chances of peace and freedom. Europe can help to make this challenging vision real.

The Africa Unity Day that Wasn’t

By E.K.Bensah II

The last holiday that Ghanaians enjoyed might have gone unnoticed to many in its symbolism purely because they did not understand the significance of it. It is interesting to note on the news wires that even the US government congratulated the African Union(AU) for the celebration of forty-five years of its existence on 25 May. So when in scanning the Ghanaian media, one heard and read almost nothing symbolic about that celebration, it struck me as a worrying trend in our psyche of “Africanness”.

Granted, we do not need a holiday alone to remind ourselves that we are Ghanaian in particular, and Africans in general, but I do wonder whether it animates us sufficiently. For a country that played host to an African Union (AU) summit in June 2007 in the fiftieth anniversary of the country’s history, it is downright unacceptable, in my opinion, that Africa Unity day came and went with a non-existent fanfare.

We can speculate as much as we can—that it is an election year, or that it fell on a Sunday, therefore the media’s antennae were not awakened to the significance of it, and then some. In my view, we have no excuse about the silence, especially at a time when the regional is taking centre stage.

Take the case of Burma and the cyclone that it experienced a few weeks ago. Two weeks ago, British foreign minister and former senior UN official Lord Mark Malloch-Brown toured the region to try to establish whether there could be greater collective Asian/ASEAN response to the disaster. This was important, because the reluctance of the regime suggested that a regional response—translated through the ten-member grouping of the Association of South East Asian countries (ASEAN) – that includes Burma would elicit a more effective response. His efforts proved useful, because ultimately, a Franco-British deal would eventually facilitate ASEAN’s greater role in the disbursement of aid to the victims of the cyclone. All this has come against the backdrop of criticism in some quarters suggesting ASEAN should be disbanded.

One particular article in the *Jakarta Post” entitled “Myanmar disaster challenges ASEAN’s utility” went so far as saying that ASEAN has been lethargic in the manner in which it has been implementing its programmes, including a 2005 Agreement on Disaster Management and Disaster Response that was never signed.

The case is not that much different in this part of the world, where ECOWAS, established since 1975, has, many times, come under some flak for not living up to its agreements. To date, the “real” meaning of ECOWAS integration is debatable, considering the hassles citizens of West Africa—comprising some 230 million—experience traveling through the sub-region.

Food crisis
The challenges notwithstanding, what we can say ECOWAS has done off late is respond regionally to the food crisis that has afflicted much of the developing world.

Last week, the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) agreed to provide $1billion annually to support agricultural productivity in the West Africa sub-region as part of its contribution towards resolving the food crisis. This was part of the outcome of an extraordinary meeting of the regional grouping and their ministers of agriculture, trade and finance. This development has spawned a number of discussions around ECOWAS and the implementation of a common agricultural policy.

Truth be told, it would be as far back as 2005 that the grouping would adopt the ECOWAS Agricultural Policy (ECOWAP). Three years later, its implementation remains moot. According to TRADENET website, in Senegal’s attempt to implement ECOWAP, the country begun putting in place a National Programme of Agricultural Investment. The question now is getting the mqjority of ECOWAS countries adopting the policy.

Imperatives
Any regional grouping learns from demands—or imperatives—that are placed on it. This means that when the Liberian conflict broke out in 1990, ECOWAS was compelled to send troops through its peacekeeping/-enforcement wing of ECOMOG. Today the Labadi-based Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Training Centre(KAIPTCE) is a testament to the ECOWAS imperative of conflict resolution and prevention. I daresay considering earthquake-struck China’s proximity to the ASEAN region, the grouping’s new imperative could be that of disaster management!

Regional Integration Perspectives: Closer Towards an East Asian Community?; AU-GCC FTA in the Offing?

There is some ground-breaking stuff going on in the area of regional integration: no less than the fifty-three member African Union has instituted an audit of its institutions.

It goes without saying that policy without direction is policy in a vaccum. An audit as a self-evaluating and self-monitoring tool can help the AU look deep into itself, and attempt at a resolution of some of the existential angst that it is suffering from. Arguably, one of the biggest of these is the proposed union government that was the subject of debate at the AU summit here in Accra last June.

An article in IPPmedia.com maintains that according to a report by Regional Economic Development and Integration, debate has been mounting on the appropriate form of a proposed union government. The report went on to say that conclusion on the debate of a formation of a continental government was subject to the finalization of the report.

AU-GCC Pact?
Meawhile, a very short article from gulf-times.com points to a desire by the de facto SADC hegemon South Africa to complete an FTA between the AU and the Gulf Cooperation Council. On reading the news, my visceral question was to ascertain since when South Africa had become the spokesperson for the AU; and secondly, was this not a masked desire by the country to itself establish an FTA with the GCC.

Interestingly enough, Pretoria maintains that it is impossible for one to be set up between itself and the country that will host the next session(XIII) of UNCTAD in 2012—Qatar, but one can be arranged between the GCC and the AU.

The reason being that South Africa is a member of a customs union, comprising the so-called BLNS countries (Botswana; Lesotho; Namibia and Swaziland).

Aren’t we going in circles here I wonder? Point is: the AU can set up one with the GCC. Fine, but why does SA have to speak on the 53-member body’s behalf as it did, when the South African Trade minister Mandisi Mpahlwa, speaking on the sidelines of a business forum organized by the Qatar Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told reporters when prompted by reporters. That in itself raises questions as to why reporters were asking about such an FTA to the country itself? What made them think South Africa would have the answer? Last time I looked, the AU had a Commission, which would take care of such questions!


EAC’s all the rage!
Though it’s been a while since I talked about the five-member regional organization that saw Rwanda and Burundi join its ranks in July last year, this is an EAC of a different kind. We’re talking about the East Asian Community, which has been promoted and promulgated so many times in the ASEAN world it’s no longer funny. ASEAN’s issues with Myanmar notwithstanding, it seems clear that an East Asian Community—probably modeled on the EU and NAFTA—would be a model that could work for the region. I suspect that one that worked like ECOWAS (in whichever form or content it exists) with a commission and commissioners is what might work best. The EU at 27 members seems a tad unwieldy these days, what with its aspirations to have an EU president and all that. Furthermore, with little movement on a referendum, and with ASEAN having adopted a charter where the EU failed, it seems, IMHO, that a hybrid of regional forms is what might best work for the proposed EAC.

But who am I to propose that? After all, the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), described as "a key initiative to support the formation of the East Asian Community has received full support from senior government officials in Brunei". This means, in short, that a considerable amount of resources are going to be put its way to chart the course of a putative Asian Community. Note what the article says:

The think tank, which will formally be established this year in Jakarta, will receive Y1 billion from the Japanese government for 10 years, said Hidetoshi.
The think tank will also be publishing 55 volumes of research on all 16 countries in the region soon, said Hidetoshi. Brunei's Centre of Strategic and Policy Studies (CSPS), one of the ERIA member research institutes, is involved with over 300 researches in 16 countries, including the 10 Asean countries and its dialogue partners, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

Bank of the South is Here, But Can Africa Bank on the Latin American Way of Regional Integration?

The new multilateral institution is considered as an alternative to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and seeks to satisfy development credits demand.

Seriously, it's more than an alternative; it's also yet another expression of Venezuela and its associate MERCOSUR members of their dissatisfaction with the prevalent neoliberal system.

I've written about this Bank of the South before and I explained that the Latin Americans had something that Africans certainly didn't. Beyond blood running through their veins, it's about a radicalism and conviction so unprecedented and emanating that any of their opponents feel it viscerally that these are people not to be toyed with.

If not, how is it that despite the articulations of Venezuela against the mighty US, Venezuela has -- along with Brazil; Argentina; Bolivia; Ecuador and Paraguay -- establish this Bank of the South [I notice no Uruguay!!]. Yet, Africans have allowed themselves to be fragmented on the so-called Economic Partnership Agreements?

The fallout of the signing of a so-called EPA-lite by the East African Community and SADC (without South Africa and Namibia) just leaves one speechless--not to mention a little bit less for wear the arduous efforts of civil society -- both in the North and the South.

That said, it's important to press on to stop the discussions between the bullying EU and the other regions.

In my view, the Bank of the South initiative, a formidable alternative indeed to the Breton Woods institutions of the World Bank and IMF in the sense that "each member country would have a single vote, irrespective of size and financial contribution" (from:http://www.nationnews.com/290175804330225.php) brings into sharp relief the necessity for greater collaboration between MERCOSUR in general/Latin America specifically and other AU regionalisms to learn lessons on how they were able to resist the Free Trade Area of the Pacific in 2005, yet AU/ACP countries allowed fragmentation by the EU.

While this issue of the Bank of the South, in my view, is one of the most progressive developments in global regional integration to date--bar the ASEAN charter-- Africans ought to contemporaneously reflect on whether there is that much of a difference between the EU and the US, for them to have allowed the EU--former colonisers at that--to hoodwink many of them into an interim agreement that will most likely destroy attempts at regional integration.

It's in the Eyes: Prayers for a Dying SAARC? Cross-Fertilising AU Dynamics!

At a time when the African Union's Peace and Security Council has well and truly slapped sanctions on the "rebellious" Comoros Islands, restricting their travel, and freezing their accounts, it beggars belief that in September, in a piece on the BBC about SAARC, a SAARC citizen would have written this in respect to the putative failure of SAARC:

Apart from OAU/OUA no other regional organization can rival the irrelevance of SAARC. The initiatives on the economic side which drove MERCOSUR, ASEAN, NAFT, EEA, usually have been put on sidelines. Pakistan does not even accord Most Favored Nation status to India. SAARC conferences are big fund guzzlers in a region that excels in poverty. It is completely irrelevant, particularly for India, to break out of the mold of 'Greater India' or Akhanda Bharat mindset and focus more on economic development, it does not need more laggards to pull it down. A good example is European Union, quite a choosy, club, which has elected to exclude Turkey. Sometimes less can even turn out to be more!
Sandeep Chowdhury, Germany

I'm not quite sure what to do about such comments--whether to laugh or cry. On the flip side, it reveals the profound misunderstanding that exists by many worldwide on the different types of regionalisms that exist, and the qualitative nature of those regionalisms.

I can very well imagine that there are many EU citizens who have probably never heard of ECOWAS or COMESA or even the ACP Group--even though it's well and truly ensconced some five minutes drive, on Avenue Georges Henri, past the metros of Schuman, into the European Communities!


Back to the SAARC expatiation, and you see something a bit predictable and sinister. Predictable, because casual observors of the region have talked at length about the apathy exuding from the region by India in reconciling with Pakistan--and how that is a key factor in injecting vigour into the seven/eight-- (if you count Afghanistan) member regional organisation established since 1985. It's going to be 22 years old this December, and I daresay the analysis around that period will be...more of the same.

Sinister, because a lot of the blame is predicated on an India-Pakistan nexus of (atavistic) and historical "hate".

Looking specifically at some of the submissions by readers, the comments ranged in between these answers:

Saarc is a failure because of India

without economic integration like the EU and NAFTA and (name your western economic cooperation agreement), SAARC will be irrelevant

Pakistan should go it alone, because it can benefit where it is losing from SAARC

India should go it alone because it is not adding to or gaining anything from SAARC

It is important to indicate that the submissions came from India; Germany; USA; Zimbabwe; UK; Pakistan; Canada; Italy; Pakistan; and Maldives (another member of SAARC)

One submission from Pakistan maintained:

The only thing that the Saarc summit has ever been able to decide is where the next Saarc summit should be held. It is a pathetic organisation - though mind you there are others in competition with it in being useless for example Sadc - the Southern African Development Community.
Alia Mansuri, Pakistan

It is interesting, also, to note that the submission above about "OAU" (it's been the AU since 2003!!) was made by I presume a SAARC citizen in...the more "successful" EU.

I was priviledged some three weeks ago to have been part of a seminar on regional integration, hosted here in Accra, by my organisation, and organised by CODESRIA. in which one academic from Tunis presented a paper about the Arab Maghreb Union being highly irrelevant out of the AU RECs (and the world).

This to me says that whilst the submission from Germany was profoundly myopic about the qualitative nature of regionalisms worldwide, the sense that citizens of "failing" regionalisms--never mind failing states are waking up to smell the bitter coffee that there are better examples elsewhere.

Without forcing a pun, they're truly getting critical on regional integration perspectives. A little more progressive views might help, though!;-)

African Union Peacekeepers Were Only Doing Their Job, but ASEAN must act in Myanmar

Recent events in Burma and Sudan have conspired to remind me about the need to have regional responses to these regional crises. Regional, because Myanmar is a member of ASEAN, and Sudan, a member of not just IGAD, but the more formidable African Union.

When I heard the news of the 10 AU peacekeepers having been killed over the weekend, I found myself almost on the verge of tears.

What happened to "never again" in Rwanda? More importantly, I couldn't help but remember, in uncanny parallels, how 10 Belgian peacekeepers were killed in Rwanda, prompting a hasty retreat. Whether Belgium was justified or not in the withdrawal, let's just say that in 1994, at the height of the genocide, no-one could have blamed them.

In my view, a quick reminder of the quasi-parallels are worth reminding ourselves about:

In January 1994, three months before the killings, Major General Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian commander of the U.N. peacekeepers in Rwanda, informed the Belgian government that the Hutus were preparing for a large-scale slaughter of Tutsis. Despite repeated warnings, the Belgians refused to provide or request further assistance.

In February, Belgian Foreign Minister Claes sent the Belgian Senate a telex that reported the possibility of genocide. No additional precautions were authorized.

The massacres ultimately were provoked April 6, 1994, by the death of Rwandan President Habyarimana, a Hutu, blown up in his jet as it approached Kigali airport on his way back from Arusha, Tanzania. Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, also a Hutu, was killed on the same plane. The two presidents had just agreed to let Tutsi refugees in Burundi return to Rwanda.

Reacting to Habyarimana’s death, Hutu leaders proceeded with their plan to exterminate Rwanda’s Tutsi minority.

General Dallaire, the UNAMIR commander, saw the developing danger. He asked Uwilingiyimana, Rwanda’s Hutu prime minister, to speak on Rwandan radio to help calm the nation. He sent 10 Belgian soldiers in U.N. blue berets to pick up Uwilingiyimana at her house.

The Belgians took gunfire at the house, and when Uwilingiyimana tried to slip out the back, the militant Hutus caught her and killed her on the spot.

Then the 10 Belgians, with U.N. advice, agreed to disarm, and the Hutus took them in trucks to Camp Kigali, a military compound. Here, a mob of Hutu soldiers attacked the Belgians.

The Hutus beat several of the Belgians to death with iron bars. A few peacekeepers ran to a cinder block hut and tried to fight off the attackers. Hours later, the last of the 10 was killed with a grenade.

Shocked by the death of the 10 Belgians, Foreign Minister Claes asked U.N. secretary-general Boutros-Ghali for permission to withdraw all Belgian troops from the peacekeeping force. Claes also told Boutros-Ghali that the U.N. should suspend its entire operation in Rwanda.

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, Boutros-Ghali said a Belgian withdrawal would cripple the UNAMIR mission
from: http://frankwarner.typepad.com/free_frank_warner/2004/04/belgiums_war_cr.html

In the same vein, a Nigerian withdrawal would cripple the AMIS (African Union Mission in Sudan) that is about to become part of a UN-AU hybrid 26 000-strong force. This, despite the fact that Nigerian AU peacekeepers were also killed--and Nigeria has been emphatic about this, too:

"The Federal government of Nigeria condemns this attack and is concerned that this incident may undermine the credibility of the international mission," presidential spokesman Olusegun Adeniyi said in a statement.

But he ruled out any withdrawal from the peacekeeping mission.

"Nigeria will still continue to participate because we are committed to our commitment in Darfur under the UN/AU hybrid force," Adeniyi added.
from:http://www.africasia.com/services/news/newsitem.php?area=africa&item=071002210557.3t71v59e.php

Meanwhile, it was interesting that in all the responses of conflict management offered by listeners to BBC World Service news last Friday in News Hour, it had to take Mark Malloch-Brown, former UN Deputy Secretary-general now-turned junior foreign minister in the Gordon Brown administration in the UK, to talk about an ASEAN response to the crisis in Myanmar/Burma.

In a manner which I personally felt was slightly self-serving on Australia's part, it was interesting to read that Australia did not wholly condem an ASEAN response; in fact, it praised ASEAN:

perhaps most significantly, the ASEAN leaders meeting in New York last week released an uncharacteristically strong statement condemning the violence, calling for the release of all political detainees, including Suu Kyi, and imploring all parties to find a political solution.
from:http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/regional-pressure-can-change-burma/2007/10/02/1191091111557.html?page=2

Perhaps I spoke too soon?:

It is ASEAN's new robust position that offers an opportunity for Australia.

Having successfully assumed a leadership role at APEC and enjoying strong relationships with a number of ASEAN countries — including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and ASEAN's chair, Singapore — Australia is well positioned to work with them in co-ordinating a regional response, including multiparty talks.

However it turns out in Burma, what with China, Japan and India playing key roles in the resolution of the crisis, what is crystal-clear to me is that the world ought to be moving slowly and surely towards a time when crises -- as exemplified by that of the ambush of the AU peacekeepers (ending in a meeting of the AU's Peace and Security Council), and that of Burma -- prompt a visceral direction towards a regional response.

About this, there must be no question.

Venezuela' s Looking at the MERCOSUR Fine Print...

Grandiloquent pronouncements against imperialism nothwithstanding, it is very easy to think of Chavez as a deluded leader who only goes to confirm that socialism is going the way of the dodo. Seriously speaking, let's face it, Chavez might attract "right-wing" criticism, but he certainly has an idea about how to bring in the role of the state. Perhaps refusing to renew the operating license for RCTV, a private Venezuelan television station may have attracted cacophony among the right-wingers who feel it spells a categorical loss of free speech. However, no-one said he had to be perfect.

Today, sounds like he's a marked man. He's particularly irked by the right-wingers of the Brazilian and Uruguay camp who feel he has little to offer beyond pronouncements of imperialism left, right, and centre. Chavez himself believes:

Mercosur and the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) must be reformulated, Chavez insists, since both are marked by Capitalism and fierce competition.

from: http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=74234

He's currently in Iran, where he is said to have made the arguments above. Now, interestingly, if Venezuela choses to rescind his decision to join MERCOSUR, he is ready to join ALBA:

"If the Brazilian Right is stronger than the idea of integration, then we will withdraw from Mercosur ... our model is one of integration and we believe in it deeply and it is called the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA)."

With Rwanda and Burundi having joined the East African Community on 1 July from the quasi-defunct Economic Community of Central African States(ECCAS), it just goes, in my view, to underscore how the plethora of regional economic communities offer necessary comparative advantages--both economic and otherwise--to countries. Without a harmonisation, it is evident that countries might start withdrawing and crossing the carpet, as it were, whenever a dispute arises.

In the specific context of the African Union government, which radio reports indicate, at the time of writing, that the "gradualists" are taking the day, it brings into sharp relief the utmost importance of fine-tuning and harmonising the RECS so as to avoid situations like this one befalling Chavez and Venezuela.

Arab League Overtures to the African Union?

Cash-strapped AU peacekeepers are to receive a boost of $1m from no less than the Arab League towards the AU's peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

It does not matter, in my view, that Somalia is a member of the Arab League--therefore the imperative impelling the Arab League to act; I think that its dedicating itself to the African Union, and by extension, regional cooperation by this substantial shot-in-the-arm is a reflection of its desire to engage (proactively), which is always a good thing!

People Power Through Mercosur Parliament?

You have got to give it to the Latin Americans. When it comes to people power, they certainly have got it! Remember what happened with the Free Trade Area of the Americas(FTAA), which was scheduled to take off in 2005? It was in Brussels, in 2002, that I started writing about the FTAA, and it certainly looked like it was going to happen.

But the Latin Americans got big on people power--and used it to good effect. In Wikipedia, description of the FTAA is "proposed". Never to have happened. A flop.

Unlike the Latin Americans, the AU countries and their relations, by way of the ACP Group, with the EU on the EPAs continues apace as if regional integration à la européen would be the best transplant for the African continent.

It seems like the Africans haven't quite gotten round to the effect of people power in the way our Latin American friends have. So sophisticated they appear to be in this regard that they have, as an article maintains, considered the:

...initiative to implement mechanisms of people's participation in the Parliament of the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) similar to the street parliamentarianism in Venezuela

Is it any surprise that it is Venezuela that is proposing this idea?

The mind boggles;-)

Some of the Regions--in Brief

APEC

--Australia has put down "energy", unsurprisingly, as the biggest issue for discussion for the next APEC summit, slated for September

ASEAN

--Japan and the 10-member regional bloc are to sign a free-trade agreement

Africa Union

--The Ghanaian-based private newspaper, The Statesman, has begun looking at the so-called Africa Union government discussions slated for the AU summit here in Accra in July.

European Union

--THe 27-member bloc certainly looks like it has way too much time on its hands! It's setting up an early warning system:

The European Union said Wednesday it would set up an early warning system to watch for foreign trade barriers that it says prevent European companies from exporting to growing markets

from:http://manufacturing.net/article.aspx?id=139801

Charming!

More like it! When the AU Criticises the EU

Oh Joy! The EU Business wesbite reports in a 21 March article that the 53-member AU representative in Brussels, Ambassador Mahamat Annadif, has castigated no less than...

...the ostensibly-mighty European Union of 27 members that they are employing "double standards" over Zimbabwe "while ignoring abuses by other African leaders". Though he was short in specifics, he maintained :

"I would have preferred that there were no double standards at the European level, even for judging heads of state"

He maintained:

"We talk about Zimbabwe, but for me there are other heads of state who are just as important to avoid as Mugabe, but they have support ... which means that today, no one says a word to them,"

In my view, the African Union has, for too long, kow-towed to the EU, because of its colonial and financial dependence on them (among other factors). While talk is cheap, it is important the AU begin to openly criticise the EU, whilst contemporraneously salivating on so-called funds from the European Development Fund, which only serve as tools to deepen AU country dependence on them.

The AU has many light years to go in order to get some its house in order, but developments like these remind me of the very necessary "eternal vigilance" needed on dealing with the Europeans.