VB: Most may find the transition from journalist to diplomat to be difficult – you managed to do so without softening – such as in the handling of the OECD’s harmful tax competition at the turn of the century and the WTO challenge of 2003. What made you shift career paths?
RS: I actually started my working life as a broadcaster specializing in news and current affairs at the age of 21. While I continued as an investigative documentaries producer and on-air broadcaster pioneering ‘hard-talk’ type discussion programmes on current issues, I graduated into management quickly. At 23, I became Programme Director of the Guyana Broadcasting Service and at 25, its General Manager – the youngest person to do so in any part of the world.
I had a passion for Caribbean integration which coincided with my return to Guyana from the United Kingdom where I spent my teenage years. I saw broadcasting as an essential tool for educating and informing the Caribbean people of the importance to their lives of the Caribbean Free Trade Area (CARIFTA), which had just started. I was one of the early contributors to the creation of the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) and the Caribbean News Agency (CANA) as instruments for overcoming the lack of information – and suspicion – among Caribbean people about each other. Countries of the Caribbean were too small to survive individually, yet each of them was becoming independent states without the means to make such independence meaningful – integration and the pooling of their individual sovereignty in their collective benefit was, therefore, essential. I wanted to contribute to making such integration possible.
I went into diplomacy to advance the cause of integration while fighting for the independence of the Caribbean from external forces. I have spent my life doing just that in various diplomatic roles.
Broadcast journalism prepared me for a life in diplomacy. It exposed me to regional and international issues, and the need to understand and analyze them. It required enormous reading – not very easy in those days without instant access to information on the Internet. It also allowed me to interview key players on the regional and international scene of that period. Because I was a broadcast commentator required on many occasions to speak spontaneously but knowledgably, I learned to speak on my feet – a capacity that has served me well in my diplomatic career in unexpected situations.
So, I suppose what made me shift career paths were two things: First, I had reached the summit of a broadcasting career by the time I was 27 and I wanted to do more. Second, I knew what I wanted was to continue to contribute to Caribbean integration and to advance the region’s collective interest in the international community, and the diplomatic service seemed to offer that opportunity.
VB: You’ve reverted to a substantial amount of journalism, and you write extensively on issues affecting the Caribbean in the areas of trade, international relations, economics and the environment, what would you say drives this prolific output?
RS: I would not call what I write as ‘journalism’. What I do is commentary on the political economy of the Caribbean and the international issues that affect the region. I believe it is part advocacy of action, regionally and internationally, in the interest of the region’s people and part provocative thinking. I draw on a range of diplomatic roles that I have played, as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom; as an Ambassador and trade negotiator for small and vulnerable economies in the World Trade Organisation; as a representative of small states in the 53-nation Commonwealth where I have served in various capacities including as a member of the Board of Governors, as an Advisor on small states, on Committees that fought for an end to apartheid in South Africa; and as a member and Rapporteur of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) that produced the 2011 report on urgent reform of the organization; as an elected member of the Executive Board of UNESCO; and as a negotiator with the OECD on its pernicious ‘Harmful Tax Competition Initiative’; as well as negotiations with the US, UK and Chinese governments on a variety of agreements.
That life’s work has taught me that small states have no free ticket in world affairs and they also have no guaranteed place in the world economy. Small states such as ours in the Caribbean are marginal to the interests of powerful countries and powerful international institutions. If small states are to secure any space in the international economy or in international affairs, they have to contend with intellectual vigour, and they have to do so consistently and together. None of them should believe that being small is good in international affairs – they need to form bigger groupings and alliances in their own interest.
Sometimes in negotiations even when individual small states win the intellectual, moral and legal arguments, the sheer power of raw force of the powerful states or entities negates the victory. No small state should regard the occasional victory as evidence of their power; occasional victories are what they are – occasional.
VB: Which of your achievements do you value most?
RS: There are two. The first was leading the charge to stop the OECD in their tracks when its powerful member States sought to unilaterally and arbitrarily impose rules on the rest of the world including the Caribbean on ‘tax competition’ which was – and is – a ruse to close down our financial services sector that porved too competitive for them. Unfortunately, the Caribbean subsequently surrendered in that battle due to disunity and the abandonment of alliances with other states. The second was leading the case for Antigua and Barbuda against the United States at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) when the US had violated its legally-binding undertakings under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) by banning Internet gaming operations located in Antigua from crossing the border into the US.
The US was wrong in law, but it was determined to impose its extra-territorial laws in defiance of its international obligations under the GATS even to the detriment of the Antigua and Barbuda economy and loss of jobs for many well-educated, computer-educated young people. In this regard, while I led the WTO charge, it was the then Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda who showed the political courage to mandate me to carry forward the challenge. The duty of care to those young people and to the Antigua and Barbuda economy demanded a robust reaction to demonstrate to the US, that despite its power, it should not get away with trampling on the rights of a small country. Securing a victory from the WTO Arbitration body was important to show the US that a small state will have the courage to stand up against injustice.
VB: What does this honorary D.Litt mean to you?
RS: The award of the D.Litt from UWI means a great deal to me. I have received other honours of which I am very proud and profoundly grateful. But, I see the D.Litt from UWI as recognition by the region’s leading institution of learning and thinking of the modest contribution I have made to the people of my region. I am deeply honoured that the University considered me worthy. For me the D.Litt from UWI is a special badge of honour that I shall treasure for the rest of my life, because it comes from my people.
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