10
UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 5TH OCTOBER, 2014
THE UWI HONORARY GRADUAND:
SIR RONALD SANDERS
Among our eight honorees this year is
Sir Ronald Sanders
, whose
career has ranged from broadcast journalism to diplomacy. Sir Ronald
will be conferred with the D.Litt at the St. Augustine campus Graduation
ceremony for the Faculty of Social Sciences on October 24, 2014. He
shared some of his experiences with
UWI TODAY
editor,
Vaneisa Baksh.
A Passion
for Integration
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 proved 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.
