ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada -- After more than two decades of covering presidential summits, I have reached a startling conclusion -- Caribbean leaders run faster than anybody else.
By Andres Oppenheimer''What is wrong with these people?'' I asked myself. Don't they realize that they are practicing 19th century public diplomacy in the 21st century? Don't they know that it's often easier to interview a Cabinet minister from Mexico or Brazil than one from most Caribbean islands?
In the United States, Latin America or Europe, presidential summits are increasingly open events. When presidents are isolated from the press for security reasons, they send their ministers to brief reporters several times a day, and often select reporters for one-on-one interviews.
By comparison, the 25th summit of CARICOM that ended here today was a typical example of the Caribbean media-phobia.
As if Grenada wasn't far enough from the foreign press -- it's a seven-hour trip from Miami -- the Caribbean heads of state spent the day Tuesday meeting on a secluded island off the coast of St. George's. They needed privacy, CARICOM officials said.
On their return to St. George's, when a journalist approached Barbados Prime Minister Owen Arthur to ask what had happened, the prime minister dashed away faster than one could say ''your excellency.'' The same thing happened with other high-ranking officials.
On Monday, a CARICOM secretariat official angrily confiscated background papers that two journalists had picked up from a conference table. Never mind that an official later said that the documents were worthless.
It's not that Caribbean leaders don't care about the outside world. Over the years, I have heard many of them complain that their countries receive little coverage in the U.S. media.
Even at this week's summit, in his speech during Monday's inaugural ceremony, Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson had talked about the ''imperative'' need of building bridges to the Jamaican diaspora.
Yet when my Herald colleague, Michael A.W. Ottey, approached Patterson after the speech to repeat his request for an interview -- which he had submitted in writing weeks earlier, to no avail -- the Jamaican leader excused himself, saying that if he started giving individual interviews, he would have to spend his entire time doing that. With that, he blew what could have been a great chance to reach one of the biggest Jamaican diasporas in the world.
Granted, some Caribbean leaders were kind enough to grant me interviews during the summit, including Bahamian Prime Minister Perry Christie and Guyanese President Bharat Jagdeo. And some others held news briefings. But Caribbean reporters told me that most of the attending leaders rarely talk to journalists individually.
Why are CARICOM leaders more press-shy than American, Latin American or European officials? Among the explanations I got was that -- as former British colonies -- they follow the British tradition of keeping the press at a distance, or that they could never afford the public relations firms that taught Latin American leaders -- if nothing else -- to use the foreign press to their advantage.
''There is no public relations tradition in this region,'' said David Lewis, an international relations consultant with Manchester Trade in Washington, D.C. ``It comes from the British tradition.''
Maybe so. However, as small countries that live off tourism -- one of the most image-sensitive industries -- they should be promoting themselves day and night. And if they don't want to play the game, they should stop complaining about being neglected by the international press.
