Ex-diplomat Bernal spotlights issues in US-Jamaica relations

Ambassador Richard Bernal has had a varied professional life that included a 10-year stint as Jamaica’s ambassador to the United States and as a Caribbean representative on the board of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Many of the issues he dealt with during his time in Washington, DC, remain relevant to relations between the two governments today.

Prior to taking up his ambassadorial posting in May 1991, Bernal had done academic and technical work, taught economics at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, and advised the Government through assignments with the Planning Institute of Jamaica and the Ministry of Finance.

His sojourn as a diplomat also came after engagements with the Bank of Jamaica and the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) and later, the job as chief executive of the former state-owned Workers Savings and Loan Bank.

“They (the Jamaican Government) were looking for someone with economic credentials to go to Washington. The main issue then was economic. We wanted to normalise and re-establish our relations with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. We wanted to lobby for the Caribbean Basin Initiative and more trade benefits, promote investments and seek debt relief. They took an economist with international experience and hoped that he would evolve into a diplomat,” Bernal told The Sunday Gleaner in a recent interview.

Today, the economic issues are more about the need to ramp up Jamaica’s production and trade; attracting climate-smart and sustainable investments; making a mark in the high-end value-added echelons of business process outsourcing; compliance with global anti-money laundering rules; dealing with the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic; and responding to price and supply shocks from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, rising inflation and what some analysts see as another looming global recession.

These are all issues that Bernal now contends with in another capacity as a senior associate for the Americas programme at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

Another of his former jobs, as chief negotiator with the Caribbean Community Regional Negotiating Machinery, which he took up on leaving Washington in August 2001, also prepared the multifaceted professional to weigh in on some of these current global economic matters.

GUN AND DRUG TRADE

Apart from the many economic issues, the age-old problem of the illegal flow of guns into Jamaica from the United States is expected to once again be on the agenda of relations between Jamaica and the US, as Washington’s new man in Kingston, Nick Perry, settles into his chair.

Bernal was called on to brief Perry – a former New York Assemblyman, who grew up in Kingston – on the Jamaica-US relationship.

“The restrictions on purchasing weapons in the US are not as strong as we would like, in terms of slowing the flow of guns coming in. We have been speaking to the US about this, like many other countries, for many years. The problem is, it is very difficult to detect and also, it is the right of US citizens, after certain filling out of forms, to purchase guns. So it is a very difficult problem [to solve],” says Bernal, now professor of practice at The UWI, Mona-based SALISES, and research fellow at the P.J. Patterson Centre for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy, also at Mona.

He explained other dimensions of the difficulty: “The guns are not coming in the normal channels. They are being smuggled and, therefore, it is very difficult to track, especially for a country surrounded by sea. There are just so many access points. Of course, guns coming in are closely tied in with drug smuggling, both in relation to marijuana and cocaine.”

Immigration is a major talking point in the US and one that stirs passion, particularly in the political debates between Democrats and Republicans. But as far as Bernal is concerned, Jamaica is not an immigration problem for the United States.

“Not enough Jamaicans go there. Not many Jamaicans go illegally. Many Jamaicans go for temporary work. We are not an immigration problem, both in the nature of the access we have and in the numbers,” he contends.

Immigration, for him, represents one form of people-to-people contact that is considered as important as the relationship between governments. He says that at the P.J. Patterson Centre, his work and that of the statesman in residence, former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, focuses on mobilising a wider public engagement to complement cooperation between governments of Caribbean and African countries.

On the matter of immigration and the US, Bernal is convinced that the Americans are far more concerned about migrants entering their countries across the US-Mexico border. In addition, people fleeing Cuba and Haiti by boat have seen divergent US immigration policies being developed and put into practice by the US authorities over the years.

“The US policy has been to block the illegal entry by the land border and to put those people in a processing situation. With Cubans and Haitians, they tend to return them, although I noticed recently where Cuba said they would not take any of these returning people,” Bernal said, giving an overview of American immigration policy response.

SYMBOL OF PRIDE

The responsible exercise of diplomacy, he believes, is important for healthy relationships between countries and for providing the best representation for a country’s nationals overseas. It is against this background that he says he remains proud to have spearheaded early in his tenure as ambassador an initiative to purchase the building that now houses Jamaica’s diplomatic mission in the US capital. That move, he recalled, made it possible for Jamaica’s flag to be flown on a building in Washington, DC, for the first time since the country opened a mission there in 1962. The national flag, he explained, could not be flown from the previously rented premises.

The Jamaican embassy to the United States in located at the sought-after Dupont Circle, with ample public transport access and within minutes of the White House and Capitol Hill.

Bernal, who served during the tenure of Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, believes his success there was, in no small measure, helped by the energy and integral involvement of his wife of 51 years, Margaret Reckord Bernal, in the social and cultural life of the Jamaican diaspora.

Ambassador Bernal, who also served The UWI for four years as pro-vice-chancellor for global affairs at the end of his IDB directorship in 2016, is son of Kathleen and Franklin Bernal. His mother worked in insurance, while his father was employed in the Jamaican civil service and was known for his research and paintings of birds of the Caribbean.

A Kingstonian and product of Jamaica College (JC), Bernal represented the school in cricket, football and tennis. He revels in what he says is the indisputable fact of him having attended the national track and field championships as a member of the JC team. He pointed out that although being part of the squad, he failed to make the cut to actually participate, despite his father having arranged for young Bernal to receive training in discus-throwing from no less a person than Jamaica’s illustrious Olympian Herb McKinley.

huntley.medley@gleanerjm.com