All star cast for Fifth Summit

Of the 34 Heads of State who will be in this country for the Summit of the Americas, only two are women. They are Argentina President Cristine Fernandez de Kirchner and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. Kirchner and Bachelet will find themselves in the company of other prominent women at the summit in the personalities of US First Lady Michelle Obama and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This does not mean that the male Heads of State will be left in the shade.

Amongst the male leaders who will be in TT for the summit will be Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who was renowned in Latin America during the 1980s when he grappled with the Contra insurgency that evaporated with the Iran/Contra Gate scandal which virtually brought then US President Ronald Reagan’s administration to its knees. Now in his second reincarnation as president without his trademark military uniform from the Sandinista era, Ortega will be joined at the summit by the flamboyant Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and equally controversial Bolivian President Evo Morales, a former coca farmer and the first indigenous man to be elected as Bolivia’s Head of State.

Before leaving on Wednesday for a visit to Brazil, Paraguay, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Venezuela, Prime Minister Patrick Manning said all of the 33 leaders who will be attending the summit have confirmed their attendance. Of the 34 leaders who will be in Port-of-Spain, 26 of them are married and will be accompanied by their spouses. The full list of leaders and their spouses who will be at the summit is as follows:

Prime Minister Patrick Manning and his wife Local Government Minister Hazel Manning;

United States President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle;

Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer and his wife Jacklyn;

Argentina President Fernandez de Kirchner and her husband former Argentina president Nestor de Kirchner;

Bahamas Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham and wife Delores;

Belize Prime Minister Dean Barrow and his wife Kim;

Barbados Prime Minister David Thompson and his wife Marie-Josephine;

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva and wife Marisa Leticia;

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife Laureen;

Colombia President Alvaro Uribe and his wife Lina Maria Moreno Meija;

Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez and wife Magarita Cedeno;

Ecuador President Rafael Correa Delgado and his wife Anne Malherbe;

El Salvador President Antonio Saca and his wife Ana Ligia Mixco;

Grenada Prime Minister Tillman Thomas and his wife Sandra;

Guatemala President Alvaro Colom and his wife Sandra Torres;

Haitian President Rene Preval and his wife Guerda Benoit;

Honduras President Manuel Zelaya and his wife Xiomara Castro;

Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding and his wife Lorna;

Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his wife Margarita Zavala;

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo;

Panama President Martin Torrijos and his wife Vivian Fernandez;

Peruvian President Alan Garcia and his wife Pilar Nores;

St Lucia Prime Minister Stephenson King and his wife Rosella Nestor;

St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves and his wife Eloise;

Suriname President Ronald Venetiaan and his wife Lisbeth;

Uruguay President Tabare Vazquez and his wife Maria Auxiliadora Delgado.

Bachelet, Morales, Paraguay President Fernando Lugo, Costa Rica President Oscar Aria, Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerritt, St Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Denzil Douglas are not married and will be coming alone.

Chavez and Guyana President Bharrat Jagdeo, are both divorced.

According to a bulletin issued by the National Secretariat on January 26, the official schedule for the summit’s main events has been developed and this was published exclusively by Sunday Newsday on February 15. All leaders, including Obama, arrive between April 16 and 17. Shortly after their arrival, the leaders will immediately go into a series of bilateral meetings and/or briefing meetings. The opening ceremony takes place in the Hyatt Regency’s ballroom on April 17 from 5 to 6 pm.

The leaders and their delegations will be treated to a cultural show from 6 to 7 pm in the ballroom. The Prime Minister and his wife will then host a cocktail reception for the leaders, their spouses and special guests. The leaders will get down to work early on April 18 with bilateral discussions from 8 to 9.30 am.

This will be followed by the first plenary session at the Hyatt’s ballroom with a holding room for alternates elsewhere in the hotel.

Prime Minister Patrick Manning will host a working lunch for the visiting Heads of State in the ballroom from 12.30 to 3 pm. The second and third plenary sessions will be held in the ballroom from 3 to 6.45 pm on April 18. Activities at the Hyatt will end on the evening of April 18 when Manning hosts an official dinner in the hotel’s ballroom for his fellow leaders.

On April 19, the final day of the summit, all 34 leaders will hold a retreat at the Diplomatic Centre. The closing ceremony, signing of the Declaration of Port-of-Spain and final press conference will all take place at the Diplomatic Centre on April 19 as well. While Manning and the visiting leaders are holding talks, the leaders’ spouses will be given an opportunity “to witness the country’s innovative growth path to development and engage in discussions relevant to the development of their own nations.” These activities include a “tour of nature reserve” on April 18 from 2 to 3 pm. Sources said the reserve in question is the Pointe-a-Pierre Wildfowl Trust which located inside the Petrotrin Camp in Pointe-a-Pierre. While in Pointe-a-Pierre, the spouses will be the guests of honour at a children’s concert. Sunday Newsday was reliably informed that the children who will be performing for the spouses have been rehearsing for a long time.

The spouses will be given a tour of Port-of-Spain on April 19, the final day of the summit, at 9.30 am. While the exact areas in the city that will be included in the tour are yet to be worked out, employees from the Port-of-Spain City Corporation and other State agencies have accelerated clean up activities in the city over the last two months.

One of the areas undergoing an intensive upgrade is Tamarind Square, long regarded as a haven for homeless persons in the city, but now being turned into a “scenic park.” After the tour of the city, the spouses will be treated to a fashion show and lunch at a venue to be determined at 10 am. A guest speaker will address the spouses at this function. Government officials said the specifics are currently being worked out and they do not anticipate any hitches when the summit begins. All leaders and their delegations are scheduled to leave this country on April 19 and 20.

The Summit of the Americas is the only forum where the 34 democratically elected Heads of State and Government of the Western Hemisphere meet to exchange ideas and opinions on the political, economic, social, and security challenges confronting the region and to develop a shared vision for the development of the hemisphere. On June 5, 2006, Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Americas meeting in the Dominican Republic at the thirty-sixth regular session of the OAS General Assembly formally accepted the offer of the government of Trinidad and Tobago to host the Fifth Summit of the Americas in 2009.

On September 18, 2006, at the Ministerial Summit Implementation Review Group meeting in Washington DC, the Chair of the Summit of the Americas Process was officially passed from Argentina to Trinidad and Tobago. The Fourth Summit of the Americas was held in Mar del Plata, Argentina on November 4, 2005. This made TT the first Caricom nation to host the Summit since its inception in 1994.