Despite a warning by former Jamaican Prime Minister PJ Patterson that they needed to do something urgently about implementing decision, Caricom Heads meeting in Georgetown last week are still to take a concrete decision
Bruce Golding
The communiqué issued late Saturday night contained just one sentence on governance. It said, “Heads of Government reviewed the governance arrangements of the Community and expect to conclude their considerations on the basis of proposals to be advanced by the Secretary-General and the Task Force on Governance”.
Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding had told reporters on Friday that some “interesting ideas” had been discussed with regards to an implementation agency for decision-making in Caricom. He had said that he hoped that arising out of these ideas a platform would have been constructed on which the Heads might be able to “finally address this enormous difficulty of governance”. He added that he hoped that it gained traction.
He noted that if Caricom was not going in the direction of a political union “…then the challenge is to find a mechanism that works because right now where the void I think exists, is that the authority resides in (the Heads”. It doesn’t seem from the communiqué that this discussion went as far as had been hoped for by Golding.
At Thursday’s opening of the 30th summit of Caricom heads at the National Cultural Centre, Patterson had said that the community’s credibility had been wounded by the failure to implement solemn declarations year after year.
He said “the litmus test for effective governance is not measured by the decisions taken when heads meet, it is whether action follows…. The greatest threat to the credibility of Caricom lies clearly in the failure to implement solemn declarations and decisions made conference after conference”, Patterson declared, adding that he himself could not be absolved of this flaw.
Further, he stated that “mature regionalism will remain a pipe-dream unless authority is vested in an executive mechanism which is charged with full time responsibility for ensuring the implementation within a specified time frame of the critical decisions taken by Heads and other designated organs of the Community. For how much longer can a final decision be postponed on upgrading the institutional machinery if the community is not to become comatose?”
This argument goes all the way back to the 1992 report of the West Indian Commission chaired by Sir Shridath Ramphal – who was in the audience at the time that Patterson spoke – where an executive mechanism was recommended.
It was later taken up again the Rose Hall Declaration of the same date of last week’s conference six years ago but has not moved much since then. The Rose Hall Declaration had envisaged “The establishment of a CARICOM Commission or other executive mechanism, whose purpose will be to facilitate the deepening of regional Integration… The Commission’s function will be to exercise full-time executive responsibility for furthering implementation of Community decisions in such areas as well as to initiate proposals for Community action in any such area.”
Meanwhile, Saturday’s communiqué signalled the urgent need for the establishment of an “effective regional regime of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures”. The Heads mandated the committee on trade and economic development (COTED) to advise on arrangements for a Caribbean Agricultural Health and Food Safety Agency.
The Heads further agreed that “member states should extend to intra-regional imports of new food products treatment no less favourable than that extended to extra-regional imports of new food products, including risk assessments inspections”.
Jamaica had raised this as a serious point of concern noting that meat patties were having great difficulty entering the Trinidad market even though Kingston’s standards organization had been accepted by the European Union resulting in the grouping no longer having to inspect the island’s facilities.
“They have assessed them and they accept their work and yet our own Caricom partners won’t accept the certification from our standards organization”, Golding lamented.
to take a concrete decision, no one wants to commit, so it’s time to abandon the caricom and let it be CARIGO
You see wha i talking bout, big men cannot sit down and iron out issues.
These heads of government gatherings have always been and will continue to be ceremonial at best. The reason for this is because there is a total disconnect between the grand visions intertwined between all that oratory fluff and the means necessary to interpret, plan and implement the entire wishlist into hard tangible solutions. The silver tongued orator died many decades ago and his wishlist is still sitting somewhare in a Caricom desk drawer gathering dust.
Their next big obstacle is money my friends. Guyana has the potential to develop a regional trade currency because we produce gold. Back the currency with gold. Open a gold trading office and encourage local investors to buy gold bonds too. When the international banks interfere, then go to the summit meetings and scream bloddy murder.
Second important phase: No inland nation ever became more prosperous than a coastal maritime nation. Guyana need to become a maritime nation. Hundreds of years ago the European merchants and the Pirate of the Caribbean discovered a natural wind phenomenon which snakes its way along the Caribbean islands.
They hitched a ride on these winds to ply their trade. Hence the word Tradewinds appeared in our english lexicon. The tradewinds are still there but the ships are all gone. Guyana need to become the maritime masters of the tradewinds and I am not talking about a few wooden plantain boats. I am talking about swift schooner like sailing vessels.
We need to build our own diesel/ windpowered ferrocement ships. We will fuel these ships with coconut and any other kind of oil, we will compliment this fuel with hydrogen cell fuel and wind power. It is a win/win/win proccess. We have to own and control the entire proccess or the fruits of our labour goes directly to the foreign profiteers.
There was an article in SN about a small foreign company that wants to introduce polymers in road building. We need to instantly recognise good foreign companies like this one and stay away from the bad ones. Polymers can achieve strenghts of up to 14,000 psi in a few days drying time.
Stucco which is more durable than paint is comprised of sand cement and colored polymers. I have mentioned before that there is new cheap technology that can make durable mud bricks by compression alone, no firing needed. Mix this with colored polymers and we have a hiend exportable brick product.
The few thirdworld countries that managed to rise out of the doldrum of medioracy did so by pulling out all of the stops, not listening to these so called foreign consultants and economic advisers who told them that their local effort is not feasible. They blazed their own trail, these countries are now among the G8 nations. They are Brazil, India and China.
We can do it too my friends, in 5 years time we can make our country rock with innovative development. I have all of the plans that I gathered over the years in case one day I return home. That does not seem likely anytime soon so I want to hand it over to my countrymen, but no one seems to be listening. HELLOOOOOOO!
Joe.
gET IN TOUCH WITH ME ANYTIME, I WOULD LOVE TO SIT DOWN AND EXCHANGE IDEAS AND VIEWS WITH YOU. Tel # 508-314-8922
Not bad Joe but Caricom is not build for this. It’s basically a talk shop and the secretariat is just the note taker. The whole treaty needs revising to make the caricom a forward planning institution capable of developing regional policies and programmes which are ‘corporate’ in nature and does not impinge but support the development of sovereign states while maintaining their rights to participate or opt out of any arrangement contrary to their constitution and national interests.
Would we move quickly towards political union? Your guess is as good as mine.
joe i read the article, you will hear from me soon from afar. keep in touch on this forum.
Joe I on board and we can start with a few feel fre to contact me Joe
Bruce in the first place we do not support the union…..this is well known, you have no decision to make Bruce.
Bruce even if Caricom is to go in the right direction you will still have problems supporting the union.
Caricom will collapse not too long from now and you Bruce will be worse off. Why? America is right now under pressure and must address the needs of American and the Banking System. When this banking system is corrected life will not be the same again, it would not be easy to get from America like before everyone have to walk a very tight rope. We are all seeing it here as we live day by day.
You and your fellow Caribbean leaders need to stop double talking and playing with Caribbean people’s lives.
No one is held accountable for what he says in Caricom. No department or system in place to question and expose the credibility of Caribbean Leaders. They do their own thing, and the people suffer.
Jamaicans, I encourage you to move to Guyana and take up new residence their, life would be much better. You can make it in Guyana leave Bruce in the eye of the storm.
I’ll pretend I did not read this correctly.To the Caribbean people.Caricom governance?In what way? A new set of the same structuring, but no movement?In a cause they consider hopeless?
anything about democracy and good governance has to be postponed, why? because this is going to embarrass the host country.
No surprise here, the dictator wants nothing to be discussed about the undemocratic norms which the PPP have embraced.
Quite hilarious, these were the same clowns prior to 92 calling for free and fair elections and democracy. Now the shoes on the other foot they do not have time to discuss.