Studying Caricom and practicing Caricom

An interesting editorial entitled `Time for a New West Indian (Caribbean) Commission’ appeared in one of our sister Caricom newspapers in Jamaica last Friday. It called for the appointment of a new Commission to reflect on what has been happening to our regional institution, on what practical steps now need to be taken to get to, among other things, the implementation of the Caricom Single Market and Economy, and to put ourselves in a position to cope with the various changes going on in the global environment that are relevant to us. The editorial would seem to have been prompted by what it deemed to be the holding of another Heads of Government conference which has not produced results likely to advance either the integration aims of Caricom, or the steps required for the Region to cope with the current financial crisis and the economic recession that have struck so many of our countries.

This call follows recent ones, mainly from Jamaican columnists, for a renegotiation of the Caricom Treaty; and a paper published in January of this year, “Caribbean Regional Governance and the Sovereignty/Statehood Problem” by two British political scientists who have been students of Caribbean politics, Anthony Payne and Matthew Bishop (the latter now resident at the UWI St Augustine Campus’ Institute of International Relations) and published by the Centre for International Governance Innovation of Canada.

The editorialist having roared however, what is suggested in conclusion seems to us to be something of a mouse: the appointment of another West Indian or Caribbean Commission, to give us some new recommendations as to where we should now be going, what we should be doing, and how we should be doing it. The paper however puts a proviso on its own recommendation and suggests that none of the region’s technocrats, advisers or diplomats associated with previous ventures of this kind should be associated with this new venture. And the reason for this advice is that the recommendations made by such persons have turned out to be “puerile”. So what some people often refer to as “talkshops” are to be replaced by yet another talkshop, but with new talkers. It would appear that, in spite of the extensive migration of professionals that has characterized the Region in the last twenty years of so, what is recommended seems to suggest that there is still an unlimited amount of talent in our Region, waiting to serve our governments in tasks which would appear to have gone nowhere over that period. Or perhaps we now need some foreign assistance for this too?

We can understand the frustration which many in the Region feel about the slow implementation of the CSME in particular, and the decision of Caricom leaders at their recent meeting to move to setting yet another series of deadlines for its implementation. After the assumption of office of Prime Minister Thompson as Prime Minister of Barbados and lead Head of Government for the CSME, a regional assessment did indeed take place on the progress of the CSME, presumably including progress on the Single Development Vision advocated in the report prepared under the leadership of Professor Norman Girvan. No doubt the new decision of Caricom Heads is based in some measure on that review. But it would be interesting to, despite the suggestion that no old hands should deal with our present predicaments, what Professor Girvan’s conclusions would be on this matter nearly three years after presentation of his report.

We can understand too, the frustrations in Jamaica, as in some other member-states, relating to what they consider a degree of inequity among Caricom economies, in the terms and conditions applying to production, and consequently trade, in the Region. Jamaican writers have been complaining for some time that Trinidad & Tobago has what they would consider an unnatural production advantage as a result of a differential in the prices for the country’s natural gas in particular which operate in the Trinidad market, as against those which apply to the sale of the gas to Jamaican industry. But issues like this need the persistence of negotiation in good faith or recourse to the Caribbean Court of Justice in its original jurisdiction, if diplomacy seems to be going nowhere. But CCJ decisions would have to be accepted, with no excuses about infringement of sovereignty.

But we can also understand the frustrations of other countries in the Region when they discovered, after the extensive labouring over the creation of the CSME, that new Prime Minister Bruce Golding, in one of his first statements after assuming office, threw vociferous doubt on the possibilities for Jamaica’s adherence to the “E” in the CSME, on the grounds that this was likely to compromise the sovereignty of the state.

Clearly it is matters like this, including among others a determination on the part of our leaders to tackle the serious problems of air transportation in our Region, and those relating to migration and the contingent rights of migrants, that will permit progress in our regional movement. We do not require any more Commissions to come to conclusions on them. (In any case the people of our Region now fully and cynically understand that governments’ recourse to  Commissions, and particularly so-called Commissions of Inquiry, are more often that not equivalent to delaying commitment to action).Rather, the citizens of the Region need some practical reassurances that governments have the will to come to terms with the requirements of effective regional action. And there is reason to believe too, after the confusions relating to Caricom’s interventions in Haiti, and the quarrelling over who should be responsible for the financing of Jamaica troops there, that our foreign friends and benefactors have, over the years, developed serious doubts as to our governments’ abilities to deliberate on and sustain collective action. That really is the issue.

It is, in our view, difficult to insist at this point, that the progress of the Single Market can be advanced much more without some firm governmental adherence to the provisions of a Single Economy. Most of our economies now need what the Single Vision report refers to as new drivers of economic growth, as the old drivers – whether bananas, sugar or bauxite – lose their strength for divers reasons. If anything is needed at this time, it is a deliberate consideration by our governments on what the requirements for new drivers are, what are the decisions that need to be made, and what the institutional systems, including legally binding arrangements for implementing and sustaining those decisions, should be. The confusions in the Region over the EPA have indicated the uncertainties relating to all these issues. Yet it is not that the facts are not there. What is absent is the firmness of the decision-making relating to the facts  – with the so frequent excuse of the necessity to maintain “sovereignty”.

It is clear that the underpinning of the Eastern Caribbean economies by clear decision-making systems, based on the collective decision-making of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank system, has protected those countries from a substantial level of damage in the short run. And the decision of the OECS governments for collective acceptance of the Eight Point Stabilisation and Growth Plan elaborated by the Central Bank, has permitted wider regional and international confidence in that sub-region’s response to the global crisis; the evidence of this being the prompt and definitive response of the OECS’s neighbours, Trinidad and Barbados, towards cooperation in respect of the CLICO and Stanford collapses.

Now, as we look down the road, and as we examine the regional implications of the Haitian earthquake, it does not take a sophisticated seer, to perceive that the design of regional integration will change as the Dominican Republic, for example, persists in its call for regional reconfiguration based on a recognition that Caricom can no longer just be the Anglo part of the area; and as, inevitably, Cuban economic liberalisation proceeds and both Jamaica and the Dominican Republic find synergies with that country permitting new drivers of growth in tourism, manufacturing and mineral exploitation.

These are the issues to be considered at this time, bereft of sneering about the “puerile” efforts of others. Practicing Caricom, the role pre-eminently of the political directorate, is now the primary task, even as the studying of Caricom goes on. And in both of these there is room for the contributions of all.