Few will really be surprised at the decision of Caricom Secretary General Edwin Carrington to end his tenure at the Secretariat towards the end of this year. For one thing, to put it at its simplest, there are few technocrats who would have wished to remain as long as he has – eighteen years – in a regional institution, in a region that entails continuing travel, where such air travel has become more, rather than less difficult.
In addition the burden of travel has increased as Caricom itself during Carrington’s tenure has widened the geographical scope of its interest, recognizing, for example, the new significance of China and India and the Asian region in general, and of the necessity to come to terms with the changing economic and political status of Latin America. That changing status, indeed, has now begun to have the psychological effect of making not only Guyana, Suriname, Belize and Trinidad & Tobago, but the rest of Caricom, begin to think of Latin America as a “near neighbour” (to use one of the phrases that post-Soviet Russian now uses about some of its neighbours), with all that implies for our future diplomacy.
Carrrington himself has, in his announcement, given his assessment of the successful tasks that have been undertaken under his watch, so there is no need to go through them here. Both his sympathetic and unsympathetic critics have begun to give him their own examination marks. But surely, this task is not as simple as it might sound, since the Secretary General, de jure, really functions in the role of messenger and executor of the decisions of his presidential and prime ministerial masters. Criticism of Carrington has tended to be made on the basis of a particular assumption: this being that the Secretary General has, or must presume to give himself, the task of not only preparing the documentation on the basis of which the heads make their decisions, but in some way guiding them, using his diplomatic sensibilities, to the conclusions that he thinks most appropriate.
In that context, many are prone to compare the performance of Mr Carrington to that of some of his predecessors, in particular the late William Demas, who was thought on some critical issues to almost negotiate his way among heads of government to ensure that not necessarily the most convenient, but the most proper for the long term, decisions were arrived at by the collective grouping. Reference has also been made in that regard, particularly because he came from this region, of the diplomacy of Sir Shridath Ramphal as Secretary General of the Commonwealth, an institution of much larger membership. He was seen as being able to persevere through the varying opinions and manoeuvres of heads of government on particular issues, and to weld acceptable conclusions that were able to move an existing status quo to a more acceptable conclusion. One example of this was undoubtedly Sir Shridath’s participation in the problem-solving of both the South Africa and Rhodesia issues, for which he was duly recognized by the heads of the new South Africa and Zimbabwe, after their liberation.
But this mode of proceeding has always necessitated a resilience, in the face of possible periodic rebuffs from political superiors, which many organization officials have tended to find hard to sustain. Comparisons have often been made between the energetic Dag Hammarskjold on the one hand, and the more temperate Kurt Waldheim, or the apparently manipulable Perez de Cuellar.
In our region, close observers would have sensed the frustration of both Secretaries General McIntyre and Rainford, as Caricom began to contemplate movement beyond the Common Market stage. And it is, in a sense, a tribute to Edwin Carrington that he did not ‘give up the ghost’ earlier, as frustrations and resistance have built over the years since the 1992 Heads of Government decisions on the issue of movement to a Single Market and Economy, and the appropriate institutional reorganization that these necessitated for the Community.
The fact of the matter has been, however, that the Heads of Government have been persistently divided on these particular matters in the last almost two decades, and Carrington has obviously been unable to see his way to “manoeuvring” or “obtaining” (themselves loaded words) a sufficient majority of heads to agree and maintain their agreement, on a set of formulas that would permit him a basis for pursuing implementation of the decisions made. One would not be surprised if the SG felt that decisions arrived at on regional governance by the heads, were so clothed in euphemisms and compromise statements (meaning capable of variable interpretations), that he never felt confident (having taken his ‘soundings’) that the translation of decisions (on governance for example) into practical institutional frames by various technical working groups were accommodating enough to recommend them to the heads of government. It may not be all that surprising then, that many observers of the Caricom in recent years have tended to blame the Secretary General for not being energetic enough in pursuit of solutions.
They probably blame him for lacking diplomatic resilience, even though he has had the physical and psychological resilience to stay much longer than his recent predecessors.
So we will soon no longer have Carrington “to kick around any more,” to paraphrase Nixon after one of his pre-presidential setbacks. But, as is evident, the dissatisfaction about Caricom’s progress, in an environment now even much more changed than Caricom heads had anticipated when they made their decisions, continues to grow.
We would venture to think, however, that before anyone worth his salt, as we say, is bold enough to accept an offer of the post of Secretary General, he or she will have to make up their minds about the precision of the mandate which he/she is receiving from the heads. In the knowledge that the Single Market and Economy is to be completed; that the complementary Single Economy Vision is to be made into practical working steps; that in that connection the diplomacy for achieving the external assistance (well beyond the scope of what is really a minuscule Capital Development Fund) necessary if the intra-regional and the extra-regional adjustment that is required in the face of the end of preferentialism is to be achieved; and that the issue of the possible extension of the geographical scope of Caricom is recognized as an issue on the agenda for the currently organized Caricom: anyone who seriously wishes to be an active recipient of the post must have, and use, his/her prestige to get clear the lines of heads’ thinking on these and other issues and the sense of a practical mandate for accepting it. Quite frankly those who do not think they can do this, or that it is presumptuous to do so, should hesitate to take up the challenge, for they can be sure that the frustration experienced in the past is already ordained.
For this purpose, it should be mandatory in the coming selection process, that any short list (and truly short – no more than three), of persons, should have an audience with the heads of government – all of them – to get clear what he or she will be expected to do in the next five to ten years (and the tenure should be no more), and that that mandate has the unreserved support of the current heads, or what might be called ‘a reasonable working majority’ of them.
In the meantime, whatever the reservations that some may have about Secretary General Carrington’s tenure, it is only right that we thank him for his services in a time of great pressure, internally and externally, and wish him well in his future endeavours, or in simple retirement.
