The original Treaty of Chaguaramas which established CARICOM in 1973 carefully provided no machinery for exercising central powers of implementation. Since then Heads of Government have steadfastly made sure that this should not change. Bold initiatives expanding the original objectives of CARICOM, shining words expressing visionary goals of togetherness, ringing declarations of unity and brotherhood, solemn promises, hand on heart, of wide-ranging decisive steps towards integration – all these have issued in an unending flow of splendid rhetoric year after year, Declaration after Declaration, Summit after Summit, Protocol after Protocol. But action’s cutting edge has always been lacking.
It isn’t that nothing has been done. The bureaucracy functions very well. As the West Indian Commission pointed out as long as 1992:
