CHEERS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR CARICOM

Reflections by Phil Pascal
QUOTE:
I was relieved by the information pertaining to a “forward move” on Community affairs as we prepare for 2010. They contrasted with some of the recent commentaries by
even distinguished former diplomats in Barbados and London, that CARICOM is almost sleep-walking into irrelevance.

IT was good to get last week the highlights of the CARICOM end-of-year round-up by Secretary-General Edwin Carrington and the top executive management team of the Secretariat.

The BBC Caribbean News had me following with close attention the exhortations and hopes as expressed by the longest serving Secretary-General of CARICOM.

I was relieved by the information pertaining to a “forward move” on Community affairs as we prepare for 2010. They contrasted with some of the recent commentaries by even distinguished former diplomats in Barbados and London, that CARICOM is almost sleep-walking into irrelevance.

As conveyed with a mix of exuberance and self-gratulation, CARICOM seems deserving of applause for earning great prominence with the hosting of two major hemispheric and international events in Port-of-Spain earlier in the year, as well as having good proof to show of the abating HIV pandemic in its member states.

Indeed, hosting of the Summit of the Americas by the Trinidad and Tobago government, at which there was the surprising and dramatic gesture of President Hugo Chavez presenting reading material on “Yankee imperialist exploitation of the Americas” to President Barack Obama, deserves much credit and appreciation.

Appreciation in particular for the tolerant and fun-loving Trini taxpayers, who may have been happy to be so generous with the largesse of oil & gas money but would expect some to be around in 2010 now that hard times are around the corner.

Let no CARICOM state be so naive, however, as to believe recovery is indeed on its way, any time soon. Jamaicans for sure harbour no such illusions, given their current experience of the so-called “guava season”.

They know that the IMF “rescue package” involves an enormous burden with massive social dislocations.

Be that as it may, when we reflect on the second great event of CARICOM’s hospitality in 2009, the hosting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference (CHOGM), it was the financial goodwill of T&T again and the comparative mild statement pointing to the current Copenhagen Climate Change Summit that supposedly earned CARICOM a high profile award.

Welcome as the climate change statement was, it almost compromised the wider “Declaration” of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) that global warming was to be “no more than” 1.5 degrees Celsius rather than the CHOGM’s “allowance of up to” 2.0 degrees.

From the many positive comments of colleagues in Europe, a major high point of the Port of Spain Conference that put CARICOM into a positive light for BBC’s viewers and listeners came in the BBC’s Hardtalk interview with CARICOM’s current Chairman, President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana.

He was quite lucid in articulating not only the need for a new economic model in dealing with indebtedness of lower middle income economies (as most CARICOM countries are), but also for a Low Carbon Growth Path to enable mitigation of global warming with adaptation and development in which common but differentiated responsibilities are observed by both developed and developing countries.

No doubt CARICOM’s executive management is deserving of praise for long and dedicated service.

The issues facing regional integration movements are, nevertheless, complex and are becoming more protracted. This calls for energy, innovative thinking and dynamic leadership.

Sound organisational theory tells us that however charismatic may be leadership of complex institutions and organisations in their early terms of office, the routinisation of charisma steps in.

Bound by day to day firefighting and worried about “second-guessing” new leaders as they are elected, makes it difficult to maintain direction, be strategic and enrich an evolving vision of where one expects the best interests of a movement to be served.

These are challenges that executive managers need to confront.

Hopefully, in the case of CARICOM, the forthcoming Inter-sessional Heads of Government Meeting in the first quarter of 2010 might be an opportunity for a more focused agenda on what needs to be done. I take this opportunity to offer three suggestions:

** First, the evasion of decisions in relation to an appropriate Governance Structure of the regional integration movement should be brought to an end.

This challenge simply has to be definitively addressed to achieve a fundamental overhaul for effective management and implementation of decisions unanimously taken by Heads of Government. The time has also come for term limits for executive management;

** Secondly, the unravelling of a comprehensive Regional Development Strategy, with adequate resources and measurable outputs, to reflect the so-called “new economic model” now being advocated.

It must evolve with a sense of urgency, taking account of the multiple global crises of climate change, food security, consequences of fuel prices diminishing financial flows that impact on CARICOM states; and

** Thirdly, a repositioning of Foreign and Community Policies that address the challenges of a wider “Caribbean Neighbourhood” to more meaningfully embrace the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Central American states while, deepening alliances in Africa and Asia, possibly by joint diplomatic representations in their respective capitals.

My thoughts obviously need fleshing out but space is a constraint and they could be revisited in the new year, and more specifically following the outcome of the first Heads of Government Meeting.
(Phil Pascal is a London-based contributor who writes on foreign and regional issues)

SHARE THIS ARTICLE :
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

All our printed editions are available online
emblem3
Subscribe to the Guyana Chronicle.
Sign up to receive news and updates.
We respect your privacy.