post-30th summit analysis
THE FIRST point to note about last week’s 30th Heads of Government Conference in Guyana, is that it failed to take any new initiative of real significance to advance the progress of the regional economic integration movement.

This is true in the areas of even free intra-regional movement of skilled nationals — much less any attempt to shape a common policy for planned migration.

Nor was there anything new to report on either the region’s response to the spreading crime epidemic, against which the latest warning has come from President of the Caribbean Development Bank, Dr Compton Bourne.

Disappointingly, the failures also extend to the vital agriculture sector and, worse, NO movement on the growing need for a new and effective governance system. The Community is left to lurch from one problem to another in the absence of any quick-response mechanism to expeditiously resolve disputes and, more importantly, focused on IMPLEMENTATION of unanimously endorsed decisions.

Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Bruce Golding revealed a refreshing flexibility, this time around, to help steer deliberations towards improvement of the Community’s governance structure, but, alas, the status quo remains unchanged.

The summit’s host and chairman for the next six months, Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo, made no secret of his own anxieties to get things moving forward when he warned at the ceremonial opening on July 2 that CARICOM was “at a cross-road,” and challenged his colleagues for ALL member countries to be involved in “finding a way forward.”

Jagdeo referred to the European Union (EU), a Community of 27 countries and some 400 million people, engaged in serious pursuits of “higher forms of integration,” and wondered aloud: “How much more should we, who are much smaller and certainly more disadvantaged, not also seek the gains to be had from greater unity and cooperation…?”

However sincere they were in pursuing their agenda to advance progress of CARICOM, the leaders may have unwittingly succeeded in spawning more disappointment and cynicism across the region.

This observation is made with much sadness and disappointment as a regional journalist who remains supportive of the region’s integration movement, warts and all, and sustains hope, along with the committed who share the view that, as Jamaica’s PJ Patterson said at the summit that honoured him with the Order of the Caribbean Community (OCC): “CARICOM’s collapse is not an option.”

Crucial issues
The Communiqué, which could have done with better editing, itself exposes the yawning gap between high-sounding rhetorical claims and evident failures to take hard and imaginative decisions.

This could be assessed from decisions and assurances recorded in the first 13 pages of the 30-page document, as well as in a few of the ‘declarations’ located in 15 other pages. For instance, in relation to issues pertaining to the realisation of the CSME; agriculture transformation; and governance.

It could be that they may have exhausted themselves in double-speak on critical issues, such as:

*FREE MOVEMENT: A classic example of forked-tongue politics at the summit was the token extension to include “household domestics (who must be in possession of a Caribbean Vocational Qualification, or equivalent certificate) for free intra-regional movement, while at the same time throwing cold water on the original concept to facilitate labour mobility with the full implementation of an already identified nine skilled categories, and pursue legislation providing contingent rights.

A few even summoned to their rescue social sector pressures, aggravated by the prevailing global financial and economic crisis, to justify failure to facilitate, with any consistency, approved skilled categories of Community nationals for free movement to live and work.

In the process, whether in St. John’s or Bridgetown, planned migration policies were expediently confused with indefensible degrading treatment of CARICOM nationals by immigration authorities who may well have been misdirected by political decisions.

*CSME: For all practical purposes, the CSME, once promised for realisation in 2015 — after much revisions — is now on the back-burner of those directly responsible for its implementation arrangements.

There is neither visible enthusiasm nor consistency in moving the process forward. Latest promise is that of a special “convocation of stakeholders” to take place in Barbados in September, and focused on an “audit” of “progress” made.

*AGRICULTURE: When the concepts and assurances outlined in the eloquent ‘Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security’ are dispassionately assessed against the one-paragraph statement in the communiqué, it also taxes the imagination on the “way forward” for a sector that remains a major source of employment and foreign exchange for quite a few member countries, including Guyana, Jamaica and Belize.

*GOVERNANCE: The administrative system in conducting the Community’s business perhaps fared the worse in terms of an evident failure by the Heads of Government to go beyond their rhetoric to find a practical solution to implement decisions and stimulate confidence.

For all the ideas to have emerged, including Prime Minister Golding’s invitation to establish a permanent high-level body, comprising representatives of all member countries (in contrast to a CARICOM Commission with executive authority as recommended by the West Indian Commission), no new decision was recorded.

The disenchanted and cynics can be heard asking: How much longer will it take to make the hard decisions to remove the survival risk of CARICOM that still holds out the promise for the creation of a single economic space, even as some governments continue to expediently cling to claims of “sovereign rights”?

Truth is that after the Georgetown Summit, CARICOM’s weaknesses seem to be more pronounced and requires an end to double-speak politics, and for all hands to be on deck, as PJ Patterson asked in thanking the Community for awarding him the OCC.