-What new to expect from the Montego Bay summit
Analysis
WITH THE lead representatives of the United Nations, Organisation of American States and the International Monetary Fund in attendance, plus some 165 regional delegates and invited VIPs of Jamaica, the ceremonial opening of today’s 31st annual summit of CARICOM Heads of Government in Montego Bay will attract much attention across the 15-member Community — assuming arrangements for televised coverage go well.
Due to a pressing personal matter involving a longstanding  family friend in Suriname, I will miss this four-day annual premiere event of the region’s integration movement as it enters its 37th year of existence.
However, like my colleagues, I anxiously await the communique to be released on Tuesday to learn of decisions taken; issues ignored or postponed for later consideration; or the surprises in creative initiatives revealed.
It is always good to look forward to pleasant surprises emerging from annual summits of CARICOM. But on this occasion, it seems pointless to keep hope alive for any progress to result on the elusive but most fundamental issue of a desirable new governance system for managing the affairs of the 15-member Community.
The current lot of regional leaders have pretty much talked to death the long advocated, much discussed, amended and re-defined concept of a high-level CARICOM Commission, vested with executive authority, to preside over the business of the Community under the supervision of the Heads of Government.
Until their regular annual summit of 2008, held in Antigua and Barbuda, all the leaders were in the habit of using language — some tongue-in-cheek — to convey the impression of support for an executive management system of CARICOM that could even draw on lessons from the European Commission (executive arm of the European Union).

The Golding factor

Then, Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Bruce Golding, one of two new Heads of Government in attendance (the other being Barbados’ David Thompson), was to make his own position clear on the governance issue, and succeeded in further complicating matters.
Golding had stressed that while supportive of the major pillars of CARICOM — such as functional cooperation and arrangements for a single market and economy (CSME) — his JLP administration was not interested, at this time, in embracing a regional management mechanism that could impact against Jamaica’s national sovereignty in governance.
This stand, as openly stated by the Jamaican Prime Minister, would have been quietly shared by some other leaders who think of a CARICOM Commission (or similar mechanism) as a threat to their ‘big fish’-leadership role in a ‘small pool’.
It also meant that the concept of an empowered management system had effectively been filed away –minus the customary political platitudes of “working together to advance the goals of our Community…”
The official communiques of the last two Heads of Government Conference — those of 2008 in Antigua, and 2009 in Guyana – were absolutely SILENT on the vital issue of governance of CARICOM — as if the leaders had simply ran out of excuses for inaction.
In July 2010, it is simply painful to recall who among current and past CARICOM Heads of Government were more or less passionate in their commitment to move, on a continual basis, the pace towards realisation of a new architecture of management.
Even, that is, as they allude to the overburdened Community Secretariat in Georgetown as being no longer an appropriate governance model to meet the challenges of our time.

CSME’s future
Among those leaders who could have been more forthcoming but got lost in the words game were articulate advocates of CARICOM — such as Prime Minister, Ralph Gonsalves, President Bharrat Jagdeo, and past Prime Ministers Owen Arthur, P. J. Patterson and Patrick Manning.
Do not, therefore, look forward to the resolution of this problem that has for too long been postponed due to a lack of collective political will at the level of the highest organ of the Community — Heads of Government Conference that begins today.
Regrettably, this expected disappointment comes at a time when there are further signals of an even slower march towards the realisation of CARIC0M’s Single Market and Economy.
This will be due, partly, to the current illness of the Barbados Prime Minister who has lead responsibility for CSME-readiness arrangements.
Thompson left Barbados on Thursday for further medical treatment in the USA, and is expected to be off official duties for at least two months, with Deputy Prime Minister and Attorney General, Freundel Stuart, acting as Head of Government.
It has been a long journey — from the report of the 1992 West Indian Commission, chaired by Shridath Ramphal,  to the ‘Rose Hall Declaration’ in Jamaica in 2003 with P.J. Patterson as host; then on to a  Prime Ministerial Working Group (chaired by Ralph Gonsalves), and later followed by  a Technical Working Group, headed by Vaughan Lewis.
But the political merry-go-round for a new and relevant governance system to satisfy CARICOM’s needs for the 21st Century goes on.
The paper chase and ‘talk’ continue. The promised new governance system remains elusive, and the goal-post for CSME implementation arrangements keeps shifting.
In the meantime, the OECS sub-region is preparing to inaugurate its economic union in January next year with an OECS Commission in place, empowered with “automatic and compulsory jurisdiction” for implementation of vital decisions.
Ironically, just this past week, Prime Minister Gonsalves was lamenting the extent to which regional integration was suffering from “lack of leadership.”
Well, he and his CARICOM colleagues would have much to discuss and resolve in Montego Bay over the next three days.