…in absence of ‘visionary’ move
Analysis
WHAT’S REALLY going on in the 37-year-old Caribbean Community on the critical challenge for improved governance to avoid a crisis in management that threatens to frustrate major policies in the coming second decade of the 21st century?
The question is being asked amid growing exasperation over the apparent attraction by the CARICOM’s political directorate to engage in buck-passing when it comes to the enlightened introduction of a new and empowered form of governance relevant to meet today’s needs.
Latest indication of their passion to skip tough, enlightened decisions in favour of ornamental structures in management came last weekend when Community Heads of Government and Foreign Ministers held an informal meeting in New York on the periphery of the current UN General Assembly.
After successive governments have benefitted for more than a dozen years from commissioned reports pertaining to new structures and functioning of the Georgetown-based Secretariat, guess what surfaced from that New York meeting?
The Heads of Government agreed to push ahead with plans to establish, on a permanent basis, a CARICOM Council of Ambassadors that, they feel, would help overcome lingering deficiencies in implementation of policies and programmes of the 15-member Community.
Venue for advancing this pitiful decision, one that will have no political teeth and could prove more of an embarrassment than asset, will be next February’s Inter-Sessional Meeting of Heads of Government in St. George’s, Grenada.
It is amazing that a group of political leaders—not without admirable credentials in a variety of areas among them—could collectively spend time discussing how best to establish a new and effective governance mechanism only to end up offering a CARICOM Council of Ambassadors!!
‘They got to be joking’ is the spreading refrain.. For a start, what’s the origin of this “model” (sic) in governance?

False comparison

For sure, it’s not located in the seminal report by the West Indian Commission; nor reports such as the “Patrick Gomes/Leonard Archer Review Committee on future functioning of the Community Secretariat, and more recent work done by the Vaughan Lewis-led technical group on “matured regional governance”.
To seek to rationalise creation of the proposed Council of Ambassadors with what obtains in the case of the  Organisation of American States (OAS), where all are located in one place, Washington–is a false comparison.
Unless, of course, we are now to have at least a dozen diplomats based in Guyana to work with the Community Secretariat that would, for a start, have to find new office space, apart from requiring increased budgetary allocations.
More importantly, what is there that this proposed Council of Ambassadors (most of them in the comparatively lower round of the regional political ladder) can do that cannot now be done via established mechanisms.
For instance, like COFOR (Council for Foreign and Community Relations); COTED (Council for Trade and Economic Development), and the more important Council of Ministers?

Current modalities

Between the Heads of Government–the major organ of the Community–and the layers of ministerial councils, there is also the CARICOM Bureau that functions as a management committee outside of the annual Heads of Government Conference and the six-monthly Inter-Sessional meetings.
If the current modalities in the functioning of the Secretariat and management of the Community’s businesses expose a serious delivery problem in implementation of policies and programmes, then how serious are the Heads of Government in expecting any improvement from an ornamental mechanism like the  proposed “council diplomats”, particularly if scattered across the Caribbean region?
Why don’t they shock the region’s people by telling them the truth behind their collective avoidance to introduce an empowered governance system, and cease sheltering behind the facade of “national sovereignty”.
They should know that the region’s public in general have been sensitised enough, to at least be aware, that having taken decisions, unanimously, the Heads of Government separately and expediently often fail to implement those
decisions.
Consequently, the current expressions of cynicism and disenchantment over the functioning of CARICOM.
At present, CARICOM has a large “search committee” working to shortlist potential candidates to succeed the retiring Edwin Carrington as Secretary General of the Community.
What the Heads are looking for in a new SG remains unknown.