– major ‘deficits’ mocking ‘progress’
Analysis
WHILE PRIME MINISTER Tillman Thomas prepares to host the first Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Caribbean Community in Grenada next month, I feel compelled, as a journalist of our region, to express a particular hope.
It is that when the Heads of Government gather for that event in St. George’s, they would make a very honest and serious effort to curb the growing doubts and cynicism over the realisation of the promised CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).
That realisation would require, for a start, not more of customary official platitudes about ‘One Community, One Market, One People’. Rather, intellectual honesty and a sense of moral obligation to arrest the tendency, among more than just a few governments, from treating intra-regional migration as a plague to be avoided.
Even, that is, amid the ongoing migration of skilled nationals to North America and Europe, and mounting skepticism about the level of commitment to the policies and programmes articulated and enshrined in the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.
Prime Minister Thomas has assumed the chairmanship for the next six months from Prime Minister Bruce Golding, whose stint as chairman coincided with the retirement last month of Edwin Carrington, after serving the Community for 18 years as Secretary-General.
For his faithful services and known commitment to the Community, he is to be officially honoured with CARICOM’s highest award — Order of the Caribbean Community (OCC), joining the distinguished company of two former Secretaries-General — the late William Demas and Alister McIntyre.
CARICOM’s mission statement, policies and major programmes, as well as the mechanisms of the now 36-year-old regional economic integration movement with functional cooperation as a central feature, are well presented in the Community Secretariat’s reader-friendly publication, ‘CARICOM–Our Caribbean Community (An Introduction)’, released five years ago by Ian Randle Publishers.
I started out by alluding to concerns about negative attitudes giving a bad name to intra-regional migration as recognised by a growing awareness among nationals in various Community states of the problems we face.
For while some administrations continue to speak sweetly about building “One Community for One People,” they are, in reality, moving in reverse gear when it comes to facilitating the shaping and implementation of an enlightened, comprehensive policy on free movement of nationals with any consistency, even for identified categories of skilled nationals.
Rather than national immigration and customs services being restructured and re-oriented to competently serve an envisaged seamless regional economy, new arrangements are being introduced to pose more difficulties for CARICOM nationals, to the point, at times, where they feel unwanted — including those with needed skills. Ask Jamaicans; ask Guyanese, Vincentians, Trinidadians, and St. Lucians among others.

Lingering questions

For all the official rhetoric, the multiplicity of ministerial and official meetings, before and after the inauguration in Jamaica in 2006 of the single market dimension of the CSME, precious little that’s new has been achieved to advance primary policies and programmes for delivery of the promised seamless regional economy by 2015.
Perhaps unrealistic from the start, that goal is clearly being endangered by a political myopia that’s sustained in too many regional capitals where governments seem to feel that the ideals that led to the inauguration of CARICOM in 1973, and the policies and programmes identified for the realisation of the CSME can be taken for granted.
What progress, for instance, has there been to finalise the body of laws to give a legal foundation for implementation of the CSME, if not by the original 2015 target, shortly thereafter?
How much ground has really been covered to make the Community less dependent on food imports, now escalating beyond some US$4 Billion annually, while producers in some countries continue to experience problems with exporting their commodities in member states, and prices for Caribbean fruits and vegetables (fresh, frozen or canned) remain disadvantaged in competing?
The Caribbean Congress of Labour (CCL) and the Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce (CAIC) are among regional organisations that have expressed disappointment and reservations about the way forward for the CSME.
They also would be aware of criticisms levelled against their own approaches. At present, however, there is no longer even a functioning tripartite mechanism for scheduled dialogue involving governments, private sector and organised labour representatives.

CCJ/Rights Charter

Further, towards the latter part of 2010, there emerged the negative signals from two Prime Ministers — Jamaica’s Bruce Golding and Trinidad and Tobago’s Kamla Persad-Bissessar — about the likely establishment of their own final national appeal court, in preference to accessing the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as a court of last resort.
Of course, while inaction has long laid to rest a short-lived Caribbean Community of Parliamentarians as a non-binding deliberative forum, arrangements to give promised legal status to the CARICOM Charter of Civil Society for enhancing democratic governance and the strengthening of political, economic social and cultural rights, continue to prove elusive.
The official ‘talk’ is normally good. What about the ACTION to give it meaning? A ‘CARICOM Day’ was unanimously agreed to for annual observance of the inauguration on July 4, 1973, with an official holiday, if possible, and focused on inspiring people’s involvement with educational programmes and cultural events.
As I recall, no more than two of the 15 member countries (Guyana and St. Vincent and the Grenadines) pay any official attention to CARICOM Day.
The Community Council — second in importance only to the Heads of Government Conference — is scheduled to meet in Georgetown on January 7 to finalise, among other matters, agenda issues for next month’s Inter-Sessional Meeting.
To judge from the first official statement by host, Prime Minister Thomas, as new CARICOM chairman, expectations for significant decisions should be kept to a minimum, particularly on matters pertaining to management changes at the Secretariat, and new approaches to governance of Community affairs.
I have taken my cue from Prime Minister Thomas’ own ‘New Year Message’, that the “cry for quickening the pace of the integration process” has been heard by the Heads of Government, and has been “translated into active consideration of new governance structures to improve the rate of implementation…”
Believe it or not! Guess what has been signalled as “one of the main ideas” to be taken on board in “new governance structures…”? Establishment of a Permanent Committee of CARICOM Ambassadors (PCCA)!  Yes, it is! And they, the ‘Heads of Government’, cannot be really serious!