AHEAD OF today’s start of the special CARICOM Summit in Guyana, the Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, has raised a surprising alert on “governance” issue that is expected to surface in their deliberations when discussing the need for a more relevant and effective form of governance for the 15-member Community.
In addressing this past Wednesday the 53rd regular meeting of the Authority of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) in  St.Vincent, Gonsalves alluded to what he described as a “sprawling regional bureaucracy” that could create problems, both for national civil servants as well as leaders of government
His observation, which relates to governance–one of the matters for consideration at this weekend’s retreat in Guyana’s Mazaruni region–points to what he  perceives as likely to result in “operational restraint to the deepest possible form of both sub-regional (OECS) and region-wide (CARICOM) integration….”
Gonsalves sees this challenge emerging from an “unfortunate inclination of a minority of influential regional public servants to act in ways which alienate themselves from the democratically-elected leaders and governments, including the national public servants whom they have a bounden duty to serve…”
To better and more effectively advance the goals of the OECS Economic Union and CARICOM, in its quest for a seamless regional  economy, Gonsalves, currently heading a narrowly won third-term government, told the leaders in his opening address on “Making More Perfect our OECS Union”:
“We require strength, commitment, creativity, and focused work of the highest quality from our regional public servants in the service of the people, and not of any sectional interest of any sprawling regional bureaucracy…
“In short”, he bluntly declared, “regional public servants ought to focus on the people’s business concretely at hand, and not on building power bases for themselves in regional organizations. We are too small, too fragile”, he argued, “as nations to permit the luxury of a divisiveness which has no reasonable basis….”
For today’s special meeting of CARICOM leaders, described as a “two-day retreat” in the Mazaruni region, some 20-minutes flying time away from the Cheddi Jagan international airport, there is expected to be a “no show” of the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, and the Prime Minister of The Bahamas (Hubert Ingraham), as well as the President of Suriname, Desi Bouterse, who is reportedly ill.
Hosted by Guyana’s Head of State, President Bharrat Jagdeo, and to be chaired by Grenada’s Prime Minister, Tillman Thomas, as current CARICOM chairman, the two-day  ‘Mazaruni retreat” has been arranged as a “Heads only” event with the possibility of one “advisor” for each delegation.
Informed sources have hinted that expectations on sensitive “governance issues”, including that of choosing a new Secretary General of the Community, “should be kept low..”
The prevailing view, as Heads were journeying yesterday from their respective capitals to Guyana, is that unless the CARICOM leaders could resolve recurring problems in implementation of decisions that fundamentally impact on the future functioning of the Community Secretariat, there was little point in rushing to find a successor to the retired Edwin Carrington as Secretary General.