“WHILE Erwin LaRocque gets ready to assume the mantle of leadership of the Georgetown-based Caribbean Community Secretariat, the former Secretary General of the Port-of-Spain-based Secretariat of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), Dr Norman Girvan, has telegraphed a clear message: In welcoming LaRocque’s selection as the new CARICOM Secretary General, Girvan, the well-known Jamaica-born economist, said he knows him to be “a person of professionalism, integrity and proven commitment to regionalism….However, he insists, LaRocque should not be given a basket to carry water…”.
Girvan is the author of the report on “Towards a Single Economy and a Single Development Vision” which covers wide-ranging areas for sequential implementation of policies and programmes to make a reality of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).
The cynics may well remark that an impartial assessment of the functioning of the Secretariat would reveal that for a number of years under the leadership of the now retired Edwin Carrington, the CARICOM Secretariat was often frustrated  in having to do what Girvan hopes does not manifest itself also under LaRocque – having “a basket to carry water”.  LaRocque himself has been part of the Secretariat’s top management team since 2005.
Girvan and the Guyana-born management expert and diplomat, Dr Patrick Gomes, were among other distinguished regional nationals on a team of consultants, mobilised by Prime Minister Tillman Thomas of Grenada, while he served as the immediate past CARICOM chairman.
The team had help to prepare a working document on “Re-energising CARICOM Integration”. It provided very valuable guidelines on the way forward for the regional economic integration movement, including enhancing overall governance of the Secretariat.
Sadly, but by no means surprising, nothing has been said publicly and for the record, about this document which is known to have been submitted by Prime Minister Thomas to his fellow Heads of  Government prior to their “special retreat” last June in Guyana.
At this time, when the Community’s political directorate are awaiting the submission of a UK-based consultancy firm on the future governance of the Community Secretariat, it is of relevance to note the very serious question raised in the report of a “review team” of 2002, co-chaired by Gomes and Leonard Archer: 
It reads: “The fundamental question arises”, they said, “as to whether the Heads of Government Conference intends and is disposed to sharing executive authority with the Secretariat, thereby attributing a supra-nationality role for the enforcement of Community decisions…”  
There has been no official answer to that question of almost a decade ago.
(The following commentary appeared as yesterday’s editorial in the Barbados Nation)