CARICOM’s decision on ‘Two Visions’

AHEAD OF next month’s two-day Inter-Sessional Meeting of CARICOM Heads of Government, the Community’s Council of Ministers is scheduled to meet today at the Secretariat’s headquarters at Turkeyen.

As the second most important organ of the 15-member Community after the Heads of Government Conference, the Council of Ministers will review the draft agenda and arrangements for next month’s two-day Inter-Sessional Meeting being hosted in St. Vincent and the Grenadines by the government of Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, current chairman of the economic integration movement.
The formal opening ceremony will be addressed by Secretary-General Irwin LaRocque, and the Vincentian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade, Consumer Affairs and Information Technology, Camillo Gonsalves, one of Prime Minister Gonsalves’ sons.
While no information was released on the official agenda, it is expected that in reviewing issues for the coming Inter-Sessional Meeting of Heads, the Council of Ministers would consider referencing what remains an issue of critical importance for CARICOM’s future development.
The issue at reference pertains to what has evolved around discussions on two “visions” for influencing decisions to shape and implement policies and programmes of CARICOM, now in its 40th year of existence.
Current Community Chairman and host for next month’s conference, Dr Gonsalves, is on record as stating that they would be meeting in “difficult national circumstances, and in a regional and international context fraught with economic uncertainty; existential threats arising from climate change; multiple exogenous and home-grown regional burdens…”
Hence, the relevance of the question: Which of two “visions” will influence the critical decision for the way forward?

The DFID Report
Well, one such ‘vision’ is located in what’s known as the “Caribbean Regional Integration” Report, submitted since April 2011. It was a major project commissioned by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), which continues to sustain development partnership relations with this region.
It was carried out as a project of the St. Augustine-based Institute of International Relations (IIR) of the University of the West Indies, and involved wide-ranging interviews with key stakeholders — governments, private sector, trade unions and other civil society organisations.
As the IIR’s Dr Matthew Bishop (lead editor of the Report) points out in the latest edition of ‘The Pelican (magazine of the University of the West Indies)’, twenty (20) major recommendations were offered. These were largely based on interviews involving 100 persons, among them political leaders, diplomats (foreign and Caribbean), officials of development partner agencies, plus participation of some 40 stakeholders in “a critical discussion of the draft report.”
“We wrote this huge report,” noted Dr Bishop, “and made 20 recommendations on what needs to happen to take the integraion process forward… Not a single person said we should scrap it (CARICOM).”
He further lamented, “There remains a disconnect between the desires of the Region and the outcome of the regional integration process…”

Girvan’s reaction
On the other hand, there was a response of disappointment by the widely recognised economist, Dr Norman Girvan, often applauded for his timely and inspiring interventions on regional affairs, and who was a part of the IIR’s team for the report.
He feels that since 2011, when the seminal report was submitted by DFID, the situation for Caribbean integration “has deteriorated, and the despair and cynicism of the population may have reached the point of no return…”
In addition, pointed out Girvan — currently hospitalised with serious injuries suffered from a fall – CARICOM’s Single Market and Economy (CSME) is becoming “less attractive to several alternatives” that have arisen.
Among these, Girvan has identified the region’s Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA with the European Union (EU); Venezuela’s inspired ‘Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our Americas (ALBA), and Petrocaribe, another initiative by Venezuela.
What, however, has prompted more than unease about the likely pursuit of a “second vision” for CARICOM’s future is a report commissioned by the Community’s Heads of Government, and submitted to the Community’s Secretariat by the UK-based consultancy, Landell Mills Ltd.
In contrast to major recommendations to deepen and widen regional economic integration, as outlined in the DFID Report of 2011, the Landell Mills Report, while conceding that CARICOM was in a state of crisis, offered limited scope for the future, with a focus on strengthening of the Community Secretariat and related organs.
The Heads of Government, therefore, must decide, sooner than later, which of the so-called “two visions” should be pursued in the interest of enlightened regional integration.
However pressing, therefore, the challenges they confront for their coming meeting in St. Vincent, they cannot shy away from making a choice between the DFID-located “vision”, which resulted from wide-ranging consultations, and that of the comparatively restricted Landell Mills report.
They could at least establish a special working group to review the core recommendations of the DFID report, with a commitment to make a firm decision at their regular annual sumit in July.

(By Rickey Singh in Barbados)

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