THE Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is observing its 48th anniversary.  The CARICOM Secretariat is situated in Georgetown, Guyana, which is a signal honour for us as a people and as a country.

The body was officially formed on August 1, 1973 with Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Barbados as signatories to the Treaty of Chaguaramas which founded the Community and gave it legal status.

The Caribbean Community was formed following the collapse of the Caribbean Free Trade Area (CARIFTA), which in some respects provided the economic framework for the new regional grouping. CARICOM currently consists of 20 member states, of which 15 are full-fledged members and five enjoy Associate status.

There can be no doubt that the body has come a long way since its formation 48 years ago.

To say that much has been achieved over the decades since the formation of CARICOM would be an understatement. The Region has today become a key player on the international stage, both in terms of trade and diplomacy. Trade both within the Region and with non-CARICOM partners has increased substantially and our economies, despite our vulnerabilities to natural disasters, continue to remain strong and resilient. The solidarity given to Guyana by CARICOM in the border controversy with Venezuela is particularly noteworthy.

Guyana’s President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, in his message to mark the occasion, has hailed the progress made by CARICOM over the decades and pledged Guyana’s full and continuing support to the integration movement.

It is to the credit of CARICOM and other democratic forces that our democracy which was under threat by the previous APNU+AFC regime was thwarted. It is not the first time that CARICOM had cause to intervene in our domestic electoral politics.

In the aftermath of the 1997 national and regional elections, the then PNC opposition had instigated violence and protests on the spurious grounds that the elections were not free and fair. The actions taken by the political opposition threatened the peace and stability of our nation. It was not until the intervention of CARICOM that a peaceful resolution to the political impasse was brokered, despite the fact that the PPP under the Janet Jagan presidency had won a clear majority of the votes in free, fair and certified elections. However, the PPP/C, in the interest of peace and stability agreed to a truncated term in office by nearly a third of its elected mandate.

CARICOM has today evolved into a strong supra-national institution which permeated our national existence in several ways. We take for granted the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) which replaced the General Certificate of Examinations (GCE) and the several other regional institutions such as the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB).

More recently, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) came into prominence, thanks to its hallmark rulings in several cases pertaining to the December 2019 no-confidence motion and more significantly, the ruling in respect to its jurisdiction to hear an appeal on a ruling from our Court of Appeal and which eventually led to a declaration of the elections in favour of the PPP/C.

The integration movement is still evolving and more remains to be done in terms of a single market and economy and in the area of free and unfettered movement of nationals from participating countries.

No one can deny, however, that as a regional integration movement, it has had over the decades a transformative impact on the lives and well-being of our citizens.

We are better off today as a Region which historically evolved out a plantation economy and where we share common cultural and sociological characteristics.