THE Caribbean Community, long admired among developing countries in Africa and Latin America for its sustainability, now seems anxious to self-destruct or become “a reed blowing in the wind”.    

And this, regrettably, at a time when the African Union is looking to the Caribbean as part of its Diaspora, and we in London and other parts of Europe want to replace disappointment with  encouragement as CARICOM  moves into its 37th year.

Perhaps under the new chairmanship of Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo, and a more committed approach to remove barriers to progress, there could be a turning of the tide against the negative trends, the mixed signals and double-speak from leaders and an evidently tired bureaucracy at the CARICOM Secretariat.

THE SUMMIT COMMUNIQUÉ
One of the disturbing factors about the long, waffling 30-page communiqué, issued at the conclusion of the 30th Heads of Government Conference in Georgetown, is that the international community and development partners, like DFID and the EU, can neither sense an overall strategic direction of CARICOM nor feel where its flagship project, the CSME is heading.

The Communiqué doesn’t give even a hint how the challenges will be addressed to hasten the pace to make the CSME a reality; of fresh moves to engage the Dominican Republic on its interest in membership of CARICOM; and, once again, deafening silence on specific initiatives to introduce a sorely needed new governance structure with a lean, clean and results-driven Secretariat.

How is the impartial observer to explain that since 1992 the idea of a CARICOM Commission with executive authority, subject, in the final analysis, to the decisions of Heads of Government at the highest organ of the Community, can after 17 years, fail to come forward with a relevant response?

What is being offered, instead, is a plethora of ‘Task Forces’, as problems surface while a quasi-cabinet mechanism with Heads of Government holding portfolio responsibilities, remains of doubtful value and so the CARICOM Bureau that functions as a sort of management committee between Heads of Government meetings.

GOVERNANCE MERRY-GO-ROUND  
After 17 years of vacillation, of a merry-go-round on governance since the recommendations of The West Indian Commission, not only is there no serious attempt to improve the overall governance infrastructure of CARICOM.

But the once promising Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) that was running into administrative problems relating to accountability, has suffered a decline in its prestige and now functions as a Department within the Community Secretariat as an Office of Trade Negotiations (OTN) with questions yet to be answered. 

This development has come at a period when questions are also being raised about the functioning parameters of the CSME Unit in Barbados and its productive capacity in terms of advancing the work agenda for realisation of the CSME by 2015.

When a serious audit is undertaken on the implementation processes for the CSME, there needs to be a critical assessment also of the functioning of the CSME Unit.

What respectable organisation can repeatedly take decisions by consensus at its highest level but repeatedly fail to implement those very decisions–as in the case of CARICOM–and expects to be taken seriously by the international community and, more precisely, development partners?

CARICOM has jumped from a Task Force set up in January this year and almost discarded, to be replaced by a Special Team of Experts, about three months later, only to be now superseded by a High Level Mobilisation Task Force (HLMTF).

This scenario would appear to an outsider, like myself, as grossly wasteful of time, misuse of limited technical expertise and a device for micro-management by Heads of Government from whom one would surely expect to set clear terms of reference, get a proper analysis of options and take executive decisions to be implemented by those who will be held accountable for actions.

It was amusing to learn that Japan’s Central Bank Governor was advising CARICOM Heads on the global crisis. Japan of all countries now in serious deflation can no doubt advise on what not to do. Is the debate of Europe’s “social market economy” useful to consider?

What also seems strange is that the Mobilisation Task Force of Heads and others, is planning to seek the guidance of Professor Stiglitz of Columbia University. Stiglitz, undoubtedly, has a formidable international stature as an economist and of the global economic financial and economic challenges.        

However, it can well be asked, what really new will Stiglitz provide as guidance for Caribbean economic transformation that Professor Clive Thomas of the University of Guyana, for one, has not written about and explained, as our region limps from crisis to crisis?

There are, of course, other noted West Indian scholars and economists whose body of contributions also qualify them to be on a fixed list for regular consultations and guidance. They would include Dr Norman Girvan and Dr Havelock Brewster.

The CRNM:  
With reference to the former CRNM that is now known as OTN (Office of Trade Negotiations), there is the curious arrangement of location of the newly-appointed Director General and operational base of the OTN. 

The appointee, Ambassador Gail Mathurin, has succeeded Ambassador Henry Gill, who resigned last month. She is known by colleagues when she served as Jamaica’s High Commissioner in London, for being quite capable and hard working and focused on results. I wish  her well.

While in principle the CRNM needed political oversight, placing it as an OTN to function as a department  of the CARICOM Secretariat has left some with questions of the working environment with over-centralised procedures.

If the Head Office of the OTN is now, for all practical purpose, now located in the CARICOM Secretariat, then why should the Director reside and work in Jamaica? Was this an arrangement to facilitate better working relationship with whoever is  the Prime Minister of Jamaica and holding lead responsibility for external trade negotiations?

If so, what went so wrong to necessitate the new arrangement from CRNM (with offices in Barbados and Jamaica) and now the OTN in the CARICOM Secretariat in Guyana?

A related question is how useful has the CSME Unit in Barbados proven to be in advancing the implementation of CSME arrangements, given the current concerns over continuing foot-dragging on making the CSME a reality? 

In a completely revamped administrative structure at the CARICOM Secretariat with an administration empowered with executive authority, and benefitting from lessons learnt by the European Commission, it may make sense to have both the OTN and the CSME Unit operating within the Community’s structures in Guyana.

The Heads of  Government with lead responsibilities for these as well as their counterparts with portfolio responsibilities for other programmes/projects, would in term be expected to be facilitated in having a special division within the offices of a Head of Government that focuses specifically on their respective mandates 

Recent events confirm that CARICOM is at risk of reversing its many gains of functional cooperation and the promise of creation of a single economic space for the good of the region’s people, political integration for the good of its peoples.

The hazardous future it faces needs to be firmly and systematically addressed under the current chairmanship of Guyana’s President and ably assisted by his counterpart Heads of Government. Will it happen before the 31st CARICOM Summit in Haiti?

(The writer is an overseas-based management expert and media contributor).