THE REAL value of the CSME Convocation that concluded yesterday in Barbados will have to be assessed on the basis of how the Caribbean Community governments choose to respond to the specific complaints and proposals made by stakeholders of the region’s private sector, labour movement and civil society organisations.

This does not mean, and should not be so interpreted, that having made their interventions at the two-day event, jointly organised by the CARICOM Secretariat and the Barbados Government, that the region’s private sector and labour movement representatives can now fold their arms and sit back.

What clearly is desirable, and has been discernable for a pretty long time, is for the rhetoric on ‘partnership’ to be translated into concrete expressions of meaningful and sustained cooperation by the Community’s governments and ALL other stakeholders.

That means much more than the occasional ‘consultations’ from which little seem to emerge, or even from hastily arranged ‘dialogue’ with various ‘task forces’ that have been recently multiplying but with little results, so far, to show.

Criticisms come easily from some quarters. Proof of cooperation is what really matters.

Now, therefore, that the mandated audit study into the state of implementation of decisions to advance the CSME has been made available for last week’s two-day convocation, all stakeholders must understand their obligations to help sensitise the people of our Community of the problems. This is not just a job for the governments, though they have to play the major role.

The Community Secretariat clearly carries a very heavy workload, and the employees deserve to be commended for their commitment.

There, however, continues to be questions, not only from the media, but representatives of governments, private sector and regional institutions about the delivery capacity of the Secretariat to satisfy, with credibility, the ever-increasing demands to make a reality, or ‘lived experience’, the tangible benefits of the CSME in the overall efforts to achieve the stated goal of a single economic space by 2015.

It is our understanding that the results of last week’s convocation, at which Guyana’s lead representatives were Home Affairs Minister, Clement Rohee and ambassador to CARICOM, Elizabeth Harper, would be forwarded shortly for consideration at the level of the Prime Ministerial Sub-committee on the CSME. Subsequently, it will engage the attention of Heads of Government at their first Inter-Sessional Meeting for 2010, possibly in Dominica in February.

That meeting would be expected to grapple with some hard decisions arising from analyses of the audit study on problems, progress and challenges in moving the pace forward on realisation of the CSME.