CARICOM: A study in the failure of small people

Jul 05, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In 1958, the islands of the English-speaking Caribbean formed a federation. British Guiana opted not to join because its Premier Dr. Cheddi Jagan wanted an independent communist country in his homeland. From that date to this moment, these islands and Guyana have been trying to cement an integration community.

We are talking about half a century of talking, drifting, meandering, wandering and wondering and integration has long receded into the bowels of the Caribbean Sea where it has lost its identity, eaten up by the predatory sharks that control the shiny blue waters.

Three years before the Federation in the West Indies. A few western states in Europe decided that post-war Europe’s future was best assured in an integration movement. From that date to now, 27 European territories have achieved a miraculous nearness to a dream that long defied European statesmen in the 18th century.

The European Union (EU) has left CARICOM billion of miles behind. But this is not the complete picture. Further description of the journey of European integration tells a pitiful tale and a Shakespearean tragedy in the Caribbean.

When the USSR collapsed, former Eastern communist nations rushed to join the EU. These were big countries with large populations and substantial historical substance attached to their names like Hungary, Poland etc.

These countries were eager to join the EU, never mind they knew that they were going into a union dominated by the world’s leading powers like Germany, France, Great Britain etc. In the Caribbean, some poor states with a combined population of less than five million (excluding Haiti) cannot get the milder forms of integration going much less the fundamental pillars that bring countries closer in economic and political unison.

The balance sheet of CARICOM is horrible to say the least. Only two institutions of CARICOM function – the CXC and West Indian cricket. Since colonial days, the final court of appeal for these islands is the British Privy Council.

Only Guyana and Barbados has left that anachronism behind. What have these leaders been doing for over half a century? In the case of Premier Cheddi Jagan, he wanted a communist nation with its own university. Today, the nation and the university stare into the chasm of Hades. In Trinidad, leader after leader feels it is best to buy food from Florida rather than from their neighbours within their own economic union.

It is not only the failure of these tiny nations (Guyana is large but it has a very small population) to deepen integration that makes them a Shakespearian comedy of errors but it is the humongous waste of money of the conference of the HEADS every year since the eighties.

Count up how many times these people have met the past 30 years then count up their achievements. As I write this, they are meeting again. What do these people talk about and where are their implementations? Take democracy.

There is always resentment among Third World scholars when others write that the white man is more interested in the higher ideals of democracy than the non-white world but a comparison between the EU and CARICOM makes for interesting reading.

When the neo-fascists through elections were about to enter the government in Austria, the EU suspended it. In Guyana, CARICOM brokered two crucial agreements to stabilize historically unstable Guyana. Those historic accords (St. Lucia Agreement and Herdmanston Accord) have never been adhered to and CARICOM has done nothing. Yet today Guyana remains delicately posed on the precipice. Why has CARICOM stagnated? The answer lies in small minds that rule CARICOM territories. While large Poland and big Hungary want to integrate, tiny islands are ruled by men that want to be a country’s leader. They want to be known as the Prime Minister. While the world moves on and countries search for modernization, small leaders in the Caribbean are happy to be the Prime Minister of a fowl pen.

My study window overlooks both the CARICOM Secretariat and the CARICOM Annexe next to it. Every morning the first thing that faces me as I open my front door, are these two buildings. I am unhappy each time I look at them. Because I know they symbolize for me the failure of Caribbean people and their leaders. Long after my generation passes on, these tiny small leaders will continue to beg the world while the world leaves them behind. As for my own country, Caricom has failed it since Burnham became a dictator and continues to fail it even though fascism rules my homeland at the moment.