CariCom Day: For what?

Jul 05, 2010 Editorial

So once again, we’re commemorating – with a public holiday – this institution that was launched thirty-seven years ago – CariCom. With great foresight, the pioneering leaders of the British Caribbean had glimpsed the challenges that would be posed by an increasingly globalised world and decided that our best course lay in greater integration in all spheres of our national lives – economics, culture, and eventually, politics.

Once again we can only applaud the prescience of those early leaders – they have been proven so right in their prognosis – and rail at the failure of their successors to implement their vision.

Starting yesterday and continuing until Wednesday, most of the present crop of leaders will be meeting at the prime resort spot of Montego Bay in Jamaica to deal with what has been promoted as “a full agenda”. This is what these leaders are best at – holding meetings with “packed agendas.

Never mind that very little ever comes out of these meetings but promises. Take the global economic meltdown that swept out from the developed economies in 2008 and catastrophically engulfed the region – especially in the areas of tourism and remittances.

An action plan was promised by these leaders since that time and reiterated at every one of their subsequent (at least half a dozen) meetings but has never been delivered. Yet these same men (the lone female leader – the newly elected PM of T&T – will be attending for the first time) will solemnly bemoan the (generally) bankrupt state of their economies.

They have already signalled that “more than half of the members will experience zero or negative growth this year”. Most likely, this may be for the benefit of the head of the IMF, who will be present; the Secretary General of CariCom has already complained that promised aid from world institutions has not been delivered. Not a word was uttered about the missing action plan: our leaders have obviously forgotten the old saying about “those who help themselves…”

We once again place the blame for the failure to consummate the ideals of CariCom squarely at the feet of those leaders and their obsession with power: Generally they have unfortunately fallen into the “Little Caesar” syndrome. They relish the opportunity to strut on the world stage (such as it is) as “Prime Ministers” and “Presidents”. They jet-off at the drop of a hat to NY to address the UN or one or the other internal conference going on somewhere. Never mind that they are bit-players of such insignificance that they are invariably shunted off to inconsequential break-out sessions with other Little Caesars: they are “leaders of countries” and in their own deluded minds probably equate themselves with the leaders of G-8 or G-20.

One leader who has generally bucked the tide of complacency at the glacial pace (if even that) of CariCom’s movement has been St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves. He recently warned candidly that a lack of political leadership was holding back the integration process: “We need serious leadership in CARICOM. And I say this without any water in my mouth, we have not been having serious leadership in CARICOM.”

The most serious lapse has been the lack of progress in realising a fully-functional Single Market and Economy (CSME) which was promised by the year 2015. As matters stand, with so many member states balking at honouring their commitments there is no way that that deadline will be met. While all the leaders also concede that the present system of management to deal with CariCom’s business and implement its agreements is sorely deficient, none of them are willing to suggest a new management system for fear that this might “infringe” on their prerogatives.

So with this weak leadership continuing into the foreseeable future, CariCom will continue to founder as disastrous agreements such as the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) signed with Europe (and against which President Jagdeo warned) unfold. Witness Europe’s new agreements with Peru and Columbia on bananas and rum. CariCom, CariGone?