CARICOM: a failure of effective leadership

By Byron Blake, jamaica-gleaner GUEST COLUMNIST

Leadership - political, institutional and business - has failed the Caribbean integration process and people over the last decade in the thrust to move from common market to single market and economy and to cope in an unsympathetic global environment.

This became crystal clear to me in 2009.   Then, in the throes of the global economic and financial crisis, CARICOM political leaders refused to adopt and advance an innovative and internally driven strategy based on collaboration, Caribbean creativity and innate strengths.   They consciously and explicitly decided to go visionless and without a strategy to the international financial institutions to provide them with the solution to the crisis as it was manifesting itself in the region.

That, together with their retreat from the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME), which should have been the strategic bulwark of the region in the global crisis, and increasing public cynical statements by leaders, caused me to fear for the Caribbean.   I, however, decided to avoid writing, or commenting, as far as possible, lest I added fodder for the cynicism of the general population.

Three recent pieces of writing have caused me to reconsider.   These are:

(i) Bits and pieces from Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves' letter to CARICOM's secretary general, Ambassador Irwin La Rocque,

(ii) Two articles by veteran Caribbean journalist and long-time integration observer Ricky Singh, and

(iii) The editorial in the Observer of February 29, titled 'CARICOM must be enlarged to survive'.

I fear that these are again laying tracks for debate, apportioning of blame, avoidance of responsibility and action and the further disillusionment of the population, especially the young ones.   I have, therefore, decided to break my self-imposed silence to offer a few suggestions for action.

Accountability and agriculture

First, political leaders, at their next opportunity, must make this short declaration, without preamble: "We are all culpable, we are all responsible for the state of the Caribbean economy.   We commit to work together to raise the CARICOM economic boat on which we are all adrift."

Second, political and business leaders must recognise that even with the various global crises, there are significant economic opportunities for Brand Caribbean.   Important here, are:

CARICOM has a large and unsustainable food-import bill.   In addition to this large and growing regional market, there is an insatiable international market for food - especially foods produced under environmentally healthy conditions such as those which still exist in the Caribbean.

Further, unlike the situation which prevailed in the 1980s, 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, when areas such as the Caribbean were discouraged and punished for indulging in food production, the international community is now encouraging and facilitating investment in agricultural production for food and other global benefits such as mitigation of environmental degradation and climate change; the provision of raw material for alternative energy; pharmaceutical and nutraceutical production; and for the achievement of several of the Millennium Development Goals.

Investment in agriculture is a private-sector, not budget-driven, activity. Leaders should agree unequivocally to operationalise the provisions of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.   This would give investors in agriculture, agro-industry and allied services rights to the resources and to invest as envisaged by the treaty.   Also, agree to immediately reconstitute the group which has been looking at agriculture for the past 10 years or so to include a much larger private-sector component.

Solving energy woes

Energy is critical to international competitiveness.   International competitiveness is one of the foundation objectives that differentiates the CSME from the 1973 Common Market.   In a region comprising small, closely located economies, international competitiveness can only be achieved and sustained by combining resources.

Leaders must accept that it is against the letter, intent and spirit of the Revised Treaty to use the existence of a natural resource in a particular jurisdiction to create competitive advantage over other members of the CSME.

A priority of the region should be to put in place an appropriately structured technical group to advise on how best to utilise resources such as the sun, sea and airspaces, fisheries, forests, bauxite, oil and natural gas to drive sustainable and balanced development.   Balanced development is a fundamental concept in both the 1973 and 2001 versions of the treaty.

Export Services

The CARICOM Secretariat has had in its possession, since January 2011, the final report of a study it commissioned on 'New Export Services'.   The study, among other things, recommended five broad areas in which the region can collaborate for immediate, spread and sustained benefits.   These benefits would include not just increased income and employment but the stimulation of the region's creativity and entrepreneurial talents, and the linking of the culture, music, athletic and sporting prowess of the young persons, especially in urban areas.

These recommendations require relatively small financial outlays.   In any event, the region is not short of financial resources for export promotion.   In addition to the resources it expends annually in areas like tourism promotion, it has access to more than €28.1 million from the European Union through CARIBBEAN EXPORT and US$40 million from the Inter-American Development Bank, the Canadian International Development Agency, and the Department For International Development under the Compete Caribbean Programme.   These are two relatively new facilities. The resources should be largely untapped so that governments should agree to direct their use to areas of likely greatest impact.

One of the priority recommendations relates to London 2012.   The basis of the recommendation is the serendipitous coincidence of XXX Olympiad, the Special Olympics and the associated Cultural Olympiad; the burst of the Caribbean (through Jamaica) on to the Olympic stage in London in 1948, followed by Helsinki, 60 years ago, and the expected excellence of the Caribbean in sprint events in London, based on performances in Beijing and Berlin.

Add to this the 50th anniversary of independence from Britain, of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, and the 40th anniversary of CARIFESTA, together with the large Caribbean diaspora population in the United Kingdom, it creates a one-time opportunity to project all aspects of Caribbean life.   The spin-off benefits for creativity, culture, music, cuisine, investment opportunities, export potential, tourist attractions, and Caribbean people in general, would be tremendous.

This would not only create a lasting legacy in the UK but provide the basis for a Caribbean programme at the 2014 football World Cup and 2016 Olympics, both in Brazil.

Five months out from the Olympics, which opens on July 27, there is no Caribbean or even national programme to take advantage of the unique opportunity.   It is late.   But in the words of the chair of the Cultural Olympiad, "It is never late for a good idea."   A strong Caribbean participation was considered by her to be "a good idea".

CARICOM leaders must now resolve to work together and launch a specially selected task force to pull together a rescue programme.   This should be delivered within one month.   Pieces of work have been done and there are individuals who have worked with key persons in the UK side who were, up to late 2011, anxious to work with the Caribbean.   The task force would have responsibility to coordinate the implementation.

Third, political leaders must complete the implementation of some high-profile outstanding decisions.   In this regard, the full implementation of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

CCJ

The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) is a financially costless act through which CARICOM leaders A drilling rig in the twin-island republic of Trinidad and Tobago as depicted on gstt.org.   Byron Blake says that CARICOM member states should coordinate the use of natural resources to benefit the region  -  can demonstrate to the people of the region their seriousness about Caribbean integration.

In the 50th anniversary of the independence movement in the English-speaking Caribbean, leaders should resolve to make the CCJ their final court of Appeal.   Jamaica, with the largest caseload, and Trinidad and Tobago, the seat of the court, should complete the process before the end of the anniversary year.

Fourth, leaders must seek quick resolution or defusing of differences before they become disputes.

The Reverend Wes Hall will confirm that in 1971 when the prime minister of Guyana, Forbes Burnham, decided to ban Gary Sobers from playing cricket in Guyana, the then prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago presented him with airline tickets and a letter of apology, over Sobers' signature, to take to Barbados to Gary to sign and then to Guyana to Prime Minister Burnham.   Burnham accepted Sobers' apology; matter resolved.

Few but those directly involved knew about Eric Williams' hand in the resolution.

Fast-forward to today.   A misunderstanding between Chris Gayle and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has been left for a year to balloon into a dispute between Jamaica, the Jamaican prime minister and the WICB, with no intervention at leadership level - political business or civil.   Leaders must put in place mechanisms to resolve this and be vigilant in the future.

Fifth, political leadership must resolve to appoint institutional leaders based on proven competence and experience; provide them with clear mandates and resources; and hold them responsible.   In a time of crisis, a new secretary general has been in office for six months without issuing a statement of vision or direction.   This will not instil confidence in a region and an institution under siege.

Byron Blake is a former assistant secretary general of the CARICOM Secretariat. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.

March 4, 2012

jamaica-gleaner

University of the West Indies (UWI) and PhDs

UWI and PhDs

By Oliver Mills

It was reported in the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper of October 14, 2010, that professor Paget Henry of Brown University in the United States, who is Antiguan born, stated that it is critical for the UWI to graduate more PhDs to teach students at degree granting colleges that are emerging throughout the Caribbean.

The professor stated that the areas should be Caribbean history, sociology, political science, economics, literature and the arts.   He added that this self knowledge could only come from artists and scholars trained at the UWI.

But what is the professor really suggesting?  Is he intimating that these emerging degree granting institutions lack sufficiently well qualified lecturers in these areas?  Again, is he saying that a masters degree or a post graduate specialist diploma are insufficient to teach at the level of these degree granting institutions?  Or, is he stating that the UWI needs to, and is not graduating sufficient PhD students, and therefore needs to increase the completion and graduation rates of PhD students?

On the surface, this suggestion appears quite straight forward, but on close examination it is highly complex, as well as quite revealing concerning not only what is being done, but what should be done.  It also implies that the degree granting institutions have sufficient persons with masters degrees, but what is now badly needed is more people with PhD qualifications.  This is far from being the case, since many degree granting institutions do not have every staff member with a masters qualification, even though many may be working towards achieving this credential.

The further factor is that many degree granting institutions in the Caribbean only offer first degrees.  Very few offer masters qualifications, unless it is done in collaboration with institutions within or outside the Caribbean.  So what seems to be initially required, is to improve the quality of the first degree, so that it articulates with the higher requirements of other institutions abroad, particularly for persons pursuing higher studies.   This is very important, since many students from some Caribbean institutions who go to schools in the United States, often have to either repeat the first degree, do make up courses, or spend an additional year, and score a particular grade, before they are accepted into the programme of their choice, even if their first degree is in the particular area.

I know personally of a Caribbean student who went to a North American institution with an upper second class honours degree in library science, but was told that her course concentration was insufficient to gain direct entry.  She had to do a number of undergraduate courses over the period of a year, before her first degree was recognized as equivalent to that offered by this institution.   The issue seemed to be that since the first degree in the Caribbean took three years, the degree at the foreign institution was a four year programme.  After completing the additional year, the Caribbean student was allowed to enter the masters programme in library science.  It means that some Caribbean institutions have to examine their first degrees in terms of equivalency with that of other institutions.  We live in a global society that is highly competitive and connected, and so we need our institutions to offer qualifications that are accepted globally, and not just in the island where they are, or in the region.

There are also cases where Caribbean students with masters degrees who have applied to certain North American institutions to doctoral work in the area of their masters, were required by the institution they had applied to, to redo their masters programme, because it was not regarded as being at the level acceptable by that institution.   Even in a certain European university, students with a first degree from their home institution who applied to do a masters programme were told they had first to do a post graduate diploma in the area with a “B” average, before they could be accepted, and those with masters who wanted to do a doctorate were told they had to do either the M.Phil. first, or do one year of this programme, and present an acceptable research paper of a particular quality, before being considered for a doctoral programme.

The whole issue here, is that before we can talk of graduating more PhDs, we in the Caribbean have first to critically and systematically look at our first degree and masters programmes in terms of global equivalency, so that when our students apply abroad to other institutions, they would not have to spend additional time and money repeating what they thought they already had in the bag.  Degree granting colleges in the Caribbean therefore need to buck up, and look not only at the commercial aspect of their programmes, but their international currency.    An important feature of their programmes should be what the student, after pursuing a course of studies is capable of doing.  Does the programme fit appropriately with the job market and requirement of the wider society?  And, does the programme ensure that the student would have acquired entrepreneurial knowledge and skills to not only qualify for a job, but to create and innovate new products and services to the benefit of the economy and society?

When the professor used the term ‘graduating more PhDs’ it gives the impression of the UWI being a factory, which churns out products, where, irrespective of quality control, still come out with certain defects, such as the student not being equipped with the right match of performance skills, along with not being educated with respect to how to transfer knowledge fit for purpose.   It is not simply a matter of graduating more PhDs, but giving students a quality education reflected in a PhD.  This means that supervisors of students must be highly credentialed, and must have published widely in local, regional and international journals.  It also means that the work produced must be either highly original, or there is a creative reinterpretation of work already in the market, providing a new and different perspective, which not only adds further weight to the area, but gives it a new and transformative applicability. It is not a rehash, or a commentary.

Furthermore, when professor Henry says that the areas should be Caribbean history, the social sciences, literature and the arts, and adds that self-knowledge could only come from artists and scholars trained at the UWI, he misses the point and purpose of education completely.   Education aims at a transfiguration of the human personality through the quality of the subject areas.  It seeks to create thinkers, open-mindedness, and a cultured and humane people.  What the professor does not say is how these areas would meet the criteria just suggested.  He seems to be saying that more PhDs should be awarded in these areas.  But why these, as opposed to others?  Is this a reflection of his bias for these areas?   Of the PhDs awarded in these areas, how have they helped the Caribbean economy and society?  Have they given the emerging degree granting institutions further status and pull, with respect to students’ interest and competence?  What about management studies?   How many persons who have already done a PhD in any of the areas mentioned by the professor, have opted to work at these institutions?

When the professor further mentions that self-knowledge can only come from artists and scholars trained at the UWI, he fails to realize that self-knowledge is personal, based on the interactions of the individual with society, how he or she interprets these, and the responses that are given.   You do not acquire self-knowledge from others.  It is an individual, psychological thing that emerges from our transactions within the environment and not from entities external to us who bestow it on us.  Artists and scholars can provide insights, based on their own analysis, but they cannot infuse self-knowledge into us.   Self-knowledge is authentic to us.   To also say these have to be trained at the UWI, is the ultimate fallacy.  Any genuine institution anywhere which exposes us to the best that has be thought and taught, qualifies to facilitate the development of our intuitions, but not award us self-knowledge as the professor seems to think.

I am sure after further reflection, the professor would enhance his perspective on the issues he has promulgated, and arrive at a conclusion that is more rational, informed, and objective.

October 21, 2010

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