Sir Shridath Ramphal worries about CARICOM unity

by Oscar Ramjeet:



One of the Caribbean's most vocal regionalists is worried about the future of CARICOM and the integration movement and said that if the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) collapses, CSME and the entire regional institution will fail.

I had a lengthy meeting with Sir Shridath Ramphal at his Barbados home, and he expressed grave concern about the pace of activities in the move towards Caribbean integration, for which he has been clamouring for five decades.

He said the Heads of Government and CARICOM have to "recapture the vision that led a generation of Caribbean leaders to the understanding that we have to have functional unity -- if we are to meet the challenges of the 21st century... We have seen to have lost our way in governance at the regional level in economic integration which is the heartbeat of CARICOM... We have lost our inspiration within the developing world when we were once the leaders of the ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific nations) and perhaps worst of all Caribbean people are losing faith in the political leadership of the region."

The old problem of implementation is still with us and, without implementation, decisions are meaningless, Sir Shridath stressed and cited the CSME, which he said has still not gotten off the ground after so many years.

Touching on the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), the former three-term Commonwealth Secretary General said the CCJ is the central pillar of regional integration under the Treaty of Chagaraumas. He pointed out that the CCJ is essential to the functioning of the CSME because the CSME is a legal regime. He added that we have come to the limit and asked what can be done without law at a regional level.

He has joined with four other recipients of the region's highest award, the Order of Caribbean Community (OCC), in calling on the various governments to remove the Privy Council and accept the CCJ as the final court.

I recall in 1977 when Sir Shridath spoke at the graduation exercise of the University of the West Indies at St Augustine, when he received his honorary doctorate from the UWI, he made an impassioned plea for regional integration and pointed out that the English-speaking Caribbean, which has a population of less than five million, has the most prime ministers, presidents, ambassadors and high commissioners on the planet -- although the population is so small.

The Guyanese-born diplomat is a regionalist at heart and was a keen player in bringing an end to Ian Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence and institutional racism in Southern Rhodesia. He also spent much of his last five years as Commonwealth Secretary General, until 1990, in the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa. He had the satisfaction of playing a part in Nelson Mandela's release from prison in February 1990, and Namibia's independence the following month.

Sir Shridath with Oscar Ramjeet at his home in Barbados

September 8, 2010

Caricom's 'Governance' Dilemma

By Rickey Singh




THE 31st annual Heads of Government Conference of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) concluded in Montego Bay, Jamaica, on Wednesday, July 7 with little hope of any progress being made by the 37-year-old regional economic integration movement in the immediate future.

Hopes raised midway the four-day event for a new approach to ensure realistic and appropriate management of today's challenges, caused by the global economic and political crises, were dashed when the leaders backed off at the close of the conference.

Not surprisingly, they have scheduled another "special meeting", for September this year, to consider likely alternative governance models for better management.

In its normally lively 'discussion forum', the BBC Caribbean Service has been encouraging responses to the provocative question: "Does Caricom have a future?"

This discussion took place while the Community's Heads of Government were still wrestling with the cynicism and disenchantment their inactions have spawned over repeated failures to implement decisions, unanimously taken, for progress towards the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME).

While the official communiqué was not available to the region's media at the time of writing (Thursday, July 8), the comments that flowed at an end-of-summit press conference on Wednesday made it sufficiently clear that the elusive governance issue had once again proved a barrier the leaders were still unprepared to scale.

Diminishing credibility

It is a failure that could only deepen concerns over Caricom leaders' credibility and commitment to make the Community's flagship project -- a single economic space in a region that constitutes a microcosm of the world's peoples, cultures and varying levels of social and economic development -- a reality either in this decade or the next.

Often viewed by Latin American, African and Asian blocs as a cohesive and productive experiment in regional economic integration, Caricom has done reasonably well in terms of functional cooperation and foreign policy coordination.

However, when it comes down to implementation of decisions on major issues involving critical segments of its treaty-based arrangements for inauguration of a single market and economy, therein lies the rub.

Their failures, which are rooted in a lack of collective political will to overcome parochialism and a narrow sense of nationalism in favour of a shared vision of "one people, one market, one Caribbean", continue to afflict Caricom. Consequently, a sense of alienation and defeatism, if not the "despair" alluded to in the BBC Caribbean discussion forum on "Caricom's future", has spread.

The announcement by Prime Minister Bruce Golding, in his capacity as Caricom's new chairman, that a committee of prime ministers has been identified to make proposals for the forthcoming "special meeting" of heads in September to address alternative forms of governance cannot be considered as anything of significance.

The Community has gone that way before with "Prime Ministerial Working Groups" and high-level committees of regional technocrats. The upcoming September meeting seems destined to do what Trinidadians call "spinning top in mud".

Amid the expanding "word game" on Caricom's future governance, more and more Heads of Government are pushing for more action and less talk. They are simply reprimanding themselves, but given the current circumstance, it is an appropriate rebuke.

Ironically, in rushing to announce a prime ministerial committee to consider a new 'governance' architecture, leaders present in Montego Bay seem to have forgotten to include the prime minister of Belize, Dean Barrow, who holds lead responsibility on governance and justice in Caricom's quasi-cabinet system. Or did he decline to serve?

July 11, 2010


jamaicaobserver

Bahamas Blog International