The CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) and the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) - are we ready?

Law and Politics: The CSME and the CCJ - are we ready?
By Lloyd Noel:


Now that we have just celebrated our thirty-seventh anniversary of independence, from the colonial rule of England way back in 1974 – but having maintained our association and membership of the British Commonwealth of nations over all those years – we in the tri-Island State of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique seem to be on the verge of severing all those ties that assisted us in becoming who we are, and achieving what we have by reason of that association.

And as we are about to travel down that road, to some unknown destination in the new world order, it may be useful to look back from whence we came, to reflect on where exactly we are at this time, and what in fact and in reality we have thus far achieved.

Of course, I must admit up front that I have been very, very fortunate, as far as my personal achievements have been over the years from those colonial days – and some may be tempted to suggest that it is because of my good fortunes during my sojourn in England that I still harbour the fond memories and gratitude of the country and people and their customs.

But I will readily respond to that suggestion by making bold to say, without fear of any contradiction, that the great majority of those thousands of West Indians who travelled to England in those colonial days, to work and start a new life, they too still cherish the opportunities and achievements.

It was while thousands of us were already in the Mother Country in Great Britain, when the first attempt at the unified West Indies came on stream with the Federation of the West Indies in 1958 – but it only lasted for four years (1958-1962), when Jamaica decided to secede, by formally withdrawing from the Federation; and the late P.M. of Trinidad and Tobago, Eric Williams, created new maths by announcing that, because there were ten states in the Federation and Jamaica was withdrawing, then one from ten leaves nought, so Trinidad and Tobago was also moving out, and that was the end.

And it was from then that the rush to political independence by the Big Four started; Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Guyana all went on to break their colonial ties with England, although thousands of their nationals were very firmly rooted in the mother country and doing very well for themselves.

From then on the same Big Four states tried to get the same West Indian islands to form an economic union, and the Caribbean Community or CARICOM is what remains of that effort.

Over the years, of course, all the smaller islands went on to achieve their independence – except Montserrat, the BVI and Anguilla -- and that rush to statehood began with Grenada in February, 1974.

Needless to repeat the happenings since then, but now we have the “CARICOM Single Market and Economy” (CSME), and included therein is the “Caribbean Court of Justice” (CCJ), which is the body responsible for the due administration of the Single Market; but more importantly any of the independent states can decide to adopt the CCJ as its final court of appeal, for both civil and criminal and constitutional matters, and by so doing abolish appeals to the Privy Council final court of appeal in England that the West Indies have always been accustomed to, both as colonies and independent states since 1962.

The strange thing about the membership of the CCJ is that, while all the independent states signed on the CSME, only Barbados and Guyana started off using the CCJ as their final court of appeal, and late last year, Belize adopted the court and abolished the Privy Council.

Trinidad and Tobago, where the court has its headquarters, has not adopted it, and the newly elected government that came into office last year are thinking of referring the option to the people for a decision.

And even the Jamaica government is now saying that it is considering establishing its own final appeal court.

Against that state of disunity and disorganisation, our own government is now saying that it will soon be adopting the CCJ as our final court of appeal, to replace the Privy Council in England.

Maybe I missed it whenever it was said, but I have never heard any statement from this government about the preference of the CCJ over the Privy Council, and neither has any opportunity been given to Grenadians to express their opinions or views on the matter. And there can be no doubt whatsoever, that this very fundamental decision, after all those years of the very excellent services we have received from the judges of the highest quality and experience, our people should have been given the opportunity to have their say.

And in the absence of that very basic and highly principled opportunity, I cannot support the government’s decision to go it alone. I hope it is not regretted before too long.

What is also of some importance to the whole concept of regional unity, at the lower level of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) in particular, is that we have been sharing a common court system, from our associated statehood days since 1967, and we continue to do so after independence right up to the Privy Council.

I have not heard of the same unified position with the other five states on this matter – but maybe I missed it, while they all were busy promoting the latest unitary animal in the recently publicised “OECS Economic Union” – for the free movement of people and capital throughout the six independent states, with the hope that the three remaining colonies of England will sooner or later get the UK’s go-ahead to join the economic union.

To take the confused situation of so many so-called unity groups in our region – all serving the same little population at different levels -- should a company in St Lucia open a business entity in Grenada, and that business has a court case in the Grenada court, it can go to the OECS Court of Appeal and then to the CCJ final court of appeal in Trinidad.

And if the same company has a case in St Lucia, it can go to the OECS Court of Appeal and then must go to the Privy Council in London for a final decision. It would be interesting if the legal issue is similar in both OECS Court of Appeal but the final decisions at the CCJ and the Privy Council differ.

To think that we in these Caribbean Isles have been playing around with this concept of unity for so many years, and for one reason or another the governments cannot get it right -- that must have some bearing on the fact that the politicians who come and go in the various islands all seem to take the position that they alone have all the answers so they never put it to their people to say yea or nay.

We saw what happened in St Vincent, when the government there put the proposed amended constitution to the people and they rejected it – yet in general elections thereafter the same people voted the same government back into power for a third term.

And that is why I agree with the Trinidad and Tobago prime minister, to put the question of whether or not they opt for the CCJ in place of the Privy Council to the people for a decision.

I saw the news item last week that the NDC government plans to hold its party General Council meeting next month, on the 13th March at the Boca Secondary School.

The same meeting was postponed last November, around the time there was the breakdown in unity over the re-shuffle of those three ministers, and one minister actually resigned from Cabinet.

The party general secretary is the minister of tourism, Peter David, and he was removed from foreign affairs back to tourism. He has since been saying that he is rebuilding the party machinery, but the 13th March is a date that is synonymous with the PRG of 1979, not the NDC of Prime Minister Tillman Thomas, on which bandwagon he entered Parliament.

So the questions beg themselves – was the choice of that date a wise decision in the circumstances?

And will it help to rebuild the NDC Party, and at the same time keep the thousands who voted for NDC loyal enough to so vote the next time?

I was chatting with an ex-PRA of the Revolution days, the day after I saw the news item, and he too felt the date of 13th March was much too sensitive at this time – bearing in mind all the events that have taken place.

Time alone will tell, in the months and years ahead.

But like all the issues mentioned above that will affect us as a people in the times ahead, the even bigger question presents itself: are we ready for the possible changes that can result therefrom?

February 22, 2011

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Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 3)

By Sir Shridath Ramphal


There is another major respect in which the West Indies, in not being West Indian in the Marryshow manner, is not being true to itself. We are failing to fulfill the promise we once held out of being a light in the darkness of the developing world. Small as we are, our regionalism, our West Indian synonymy, inspired many in the South who also aspired to strength through unity. Solidarity has been lost not only amongst ourselves, but also collectively with the developing world.

And, perhaps, therein lies the ‘rub’. Were we making a reality of our own regional unity we would not be false to ourselves and we would have inspired others who, in the past, had looked to us as a beacon of a worthy future. Instead, we are losing our way both at home and abroad.

Have we forgotten the days when as West Indians we were the first to daringly bring the ‘Non-Aligned Movement’ to the Western Hemisphere, when we pioneered rejection of the ‘two China’ policy at the United Nations and recognized the People’s Republic; when, together, we broke the Western diplomatic embargo of Cuba; when we forced withdrawal of the Kissinger plan for a ‘Community of the Western Hemisphere’; when we were in the front rank (both intellectual and diplomatic) of the effort for a New International Economic Order; when from this region, bending iron wills, we gave leadership in the struggle against ‘apartheid’ in Southern Africa; when we inspired the creation of the ACP and kept the fallacy of ‘reciprocity’ in trade at bay for 25 years; when we forced grudging acceptance in the United Nations and in the Commonwealth that ‘small states’ required special and differential treatment? In all this, and more, for all our size we stood tall; we commanded respect, if not always endearment. We were West Indians being West Indian.

For what do we stand today, united and respected as one West Indies? We break ranks among ourselves (Grenada, I acknowledge, no longer) so that some can bask in Japanese favour for helping to exterminate endangered species of the world’s whales. We eviscerate any common foreign policy in CARICOM when some of us cohabit with Taiwan. Deserting our African and Pacific partners, we yield to Europe -- and take pride in being first to roll over.

What do these inglorious lapses do for our honor and standing in the world? How do they square with our earlier record of small states standing for principles that commanded respect and buttressed self-esteem? The answers are all negative. And, inevitably, what they do in due measure is require us to disown each other and display our discordance to the world. This is where ‘local control’ has led us in the 21st Century. We call it now ‘sovereignty’. In reality, it is sovereignty we deploy principally against each other; because against most others that sovereignty is a hollow vessel.

It is easy, perhaps natural, for us as West Indian people to shift blame to our governments; and governments, of course, are not blameless. But, in our democracies, governments do what we allow them to do: they themselves say: ‘we are doing what our people want us to do’. It is not always true; but who can deny it, when we accept their excesses with equanimity, certainly in silence.

No! There is fault within us also. We have each been touched with the glow of ‘local control’; each moved by the siren song of ‘sovereignty’; have each allowed the stigma of otherness, even foreignness, to degrade our West Indian kinship. The fault lies not only in our political stars but also in ourselves that we are what and where we are; and what and where we will be in a global society that demands of us the very best we can be. When the West Indies is not West Indian, it is we, at least in part, who let it be so. And what irony: Marryshow and his peers demanded that we be West Indian to be free together. We were; but in our freedom we are ceasing to be West Indian and in the process are foregoing the strengths that togetherness brings.

When are we at our best? Surely, when the West Indies is West Indian; when we are as one; with one identity; acting with the strength and courage that oneness gives us. Does anyone doubt that whatever we undertake, we do it better when we do it together?

Thirty-five years ago, in 1975, on the shores of Montego Bay, as I took leave of Caribbean leaders before assuming new roles at the Commonwealth, my parting message was a plea TO CARE FOR CARICOM. Among the things I said then was this:

Each generation of West Indians has an obligation to advance the process of regional development and the evolution of an ethos of unity. Ours is endeavoring to do so; but we shall fail utterly if we ignore these fundamental attributes of our West Indian condition and, assuming without warrant the inevitability of our oneness, become casual, neglectful, indifferent or undisciplined in sustaining that process and that evolution.

The burden of my message is that we have become ‘casual, neglectful, indifferent and undisciplined’ in sustaining and advancing Caribbean integration: that we have failed to ensure that the West indies is West Indian, and are falling into a state of disunity, which by now we should have made unnatural. The process will occasion a slow and gradual descent – from which a passing wind may offer occasional respite; but, ineluctably, it will produce an ending.

In Derek Walcott’s recently published collection of poems, White Egrets-- for which he has just won the prestigious T.S. Elliot Prize -- there are some lines which conjure up that image of slow passing:

With the leisure of a leaf falling in the forest,
Pale yellow spinning against green – my ending.

This must not be a regional epitaph. But, if CARICOM is not to end like a leaf falling in the forest, prevailing apathy and unconcern must cease; reversal from unity must end. The old cult of ‘local control’ must not extinguish hope of regional rescue through collective effort; must not allow a narcissist insularity to deny us larger vision and ennobling roles. We must escape the mental prison of narrow domestic walls and build a West Indies that is West Indian. We must cherish our local identities; but they must enrich the mosaic of regionalism, not withhold from it their separate splendours.

In some ways, it must be allowed; our integration slippage is less evident among the smallest of us. The OECS islands have set out a course for more ambitious and deeper economic integration among themselves, which would be worthy of all, if it could subsist for all. The Treaty establishing the OECS Economic Union is now in force. But, it is early days; it remains to be seen at the level of action, at the level of implementation, whether, even for them, the earlier ‘agony’ (of which Sir Arthur Lewis wrote so ruefully in 1962) lingers still. Meanwhile, however, congratulations are in order, and I extend them heartily.

In moving closer to ‘freedom of movement’ among the OECS countries they have set a vital example to the rest of CARICOM. The OECS West Indies is being West Indian. May it translate into an ethos among them, and in time infuse the wider Community with an end to ‘foreignness’ among all West Indians. The OECS islands have taken the first steps in a long journey whose ultimate goal must be a larger union.

Collectively, we must recover our resolve to survive as one West Indies -- as one people, one region, one whole region. Imbued by such resolve there is a future that can be better than the best we have ever had. Neither complacency nor resignation nor empty words will suffice. What we need is rescue – by ourselves, from ourselves and for ourselves. We cannot be careless with our oneness, which is our lifeline. As it was in St Georges in 1915, so it is now: The West Indies must be Westindian!

The foregoing is an extract from the Eleventh Sir Archibald Nedd Memorial Lecture delivered by Sir Shridath Ramphal in Grenada on 28 January 2011.

February 10, 2011

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 1)

Is The West Indies West Indian? (Part 2)

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Careless with CARICOM - Part 2

Sir Shridath Ramphal:


At the end of Part 1, I suggested that we are losing our way abroad as we are at home. It was not always so; and progress on each journey helped us forward on the other.

Have we forgotten the days when as West Indians we were the first to daringly bring the ‘Non-Aligned Movement’ to the Western Hemisphere, when we pioneered rejection of the ‘two China’ policy and recognized the People’s Republic; when, together, we broke the western diplomatic embargo of Cuba; when we forced withdrawal of the Kissinger plan for a ‘Community of the Western Hemisphere’; when we were in the front rank (both intellectual and diplomatic) of the effort for a New International Economic Order; when from this region, bending iron wills, we gave leadership in the struggle against ‘apartheid’ in Southern Africa; when we inspired the creation of the ACP and kept ‘reciprocity’ at bay for 25 years; when we forced recognition of the vulnerability of ‘small states’?

In all this, and more, for all our size we stood tall; we commanded respect, if not always endearment.

And beyond respect from others, was self-esteem; because in all these actions, and others, we were guided by principles: principles rooted in our regional values; principles we were not afraid to articulate and by which we stood, mindful of, but not deterred by, objections to positions we once took boldly on the global stage - not recklessly, but in unity, with honor and circumspection.

For what do we stand today, united and respected?

Some of us weaken the region’s standing in the international community when we are seen as clients of Japan’s pursuit of whaling. We eviscerate any common foreign policy in CARICOM when some of us cohabit with Taiwan. Deserting our African and Pacific partners, we yield to Europe - and take pride in being first to submit.

What do these aberrations do for our honor and standing in the world? How do they square with our earlier record of small states standing for principles that commanded respect and buttressed self-esteem? The answers are all negative. And, inevitably, what they do in due measure is require us to disown each other and display our discordance to the world. This is where ‘local control’ has led us in the 21st Century. We call it now ‘sovereignty’.

It is easy, perhaps natural, for us as Caribbean people to shift blame to our Governments; and Governments, of course, are not blameless. But, in our democracies, Governments do what we allow them to do: they say: ‘we do what our people want us to do’. And who can deny that that is so, while we accept their excesses with equanimity, certainly in silence – and not infrequently renew their political mandate.

No! The fault is with us. We have each been touched with the glow of ‘local control’; each moved by the siren song of ‘sovereignty’; have each allowed the stigma of otherness, even foreignness, to degrade our Caribbean kinship. The fault lies not in our political stars but in ourselves that we are what and where we are; and what and where we will be in a global society that demands of us the very best we can be.

When are we at our best? Surely, when we are as one; with one identity; acting with the strength and courage that oneness gives us. Does anyone doubt that whatever we undertake, we do it better when we do it together?

Thirty-five years ago, in 1975, on the shores of Montego Bay as I took leave of Caribbean leaders before assuming new roles at the Commonwealth, my parting message was a plea TO CARE FOR CARICOM. Among the things I said then was this:

Each generation of West Indians has an obligation to advance the process of regional development and the evolution of an ethos of unity. Ours is endeavoring to do so; but we shall fail utterly if we ignore these fundamental attributes of our West Indian condition and, assuming without warrant the inevitability of our oneness, become casual, neglectful, indifferent or undisciplined in sustaining that process and that evolution.

The burden of my message is that we have become ‘casual, neglectful, indifferent and undisciplined’ in sustaining and advancing Caribbean integration: that we have become careless with CARICOM – and in the process are falling into to a state of disunity which by now we should have made preternatural. It will be a slow and gradual descent; but ineluctably it will be an ending.

In Derek Walcott’s recently published collection of poems, White Egrets, there are some lines which conjure up that image of slow passing:

With the leisure of a leaf falling in the forest,
Pale yellow spinning against green – my ending.

This must not be a regional epitaph.

If CARICOM is not to end like a leaf falling in the forest, prevailing apathy and unconcern must cease; reversal from unity must end. The old cult of ‘local control’ must not extinguish hope of regional rescue through collective effort; must not allow a narcissist insularity to deny us larger vision and ennobling roles. We must escape the mental prison of narrow domestic walls and build the new Caribbean with room for all to flourish. We must cherish our local identities; but they must enrich the mosaic of regionalism, not withhold from it their separate splendors.

Today that mosaic is most evident in Caribbean diasporas who have heightened their self-esteem and secured an identity for themselves by holding fast to that image of Caribbean oneness which is slipping away from us at home. No one has told them this is the reality at home; in fact, self-deception, even denial, in the Caribbean has kept them united in a quite poignant way. Could it be that we are more true to ourselves in London or New York or Toronto, than we are within the region itself? What an irony that would be?

In some ways, it must be said, that identity slippage is less evident among the smallest of us. The OECS islands are developing a model of economic unity among themselves which would be worthy of all, if it could subsist for all. But, it is early days, and it remains to be seen at the level of action whether, even for them, the ‘agony’ lingers still.

Whatever ails us now, we must recover our resolve to survive as one people, one region. Imbued by such resolve, yet only so resolved, there is a future for this region that can be better than the best we have ever been. Make no mistake, however; neither complacency nor resignation will suffice. What the Caribbean needs is rescue – by ourselves, from ourselves and for ourselves. We cannot be careless with our oneness, which is our lifeline. We must not be CARELESS with CARICOM.

(Sir Shridath has held the positions of Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, Chairman of the West Indian Commission and Chief Negotiator in the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery)

May 5, 2010

Careless with CARICOM - Part 1

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Careless with CARICOM - Part 1

Sir Shridath Ramphal:


As ‘West Indians’, as ‘Caribbean people’, we face a basic contradiction of oneness and otherness, a basic paradox of kinship and alienation. Much of our history is the interplay of these contrarieties. But they are not of equal weight. The very notion of being West Indian speaks of identity, of oneness. That identity is the product of centuries of living together and is itself a triumph over the divisive geography of an archipelago which speaks to otherness. Today, CARICOM and all it connotes, is the hallmark of that triumph, and it is well to remember the processes which forged it – lest we forget, and lose it.

Throughout history our geo-political region has known that it is a kinship in and around an enclosing Sea. But, through most of that time it suited local elites – from white planters, through successor merchant groups, to establishment colonials - to keep the Sea as a convenient boundary against encroachment on their ‘local control’. Political aspirants in our region jostled for their Governor’s ear, not each other’s arm.

Times changed in the nineteen twenties and thirties – between the ‘world wars’. The external economic and political environments changed; and the internal environments changed – social, political and most of all demographic. Local control began to pass to the hands of local creoles, mainly professionals, later trade unionists, and for a while the new political class saw value in a strategy of regional unity. Maryshaw’s slogan ‘the West Indies must be West Indian’ carried at the masthead of his crusading newspaper was evocative. For two generations, West Indian ‘unity’ was a progressive political credo.

It was a strategy that was to reach its apogee in the Federation of The West Indies: due to become Independent in mid-1962. It is often forgotten that the ‘the’ in the name of the new nation was consciously spelt with a capital ‘T’ – The West Indies - an insistence on the oneness of the federated region. But, by then, that was verbal insistence against a contrary reality, already re-emerging. The new political elites for whom ‘unity’ offered a pathway to political power through ‘independence’ had found by the 1960s that that pathway was opening up regardless.

Regional unity was no longer a pre-condition to ‘local control’. Hence, the referendum in Jamaica; and Trinidad’s arithmetic that ‘1’ from ‘10’ left ‘0’; even ‘the agony of the eight’. The century old impulse for ‘local control’ had prevailed, and the separatist instincts of a dividing sea had resumed ascendancy.

But, as in the nineteen twenties and thirties, so in the sixties and seventies – the environment changed against separatism. Independence on a separate basis had secured ‘local control’; but the old nemesis of colonialism was replaced by the new suzerainty of globalization. Independence, particularly for Caribbean micro states, was not enough to deliver Elysium. ‘Unity’ no sooner discarded was back in vogue; but less a matter of the heart than of the head.

In an interdependent world which in the name of liberalization made no distinctions between rich and poor, big and small, regional unity was compulsive. Caribbean states needed each other for survival; ‘unity’ was the only protective kit they could afford. Only three years after the rending ‘referendum’ came the first tentative steps to ‘unity’ in 1965 with CARIFTA; ‘tentative’, because the old obsession with ‘local control’ continued to trump oneness – certainly in Cabinet Rooms; but in drawing rooms too; though less so at street corners.

Despite the new external compulsions the pursuit of even economic unity, which publics largely accepted, has been a passage of attrition. It has taken us from 1965 to 2010 - 45 years – to crawl through CARIFTA and CARICOM, through the fractured promises of Chaguaramas and Grand Anse, and through innumerable Declarations and Affirmations and Commitments Not surprisingly, we have reached a moment of widespread public disbelief that our professed goal of a ‘Single Market and Economy’ will ever be attained.

In the acknowledged quest for survival, the old urge for ‘local control’ has not matured to provide real space for the ‘unity’ we say we need. Like 19th century colonists we still struggle to keep our rocks in our pockets – despite the enhanced logic of pooling our resources and the enlarged danger of ‘state capture’ by unelected groups and external forces if we do not.

In the 21st century, despite all we know in our minds of the brutality of the global environment and the need for collective action to survive it, the isolationist claims of ‘local control’ still smother the demands of unity of purpose and action. It is puzzling that it should be so; for we have assuredly made large gains in what ‘unity’ most demands – ‘identity’.

There may be exceptions; but does not every citizen of every CARICOM country regard himself or herself as a Caribbean person – not first and foremost, of course, but after his or her national ’ identity - a member of the society we call ‘West Indian’. There may be grouses, even anger, at not being treated ‘properly’ – especially at immigration counters – but that is because as ‘West Indians’ we expect to be treated better. Our anger hinges not on the absence of identity but on its assumed reality; on the conviction that our common identity is not a garb we wear outside but shed when we come home.

Just recently, we lost one of the Caribbean’s most illustrious sons – an ‘incandescent eagle’ I called him. The whole Caribbean mourned him. And West Indian diasporas – not just Jamaican – mourned Rex Nettleford as a Caribbean person. We groan together when West Indian cricket grovels; and jump together when it triumphs. What is all this but identity?

It is not an identity crisis that we face. We know we are a family. But our family values are less sturdy than they should be – those values that should move regional unity from rhetoric to reality; should make integration an intuitive process and the CSME a natural bonding. Until we live by these values so that all the family prospers, we degrade that identity.

We are also failing to fulfill the promise we once held out of being a light in the darkness of the developing world. Our regionalism inspired many in the South who also aspired to strength through unity. We have all but withdrawn from these roles, and in some areas like the EPA with Europe we have forsaken our brothers in the South.

Recently, the former President of Tanzania, Ben Mkapa, who was our brother in arms in the North-South arena, was warning Africa against the same EPA of which we have made Europe such a gift. We have lost solidarity not only with ourselves, but collectively with our brothers in the developing world.

And, perhaps, therein lies the ‘rub’. Were we making a reality of our own regional unity we would not be false to ourselves and to others who look to us for a vision of the future. Instead, we are losing our way both at home and abroad.

(Part 2 to follow)

(Sir Shridath has held the positions of Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, Chairman of the West Indian Commission and Chief Negotiator in the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery)

May 4, 2010

Careless with CARICOM - Part 2

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