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

Bahamas: National pride is heightened as Bahamians' 37th anniversary of independence from Great Britain is observed: July 10, 1973 - July 10, 2010

National pride heightened as independence is observed
By JASMIN BONIMY
Guardian Staff Reporter
jasmin@nasguard.com:



At a time when the effects of the global economic recession continue to grip the country and violent crime is at an all time high, some residents say they are prouder than ever to be Bahamian.

Their pride comes as the nation celebrates its 37th anniversary of independence today. Despite the grim economic and social conditions over the past few months, many Bahamians said they plan to overlook their worries this holiday weekend.

The people The Nassau Guardian spoke to insisted that there is still much to be proud of as the nation turns 37.

Marcia Hutcheson, a street vendor and owner of VIP Productions, a stall that specializes in Bahamian merchandise, said, "There are problems no matter where you are in the world, but in The Bahamas we are doing well. So I am proud to be a Bahamian.

"We are in a recession and everybody is still surviving. We're helping each other out so we can all do well. Regardless of whatever, we are going to wear our colors because we are an independent and proud people."

Zarria Moxey, a teenager, said she loves celebrating independence because it is the only time everything Bahamian is truly embraced.

"I like all of the festivals that we celebrate like Crab Fest and the regattas on different islands," said the 16-year-old.

For some who have traveled the world and experienced other cultures, like Michael Thurston, there is no place like home.

"The Bahamas is one of the best places in the world," said Thurston. "I have been here most of my life but I've done a lot of traveling. But I love The Bahamas, I love the Bahamian people, but most of all I love the Kalik beer."

Charity Brennen, who attended the first Independence Day celebrations on July 10, 1973, said, "I was born here and there is no other place I'd like to be."

For 67-year-old Franklyn Dorsette, the nation's growth and development over the past 37 years is what defines Bahamian history.

"I am proud of The Bahamas simply because we are free from all sorts of things that would impede us," he said, "that is freedom of speech and freedom of worship. In many other countries they aren't as lucky."

In his independence message to the nation, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham said celebrations are tempered by what has become a prolonged global economic downturn.

"However, we are a resilient people, resourceful and creative in times of hardship," he said. "We are heartened by the promise of the beginning of recovery and we look forward to improved economic times in the months ahead."

7/9/2010

The Nassau Guardian

Bahamas Blog International

Mafiosi buy votes to prevent travel to Cuba

By Gabriel Molina:




THE U.S. Chamber of Commerce has surprised congress members by warning that it proposes to "monitor votes" on the bipartisan bill aiming to reestablish the right for U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba and sell food to the island in a more normal way.

The tone of letters expressing support for a relaxation of the measures against Cuba never implied a virtual threat like it does now.

Bruce Josten, lobbying chief for the Chamber of Commerce, said that they will watch the count closely if the bill – passed on June 30 by the Agriculture Committee – gets to the floor.

The unusual warning came after an exposé by the Federal Elections Commission over vote-buying by the U.S. Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee (PAC), which prompts the Miami ultra-right Cuban-American lobby, which has directed more than $73,000 in the first four months of 2010 to block approval of the bill.

The PAC "donated" around $11 million to close to 400 candidates and legislators between 2004 and 2008. According to a statement from the Public Campaign non-party group, 53 Democratic legislators received more than $16,000 per head and at least 18 of them changed their position.

Republicans Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart and Democratic Senator Robert Menéndez have benefited the most.

A survey taken in 2008 by World Public Opinion concluded that 70% of U.S. citizens are in favor of travel to Cuba. Among Cuban Americans, 55% are against the so-called embargo.

For example, Congressman Mike McIntyre, Democrat, North Carolina, said that he had spoken with Miami Republicans Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart about their family’s experience in Fidel Castro’s Cuba and he changed his vote "because of the horrors that they suffered." It is not difficult to realize that that experience is only one of support for the Batista dictatorship, given that Rafael J. Díaz-Balart, founder of the dynasty and the grandfather of Lincoln and Mario, was the legal adviser of the United Fruit Company in Banes – likewise the birthplace of Fulgencio Batista. He was government minister from 1952 to 1958. His son Rafael, father of the congressmen, was deputy minister.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat for Weston, has received $75,700 from the Committee; Kendrick Meek, Miami Democrat, is at eighth place on the list. Montana Republican Denny Rehberg changed from being an enthusiastic opponent of the blockade to voting in favor of the prohibitions, after receiving $10,500 from the PAC.

As majority leader, in 2004 legislator Tom DeLay prevented the restoration of U.S. citizens’ right to travel to Cuba, which had been passed with a wide majority in both Houses via a bipartisan initiative. DeLay made the bill disappear in complicity with the Díaz-Balarts.

The Cuban travel ban was established close to half a century ago, in January 1961, by Dwight Eisenhower. At the end of his term, President William Clinton eased travel to Cuba in order to win influence on the island. But President George W. Bush prohibited it again, in order to thank ultra-right Cuban Americans whose vote fraud in Florida made it possible to strip Al Gore, the Democratic candidate, of the presidency.

Bill HR 4645 is sponsored by 62 congress members, led by Democrat Collin Peterson, chair of the House Agriculture Committee, and Republican Jerry Moran of Kansas, and is backed by more than 140 business, social, economic, political and religious organizations.

In addition to the Chamber of Commerce and the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), which groups together more than 300 important U.S. companies, these include USA Engage and the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA), which also sent letters of support to legislators. As did the Council of Churches (Protestants) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; the National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) and the American Farm Bureau Federation; the Fund for Reconciliation and Development and the National Corn Growers Association.

General James Hill, ex-commander in chief of the Southern Command; General Barry McCaffrey, former director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy; Colin Powell, former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and nine more former high level members of that country’s Armed Forces have acknowledged that the current policy of isolating Cuba has failed. José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, expressed the same sentiment in a Congress hearing. All those players agree that the initiative is not doing away with the embargo (blockade), but is of high interest to the United States.

Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the Chamber of Commerce, cited a study undertaken last March by Texas A&M University, which revealed that reducing restrictions on exports to Cuba could start a boom, because it would lead to sales worth $365 million, 6,000 new jobs and an economic impact amounting to $1.1 billion for the country. But Congress is still being subjected to the pressure of bribes distributed by the Miami Mafia with government funds.

Steve Yoder, chair of the NGFA’s Joint Trade Policy A-Team and of the U.S. Grains Council, affirms that the embargo is affecting ranchers and farmers. In the 2008-09 growing season, Cuba was Washington’s tenth-largest corn customer. In order to retain this market Yoder admits that they need to eliminate payments in advance and the requirement to use banks in third countries, provisions that the H.R. 4645 bill would suppress, in addition to the quotas that generally accompany those permits. It also established that the permits will have the same payment requirements as U.S. exports to other countries. So Cuba would not have to pay in advance and in cash before a ship leaves a U.S. port with merchandise for the island.

The bill could be debated in the House after August 8 and it has been said that it needs 13 votes more than those committed to date. In the Senate, Democrat Byron Dorgan and Republican Mike Enzi were confident that a similar bill to that of the House will be passed. They are confirming that they have the 62 votes needed. But Cuban-American Robert Menéndez, chair of the Senate Democrats, has threatened a filibuster in order to bring the session to a close without a vote. The battle will continue to be a difficult one.


Havana - July 9, 2010

granma.cu

Bahamas Blog International

Caricom - and carry-go where?

The Caricom 31st regular heads of government meeting was held over recent days in Montego Bay. The mood of the event, according to the tone of media reports, seems to suggest you would be justified to assume it was the 13th, with all the pessimism that comes with that number.

Media personnel looked at things with less than rose-coloured spectacles which, in an earlier time, produced more optimistic expectations of a Caribbean future. In the eyes of today's media, however, this week's meeting (first in the series began1973) was just another chat shop, whole heapa talk and little substance.

The dean of Caribbean political analysis, Ricky Singh, in a column in the Observer on Wednesday, gave one of his usual astute overviews of the event which the editors headlined. "Caricom - decisions minus theatrics". It depends on how you define "theatrics", but from the distance of Kingston and relying instead on print reports and broadcasts which came out of Montego Bay, I gained the impression that at least some "theatrics" occurred.

The PNP's boycott of the opening ceremony could be given the Damp Squib Award of the Week. The intention seemed to have been to make a statement about the JLP government and the whole business "from deception to detention" in that certain matter which has left us exhausted and bruised, but what did that have to do with Caricom? Even if the PNP, as the official Opposition, thought it unpalatable to be guests of an administration which they do not respect - in the name of Jamaica at least, an unreserved welcome should have been accorded to visitors, after which we could get back to domestic agendas. Having far more of a track record with Caricom than the present leadership, the PNP should not have denied its place in history. Equally embarrassing was the scant media attention which was given to the protest. With the JLP now pouring on the scorn, we're sinking into another round of kass-kass.

THANKS to Ricky Singh, we got a bit of insight into the motivation of certain players in the conference scenario, particularly the newest prime minister, Trinidad and Tobago's Mrs Kamla Persad Bissessar, the fourth woman to hold that level of high office in the region. To remind those who may have forgotten, or inform those who might not know, her three forerunners were the indomitable Dame Eugenia Charles of Dominica, the historic Janet Jagan of Guyana and the mercurial Portia Simpson Miller of Jamaica.

Mrs Bissessar's victory is of particular note because she heads a People's Coalition, cutting across racial and social lines, assembled to oust Patrick Manning from the leadership of Trinidad and Tobago - which it did. Her presence here this week was her maiden voyage in the sea of Caricom meetings. I've heard that she is no stranger to Jamaica, having lived here some 14 years.

At Montego Bay, she expressed concerns about the use of the Caribbean Petroleum Fund. One got the impression that Mrs B was sending a message that T&T intends to be more prudent in its benevolence to its neighbours. Ricky added his own caution to T&T that the relationship with its neighbours is not a one-way street.

The big story, for me, is Mrs Bissessar's request for a meeting with Prime Minister Golding on the matter of the Air Jamaica-Caribbean Airlines deal. This was signed just before the general elections, which resulted in former Prime Minister Patrick Manning's loss of power. For some time before, there had been complaints from media and in the Trini Parliament as to why details of the deal were not known and that more reports seemed to come out of Jamaica than home territory.

Kingston cast aside all doubts and proceeded to the signing, eager to take Air Jamaica off its list of obligations and earn the favour of the International Monetary Fund, which these days is behaving like a proud daddy, thrilled to bits at how well Jamaica is complying with the rules, qualifying it for more pocket money from "dads".

Mrs B stayed on after the Caricom meeting to confer yesterday with Mr Golding in Kingston to discuss the airlines issue. Question of the day: What if some flaw is found which could set back the deal, after Air Jamaica has been diminished, by "the mating" of the scarlet ibis of T&T and the hummingbird of JA? What sort of offspring is to result?

There are other challenges. Jamaica continues to get the short end of the stick in inter-regional immigration despite the promise for completion and implementation of the Caricom Travel Card (CARIPASS). As to all the stuff about Caricom citizenship and neighbourliness, with opportunities for exchange of qualified workers, the reality definitely has not been neighbourly.

Time and again you hear stories of how when we head into the Caribbean, we're met with suspicion at every port. From they see us getting off the plane, Immigration runs out to pull in the welcome mat. The only other members of the Caricom family who are dissed as much as JA people are the Guyanese, and even they diss us when they're ready. Our dancehall artistes are branded and stereotyped, treated like carriers of the plague, accused of contaminating peaceful island kingdoms with "dutty music", "bad wud" and the demon drugs, not unfamiliar to those passing judgement.

OF THE DWINDLING number of elder statesmen still defending the Caricom ideal, former PM PJ Patterson has been given the task of guiding the sub-committee on immigration. More power to him. He already has on his hands the other hot potato of Haiti with the agonisingly slow march to find light at the end of the tunnel darkened by the February mega earthquake.

So was Caricom-31 a total waste of time and money? Word that the bill to be met by us as the hosts has made some persons decidedly antsy and has incited a reminder to the government about its obligation to nurses, teachers, police, correctional officers and the growing public sector unhappy about delayed settlement of overdue debts. In that scenario, some people say Caricom is the last thing on their minds.

CELEBS CELEBRATE: Usain running a goodwill race with a group of Swiss kindergarteners - who "beat" him. He responded by "breaking down in sobs". The children go to comfort him. A tiny girl plants a consoling kiss on his cheek. The crowd cheers. Chalk up one for the big man's acting skills... Back home, Asafa's special girl Yendi takes the Miss Jamaica Universe crown... The man was positively beaming.

gloudonb@yahoo.com

July 09, 2010

jamaicaobserver

Bahamas Blog International

Antigua and Barbuda: Wrong track, wrong direction

Wrong track, wrong direction
by Dr Isaac Newton:


I read Peter Richards’ article ‘Antigua Threatens Sanctions Against the United States’ on Caribarena’s online news with intense interest. I distilled that PM Spencer is expressing a certain brand of ‘righteous anger’ over the United States’ (US) refusal to settle the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling with Antigua and Barbuda (A&B).

Spencer typically dwells on the egregious effect that the United States’ behavior has had on A&B’s economy. But he gives few considerations and realistic proposals of improving relations with the US. It is reasonable however, that Spencer should advocate that the US should respect voluntary codes of conduct consistent with international rules governing the WTO.

Amongst a thousand reasons, Spencer has one motivation to improve relations with the US. That is, A&B carriers the towering presence of Mount Obama—its highest peak, a tribute paid to President Obama by Spencer himself.

Overshadowed by years of failed negotiations, Spencer has arrived at a formidable impediment. He realizes that as a super power, the US is determined to protect its national interests with little regard for international monitoring and compliance verification of the WTO. The PM now is considering the option of imposing sanctions against the US.

The rational for Spencer’s decision is that the US has sustained its position through a prolonged process of sidestepping that offsets the nation’s progress, tantamount to abusing a small island state. There may be other complexities involved.

Yet, it is a discerning leader indeed who can make a wise choice between the ethics of a little axe cutting down a big tree, and the geo-politics of a M1A1 Abrams’ tank crushing a small rose.

Spencer’s decision is further compounded by a dangling political future at home. He awaits the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeals’ decision, and within a month may be compelled to go back to the polls with the likelihood of descending into the valley of the shadow of death.

Adding more pepper to the stew, the PM is currently presiding over a deadbeat economy--- which is fundamentally dictated by IMF’s dominant interests. The prevailing mood amongst a vast sector of the population suggests a general exodus. Sensing his tenure is on the brink, and that voters believe his leadership amounts to a travesty of public service, Spencer seems trapped between getting results and the dramatics of appearing tough. Folkloric wisdom cautions, “You don’t cut off your nose to fix your face.”

In this context, imposing sanctions against the US invites a yawn and a smile. It also represents a public autopsy that Spencer is unable to handle the uncertainty of his office with keen thoughtfulness. Perhaps the PM may prove naysayers wrong, but to date, he has not gotten his leadership act together fast enough to reach expected potential.

At best, sanctions against the US may evoke symbolic sympathy from Caricom as well as some members of the international community. I cannot see any benefits whatsoever, bestowed to A&B, anytime in our preferred future. A&B cannot afford to erode its hemispheric relations with and economic ties to the US.

Perhaps Spencer should consider the possibility of another attempt at soft negotiations, even if in the past, this strategy might have been met with subtle but fierce resistance. It is quite possible that the road to effective diplomacy supported by patience, fresh eyes, and a philosophy of finding common ground, can effect flourishing change.

What the PM needs right now is a strategic intelligence pathway that produces a win-win for Antigua and Barbuda and the US. But this requires possibility thinking that does not align with Spencer’s natural mode of political miscalculations.

Seen through critical lens, Spencer has become a captive to the dogma that desperate times call for desperate measures. But the pragmatics of this strategy applied to the WTO’s case, will not yield financial reward or diplomatic right-thinking. Both of these ingredients are needed for the country’s long-term prosperity.

Although I have completely given up on Spencer’s leadership credentials to turn the ship of state in the right direction, the nation needs well-practiced operational-skills to address this matter. But Spencer will have to ignore his string of advisors, whose failed ideas are now brilliantly evident in the trademark of colossal failures, intrinsic to his administration.

Mired in high-stakes politics where perceptions of eroding ethics and unfair treatment intersect to destroy democratic values and international trust, Spencer should see by some force of miraculous intervention, that evoking sanctions against the US, will not guarantee our national successes or lessen our regional challenges.

Ultimately, the PM can not afford to pretend to operate in a vacuum. Should he move towards sanctions, he will induce an aberration, far too costly for our nation to bear. Sanctions would not hurt the US. At best, influential countries, whose economies are linked to Wall Street, may frown at United States’ non-compliance posture. And nothing will happen, except that A&B will feel untold pain.

I hope Spencer will reconsider his odd temptation, and push the envelope in the pursuit of doing what is right for A&B. Or he will continue on the wrong track--- heading farther in the wrong direction.

July 8, 2010

caribbeannetnews

Caribbean Blog International

The British Caribbean and its history

By Franklyn W Knight:


The English-speaking population of the Caribbean represents less than 20 per cent of the conventionally defined region. That definition describes a Caribbean composed of the island chain from the Bahamas and the Dutch ABC islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao plus the mainland enclaves of Belize, Guyana and Suriname. Sometimes Bermuda is included although its 68,000 additional souls hardly change the proportion.

In the 1980s a new political definition became popular. It added the Central American states but omitted Cuba, displaying more the political bias of the United States of America rather than the reality of Caribbean affairs and the peculiar history of the region. The driving force behind the conventional definition of the Caribbean was a certain uniformity of history. The states of the conventional Caribbean were inordinately influenced by the interrelated sugar revolutions that convulsed the region between the 17th and the 19th centuries.

These sugar revolutions radically transformed the political, social, occupational, economic, demographic, and environmental structure of most of the Caribbean islands. Sugar was the principal driving force but it was not the only one and not all the islands succumbed to those revolutions. The massive importation of Africans - more than 10 million between 1518 and 1870 - made possible the transformation of the vast region between the northeast of Brazil, the Antilles, the Magdalena-Cauca river valleys of Colombia and a huge swath of the southern part of what today is called the United States of America. But African slavery affected every country in the Americas to some degree.

Slavery, of course, existed long before Christopher Columbus and his ill-fated caravels wandered into the Caribbean. Slaves constituted an integral part of Roman expansion and colonisation of most of Western Europe. The preferred slaves of Romans came from the region that today comprises Germany. But the word itself derives from the Slavic peoples who formed the greater proportion of people who were traded in the slave markets of the Mediterranean. Europeans continued to enslave one another until the middle of the 19th century, although mostly in Russia. And Muslim states enslaved captured Europeans in the Mediterranean until the Napoleonic Wars.

African and indigenous American peoples also enslaved one another. Throughout the continent of Africa, stronger states subordinated weaker states and subjected their conquered peoples to some form of slavery. Among other occupations, male slaves were employed as warriors or protectors of harems and religious sites. In Mexico a system of slavery called Tlacotli existed until the arrival of Hernán Cortés in 1521.

Slavery in the Americas reconstructed by the Europeans and their slaves finds no precedence anywhere else in the world. Neither in Europe, Africa nor among the indigenous societies of the Americas did the practice demonstrate the rigidity and suffocating mutually reinforcing cleavages developed after 1518. Only in the European American colonies were race and colour essential aspects of enslavement. Only in the Americas did slavery perform a vitally important economic function, assets that could independently generate wealth. The American slave society and the American slave-holding society were fundamentally different.

Nevertheless, the way the history of the Caribbean is taught, especially in the British Caribbean, leaves much to be desired. It tends to be excessively centred on the British Caribbean experience and neglects the integral connection with the non-Anglophone Caribbean or with the wider Americas.

To begin, not all Africans arrived in the Americas as merchandise. Several Hispanised Africans arrived with the Iberians in the first century of conquest and colonisation. Columbus recruited travel companions such as Juan Garrido and Pedro Alonso Niño from among the large free black population that lived in Andalucía, in cities from Málaga to Huelva. Nuflo de Olano who accompanied Vasco Nuñez de Balboa across the Isthmus of Panama was probably a bought African slave. Juan Valiente who accompanied Hernán Cortés to Mexico was described as black. So was Estebanico who wandered for 10 years with Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca from Florida to Mexico by way of Louisiana and Texas.

These free blacks, like their fellow adventurers, spawned a large, free, mixed population wherever they went. There were blacks and descendants of blacks all across the Americas who were never enslaved. They formed pockets of free population in cities, especially port cities like Havana, New Orleans, Vera Cruz, Porto Bello, Cartagena, Lima, Salvador de Bahia and Buenos Aires. And the town of El Cobre in eastern Cuba had a town council of freed and semi-free residents between 1680 and 1780.

During the 19th century another group of free Africans arrived along with Chinese and Indians from the Asian subcontinent to assist in the transition from slave labour to wage labour across the Caribbean. While smaller than the imported numbers of the commercial transatlantic slave trade, these immigrants are a part of the history that should not be neglected.

The massive importation of Africans was necessary because, unlike the narratives of Bartolomé de las Casas, the population of the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean in 1492 was not as large as the friar supposed. The Caribbean islands may have had a combined population of just about one million. That population could not support the increased labour demands of export-oriented plantations. The decline of the Native American population between 1500 and about 1650 was extremely complex and not the result of the single or simplistic explanation of Spanish genocide. Indeed, genocide is an inappropriate description for the decline of the Tainos of the Antilles.

But slavery is not the only theme in which moving the boundaries beyond time and space offers rewards. Hispaniola had a relatively early sugar complex - as early as 1512. The distillation of rum has a history preceding the English arrival in Barbados. Rum was distilled in the 13th century by Benedictine monks in Lebanon. Maroons were not really instrumental in the process of disintegration of the Caribbean slave society, and their role in the Haitian revolution seems highly exaggerated. Finally, the peasant society in the Caribbean goes back to the 16th century.

July 07, 2010

jamaicaobserver

Bahamas Blog International

Don’t abandon Caricom, fix it

jamaicaobserver editorial:



THE one thing everyone in the Caribbean agrees on is that the regional grouping, the Caribbean Community (Caricom), has been an abject failure.

The process of regional integration has stalled in most respects, notably the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) and is in reverse on many other areas such as freedom of movement of Caricom citizens. The inability to accomplish freedom of movement is a classic illustration of the failure of the grouping.

Ironically, during the colonial period people were free to move from one colony to another. But immediately after the attainment of political independence, governments began instituting a system of work permits.

While welcoming tourists with only a driver's licence, immigration officials subject passport holders from other Caricom states to hostile interrogation. In the Bahamas and Barbados, citizens of Jamaica, Guyana and Haiti are treated as personas non grata.

The state of Caricom is the equivalent of a bankrupt company that has been losing money for well over a decade. But since there are still obvious benefits to be realised from regional integration and cooperation, abandoning Caricom is the option of the faint-hearted. The only viable course of action is fixing it.

A diagnosis of the cause of the malaise reveals myriad problems, some natural and some anthropogenic. The natural barriers, such as the lack of a contiguous land mass and the separation by hundreds of miles of sea can be rendered manageable by better logistics and modern communications. The several centrifugal tensions such as the lack of a genuine sense of community and petty nationalism can be mollified by leadership.

The crisis of Caricom is a crisis of leadership, the essence of which is a lack of vision and an incapacity for mobilisation of the people of the region in support of lucidly articulated strategy. This crisis of leadership exists at two levels: the political and the managerial.

The political leadership is comparable to the board of directors which sets goals and approve broad policy on the advice of management. The current heads of government are not without ability, but they lack unity without the keen intellect of Mr Owen Arthur and the calm statesmanship of Mr P J Patterson.

In addition, they have avoided addressing the unpleasant issue of not holding management responsible for its failure to implement their instructions.

The real problem of Caricom is the comprehensive failure of the management, specifically the leadership of the Secretariat. The performance of the Caricom Secretariat over the last 10 to 15 years has happened on the watch of the current secretary-general and whether it is his fault or not, the record points to the need for a change of leadership. This is what would be done in any bankrupt company or non-performing organisation.

The heads of government abhor the unpleasantness of changing a manager but, in any event, we would prefer to see the manager opting to resign. There is nothing dishonourable in resigning, especially if one has served well beyond normal retirement age. Caricom, we believe, is an indispensable cause but no one is indispensable to that cause.

This newspaper salutes the selfless work of the current secretary-general, however, his resignation now at the heads of government meeting in Montego Bay, would dramatise the need for a fresh start, without which Caricom will drift aimlessly on to certain death.

July 06, 2010

jamaicaobserver editorial

Bahamas Blog International