FOLLOWING PRIME MINISTER FREUNDEL STUART’S declaration last week that freedom of movement in the Caribbean Community takes “second place” to Barbados’ “sovereignty”, there came a quick, critical response from the pro vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies, Dr Bhoendradatt Tewarie – a charge that Barbados is adopting “too defensive” a position. (Weekend Nation, January 28).
In between the Prime Minister’s take on intra-regional free movement of Community nationals and the response that came in an interview with Tewarie, Stuart received a briefing last Friday from the Caribbean Community Secretariat focussed on the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).
Like Barbadian Prime Ministers before him, Stuart has inherited lead responsibility among CARICOM Heads of Government for CSME-readiness arrangements.
All signatory member-states had voluntarily chosen to be participants in the CSME. Officially viewed as CARICOM’s “flagship project”, it is anchored in the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas and governments are expected to honour their obligations in the implementation processes without having to violate their laws.
CARICOM, after all, was inaugurated back in I973 as a “community of sovereign states” and has been so functioning as succeeding governments engaged in collective cooperation on policies and programmes that have resulted in the current status quo of the CSME project which was originally targeted for realisation by 20I5.
In the implementation phases, intra-regional free movement became a controversial issue in a few jurisdictions, among them Barbados and Antigua and Barbuda, with even approved categories of skilled nationals being affected. This led to the CARICOM Secretariat undertaking an audit of the pluses and minuses.
Prime Minister Stuart was contending last week – prior to his briefing by a CARICOM team headed by acting Secretary General Lolita Applewhaite – that “Barbados is reviled and persecuted and is sometimes described as not being faithful to the regional project.
“But there is freedom of movement in Barbados so long as our immigration laws are observed and as long as all the other security issues are taken care of . . . .
“Reviled and persecuted”? Well, that’s the message from the country’s fourth Prime Minister, who now shoulders lead responsibility for CSME-implementation arrangements.
In a press statement issued after the briefing at Prime Minister Stuart’s office last Friday, the CARICOM Secretariat explained: “The meeting also focussed on the single economy, in particular the need to do some stocktaking and to identify the elements that needed to be accorded priority as well as a realistic time frame for putting these in place, given the realities in member-states . . . .”
I do not envy those seeking to come to grips with this rather complex message wrapped in official jargon.
But I am prepared to await the outcome of the Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee meeting on the CSME, to be held in Grenada on February 24 under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Stuart.
