After circulating their draft work agenda, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Heads of Government will have to deal with an unexpected spreading controversy involving Haiti and Jamaica at their first Inter-Sessional Meeting for 2011 this week.
It has to do with Jamaica’s decision to send home last weekend the Haitian football team whose members were participating in the current CONCACAF Under I7 tournament following discovery that three members were infected with the contagious malaria disease.
Since then, while at the level of governments, in Kingston and Port-au-Prince, feverish efforts were being made to keep the lid on what threatens to be a serious rupture in diplomatic relations, angry Haitians have engaged in anti-Jamaica/Caricom protests in the Haitian capital.
And, sensationally, they torched the official flag of the 15-member Community – an unprecedented development in the 38-year life of Caricom, amid clamour for a break in diplomatic ties.
When the draft work agenda went out for this week’s two-day meeting, carded to start on Friday in St George’s, Caricom leaders were already having to contend with a range of unresolved sensitive and pressing issues.
These include a secretary general to succeed Edwin Carrington, who retired last year after I8 years in office, and the establishing a new governance structure at the Community Secretariat.
Further, they have to come to grips with complaints about lack of progress on a backlog of readiness arrangements for the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME) as well as implementation of provisions of the Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union, signed back in 2008 in Barbados.
Jamaica has traditionally been the hub for Caricom activities involving developments in Haiti. It is the only Community state with an Haitian embassy, and the one which the deposed President Jean Bertrand Aristide chose for political asylum before moving on to South Africa where he has remained for most of his current seven years in exile.
Prime ministers’ meeting
Ahead of the official agenda for the Inter-Sessional Meeting, being chaired by host Prime Minister Tillman Thomas, there is to be a scheduled meeting today of the Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on the CSME under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Fruendel Stuart, of Barbados.
Given the growing anxieties across the Community over an apparent standstill in arrangements to push ahead with the CSME – the so-called “flagship project” of the Community, expectations for some positive developments from the conference would be focused on, for example, information on some specific details of progress made since the last Caricom Summit held in Jamaica on 20I0 in areas such as intra-regional free movement to live and work, consistent with CSME provisions in the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.
Also, the related legislation on contingent rights for approved skilled nationals and their families, and the proposed regional health insurance for all CARICOM nationals.
On the old issue of the much talked about introduction of an effective governance system – that dates back to the I992 seminal Time for Action report from The West Indian Commission – the Heads of Government would, hopefully, have been sensitised to informed criticism across the region, that their proposal to establish a Permanent Council of Caricom Ambassadors is not the way to go.
The fact that an ill-considered, unwieldly “search committee” failed to come forward with a shortlist of nominees for secretary general should be given priority consideration.
Before, that is, proceeding any further with the proposed creation of a Permament Council – the envoys scattered across the Community and whose powers to influence change and terms of accountability are yet to be defined.
For a start, how useful have the existing country envoys to Caricom proven to be over the years? Quite a few often convey the impression of being adrift in a canoe in the Caribbean Sea.
Now that the interviewed five Caricom nationals – from Belize, Jamaica, Dominica, St Vincent and the Grenadines and St Lucia – have not been approved, it is reasonable to assume that an entirely new and realistic approach would have to be pursued.
At this time, there is neither commonality on the way forward in determining the choice for appointment of a new secretary general, nor the usefulness of a Permanent Committee of Caricom Ambassadors to help the process of effective governance.
For now, we must await the outcome of this week’s meeting in St George’s to discover if, indeed, there has been progress in areas that continue to be plagued by political sloth.
Please see also today’s DAILY NATION Page 40.