THE JUST CONCLUDED 33rd Regular Meeting Of The Conference Of Heads Of Government in St Lucia has provided strong evidence that “good leadership” may be the key to overcoming problems which on the surface appear intractable.
Coming after roughly five to six years when a cadre of regional leaders, due to lack of creative thinking, appeared to take the easy route of “opting out” of regional commitment, it was refreshing to witness a conference in which new approaches were deliberately presented as a way out of CARICOM’s current inertia, “learned helplessness” and the “death that is not quite death”, to quote Ralph Gonsalves.
Thus, whilst a few years ago committed regionalists stood aghast as newly elected leaders seemed not to appreciate the work of generations of more mature statesmen, the last conference appeared to have deliberately taken a step away from the abyss into which we were blissfully headed.
Gone were the callous ATM references, CSME pause, the self-righteous defence of discriminatory immigration policies, and the panicked reaction to a global economic downturn which pushed untested leaders towards desperate short-term national responses that did greater harm to their own individual causes.
It is clear from his welcome remarks that host Prime Minister Kenny Anthony was consciously aware of the historical responsibility placed on him to return the Caribbean’s leadership to a place of greater awareness of the value of regionalism to development.
Quite telling of both his consciousness and intent was his decision to fix the agenda “to devote an entire day to a caucus of Heads”, since he believed that “we must take time to share our hopes, dreams and aspirations for our beloved though enigmatic region. We must start again by re-establishing the ‘political chemistry’ that bound us together”.
Equally important was Anthony’s proposal for CARICOM to “overhaul and redefine its foreign policy positions and postures” in order to make the region more globally relevant.
Central to his suggestion was the fact that “China was on course to become the world’s largest economy in the next few years and a superpower in its own right” and conversely that “Europe now faces an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions” and “will never be the same again”.
Significant, too, was the need for more progressive engagement with emerging African states which, largely through Chinese support, “are finding a new era of stability which is fuelling economic growth and a socio-cultural renaissance”.
In recognizing that only Ralph Gonsalves and Denzil Douglas surpassed him in terms of Caribbean leadership longevity, Anthony was signalling his awareness of the dilemma that the natural Caribbean leadership appeared to be emanating from the smallest platforms. Anthony perhaps, too, was seeking regional cover for his own new directions in St Lucia.
Despite this, regionalism was injected with much needed hope.
• Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, specializing in regional affairs.
