HEADS OF GOVERNMENT of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) met at the start of the month in Guyana for their 37th regular meeting. It came and went like countless others that have preceded it – without even a hint of interest by the average Caribbean citizen.
In the case of Barbados, unless the meeting is being held in Bridgetown, there is now an apparent tradition of almost total disinterest by everyone except perhaps for the officials who attend.
The Prime Minister takes off, at times with a notice issued via the Barbados Government Information Service, and returns with even less fanfare and seldom a word of what transpired.
It would be hard for any reasonable adult to argue that the way leaders and their public service officials treat these meetings they can be construed as important to the welfare and interest of the average citizens. In fact, we would venture to be emphatic and say that a significant portion of Caribbean people, perhaps the majority, don’t see CARICOM as relevant to their day to day existence.
And that’s sad, because given the complexities and inter-connectedness of today’s world, our success as a region is dependent now more than ever on our ability to be able to present a united front on a number of issues.
We don’t believe that anyone needs to sell ordinary Caribbean people on the value of free movement within our region. Our history speaks to how the islands have benefited from a time when movement was not nearly as encumbered as it is today. Yet, after talking for three days CARICOM issued a “meeting summary” that said in part:
“Among the matters for immediate attention is an intensified public education campaign, aimed at all levels of the society in member states, to highlight the benefits and provisions of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy, CSME.
“The CARICOM Secretariat was also mandated to convene a meeting of the region’s chief immigration officers, CARICOM ambassadors, and other relevant officials within the next three months to examine challenges being faced by travelling CARICOM nationals.”
Are we serious? Did our leaders really need to fly to Guyana and spend three days talking, at the expense of taxpayers to arrive at that conclusion? Are Caribbean people to believe that after the Shanique Myrie debacle in Barbados in 2011, and the ruling of the Caribbean Court of Justice against Barbados in 2014 that in 2016 we would be hearing of the need for technocrats to meet “to examine challenges being faced by travelling CARCICOM nationals”?
After all the raised temperatures and threats of trade wars and tit-for-tat responses over the treatment of Jamaicans and Guyanese in particular at Piarco International Airport in Trinidad, we would be talking about such a meeting today?
We are willing to bet that in six months there will be another CARICOM summit and if this matter is on the agenda there would have been no change – except perhaps for a draft of some paper that will be considered at a subsequent meeting of the leaders.
Maybe our leaders could take the time to listen to the lyrics of Chalkdust’s 1986 calypso Seawater and Sand, particularly the latter half of the third verse:
And they meeting regularly, drawing up all kind of treaty
And after they drink their whiskey, the treaty dead already
At their Heads of Government conference is mere shop talk and ignorance
Lots of talk but no action ever commence.
Our people are losing, or have lost, interest in CARICOM, not because they don’t understand its importance or are in need of a reminder of what it can achieve, but because those who lead – and we don’t only refer to the current crop – have not performed in a manner that breeds and propels inspiration.
Thirty years ago Chalkdust sang about the matters that CARICOM leaders spend three days discussing in Guyana this month. Could we want it any clearer than that?