SEVENTEEN years ago this month some of the most noted scholars and intellectuals of our Caribbean Community, a trio of invited heads of government and representatives of the private sector and major non-governmental organisations participated in a historic three-day conference focused on the theme: Contending with Destiny – The Caribbean in the 21st Century.
That path-finding event involved a joint effort of the University of the West Indies, CARICOM Secretariat and the Caribbean Development Bank. It was hosted at the Mona Campus of the UWI from September 3 to 5, 1999 in Jamaica.
Some seven years earlier the CARICOM region, which is a comparatively small portion of what constitutes the wider Caribbean – was to benefit from a monumental work produced by The West Indian Commission under the chairmanship of Sir Shridath Ramphal.
The commission’s Time for Action report was followed by the UWI’s 1999 rather creative initiative on “Contending with Destiny”. Both documents are chock-full with suggestions/recommendations for collective regional actions by governments and relevant stakeholders.
However, it remains a depressing experience to follow multiplying failures by governments and the CARICOM Secretariat to implement decisions unanimously approved at ministerial and heads of government meetings to advance stated goals of the regional integration movement.
A reading by any serious research student of the piles of official ministerial statements and communiqués of twice-annual heads of governments conferences could well confirm the unpleasant, painful truth of recurring failures to implement decisions unanimously adopted to overcome barriers and achieve progress in support of policies linked to achieving functional cooperation as well as advancing initiatives to deepen regional integration.
Of course, there remains the very elusive target of transforming the 15-member Community into the long promised single market and economy (CSME). Incidentally, this centrepiece project for which a Prime Minister of Barbados has always been allotted “lead responsibility”, continues to be a major casualty of frustrating politickings among CARICOM leaders.
Depressing norm
Even the then active visionary Owen Arthur, who had inspired much hope with time frames for proposed implementation of regional initiatives, while serving as a three-term prime minister with lead responsibility for transformation of CARICOM into the CSME, was to prematurely depart as prime minister in his third term with unconcealed disappointment in not achieving the stated laudable regional goal for realisation of the CSME by 2015.
That 2015 projection was first publicly signalled at a CARICOM event in Jamaica back in 2006 which I had covered for regional media. But the litany of official failures since to significantly advance areas of functional cooperation, including areas of transportation and freedom of movement – amid recurring hassles at some ports of entry – continue to be a depressing norm.
Even, that is, with Barbados’ current Prime Minister Freundel Stuart still having portfolio responsibility for CSME among our Heads of Government.
Meanwhile, we are left to cope with a political culture across Caricom, of continuing vapid political rhetoric and without new initiatives of significance to make a reality of the elusive CSME. Even, that is, as successive governing leaders maintain seeming contempt for structured consultations with constitutional, parliamentary Opposition Leaders, amid our worsening social, economic and political challenges.
Structured dialogue between a CARICOM head of government and the Opposition Leader is simply not a normal feature of what passes for “good governance” for our regional economic integration movement. No wonder the CARICOM Assembly of Parliamentarians proved a experience – no more than three scheduled meetings, as I recall.
Amid this quite disappointing party political/governance scenario, no community head of government seems seriously interested in and willing to exercise any new, relevant initiative with a view to avoiding further downward slides for a regional integration movement now in its 43rd year of existence.
How quite disappointing and sad.
• Rickey Singh is a noted Caribbean journalist.