CARICOM - empowerment politics
BY RICKEY SINGH
AS TRINIDAD and Tobago prepares to host the 20th and final Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Summit of this century next month, the Prime Minister of Barbados, Owen Arthur, was last week signalling a very important message to his fellow heads of government: "To build a strong Caribbean Community", said Arthur, "Caribbean leaders must have the courage to devolve real authority to regional institutions and technocratic leaders to act in their name to get the job done". What makes this message all the more relevant to the future of the region's economic integration movement, inaugurated at Chaguaramas in Trinidad almost 26 years ago (on July 4, 1973), is that it has come from a Prime Minister who has lead responsibility among heads of government for arrangements for CARICOM as a single market and economy (SM&E). At the core of Arthur's message, is the urgent need for empowerment - giving the necessary authority to those who have been assigned special tasks so that they can use their creative imagination and skills to get things done, with all the necessary consultation, rather than prolonging excuses and generating cynicism and disenchantment. In his plea for the devolution of authority - which he found necessary to make public at an international conference on moving the Caribbean into the 21st century, the Barbadian Prime Minister told an assembled audience of representatives of government, private sector, labour movement, academic and non-government communities and regional and international institutions and organisations: "I say so, aware that as a Prime Minister, I have been designated by my other colleagues of Prime Ministers to bring into existence a single Caribbean market and economy. I fancy that I know what has to be done. But I know that I have not been given the power to do it..." The truth is that this lack of devolution of authority, this failure to empower those assigned special tasks affects not just Arthur. Also, other heads of government, among them Prime Minister Percival Patterson, with portfolio responsibility for different aspects of CARICOM affairs, including free movement of skills, fiscal and monetary policies, education and technology, external trade and economic negotiations... Suffering too from what Arthur has identified as a "process of dynamic inertia", are the special organs created by the Community to more effectively respond to the objectives of the regional integration movement. These would include the four ministerial councils, including the Community Councils, the CARICOM Bureau of three heads of government and the Secretary General, and the CARICOM Secretariat itself. If senior ministers of government who have to head these special councils of the Community are expected to do more than just chair meetings, then it is time that they be so empowered. The same goes for the CARICOM Bureau of heads of government with special portfolio responsibilities and, of course the Community's Secretary General whose powers are very restricted compared to what obtains at, for instance, the European Commission. It is evident that after a quarter of a century in existence and some ten years after the commitment at their Grenada Summit to advance towards a single market and economy, the CARICOM leaders continue to show an appetite for changing structures and assigning responsibilities, but extremely reticent when it comes to devolving "real authority". We know of the resulting negative consequences, some of them now undermining the morale of once enthusiastic and committed advocates of economic integration and functional cooperation, and of the serious doubts raised about a single market and economy being operationalised in 2000. In the wake of the recommendations from the West Indian Commission in 1992, there was a move to introduce a CARICOM Commission with executive authority, possibly modeled, with adaptations, after the European Commission. That idea was quickly torpedoed, particularly by leaders nervous about sharing the authority they so much wish to retain for themselves in a Community that still depends heavily, too heavily, on a questionable unanimity mode in decision-making. Instead, the CARICOM leaders came up with a CARICOM Bureau that, for all practical purpose, is a glorified mechanism to consider and make recommendations to the Heads of Government without being empowered to resolve any particular issue of importance on its own. The Secretariat itself seems to be in urgent need of restructuring and empowerment, and for the Secretary General to have some clout in getting governments to implement decisions unanimously approved. It is felt in some quarters that a higher level of expertise should also be assigned to the Secretariat instead of it being used for the off-loading of officers of the public service or state institutions and corporations who their government can spare. Since at least five leaders of CARICOM are among the victims of lack of devolution of real authority to do the job asked of them, and as they are all well aware by now of the problems they face in advancing toward a single market and economy in this period of coping with the challenges of globalisation, then the Community's leaders must now make the hard and right decisions at their 20th Summit next month in Port-of-Spain. 
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