After CARICOM'S 20th summit
WITH THE 20th Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Summit over, let it be admitted that, despite the carping criticisms of their political opponents and sections of the ill-informed and disinterested media, the heads of government did succeed in achieving some very major decisions of importance to the regional integration process at the final such event for this year and century. Valuable time and opportunities may have been lost in the quest for a single market and economy, even after the West Indian Commission's 1992 `Time For Action' Report that resulted from the historic 1989 CARICOM at Grand Anse, Grenada. But we are finally getting there with the dawn of the new millennium. If we did not have CARICOM, with all its weaknesses so many point to, we would have had to hurriedly create some kind of regional mechanism to together deal with the international community in a fundamentally changed post-cold war world in a globalised economy. Except for the ceremonial opening of the summit, local electronic media reporting in particular of this premier regional event of 1999, lacked the expected level of coverage in a host country with a highly developed media infrastructure and talented media personnel. The fact that this host country was in the midst of an intense local government election campaign that culminates in voting tomorrow for some 124 seats in 14 corporations, may only be part of the reason for the evident deficiency in media coverage. This deficiency in coverage, often very superficial, was commented on in conversations by ministers and officials of delegations attending the summit. But this is an issue for another time when critical examination must also be made of the continuing silly interventions of some government bureaucrats, and poor arrangements that the media corps, both local and visiting, have to face in covering the annual heads of government conference. Both the CARICOM Secretariat and the host government of a summit need to get their acts together in arrangements for the media. However, although it could have been more tightly organised for efficiency and without, once again, being burdened with too long an agenda, last week's summit would also be remembered for the exposure given to the rich, diverse cultural life of the host country, Trinidad and Tobago, this most cosmopolitan of West Indian societies where, as David Rudder reminds us, "the Ganges and the Nile meet". The leaders may have surprised not just their critics, but themselves in being able to announce, after three full working days, that they would be on target to operationalise in 2000, the single market and economy of the 26-year-old Community, of which Haiti is now a full member. It would also have been encouraging to the summit leaders and those across the region who favour an end to the dependency syndrome on the jurisdiction of Britain's Privy Council, to have been in a position to tell the region's people of their "approval" - after much work by Attorneys General and legal experts - of the Agreement to establish a Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). Signing of this Agreement before year end, will result in Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago being the initial four members of the CCJ. The Jamaica Prime Minister, Percival Patterson, left the summit with an understandable disappointment over the misrepresentations he had to face in sections of the media on involvement in the CCJ, preparation for which Jamaica is even more advanced than other participating states. The signing ceremony of the Agreement on the CCJ will follow completion of the work of a specially appointed Preparatory Committee of Attorneys General and other top legal officials. That committee has also been charged with the responsibility to make all appropriate arrangements for the inauguration of the CCJ prior to the single market and economy coming into force. And so, eventually, after some two decades of talking about it, and some nine years of active pursuit of the idea, the first four independent countries of CARICOM - Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Barbados - will now be able to get the necessary parliamentary approval to bring on stream next year a final regional appellate court and sever links with the Privy Council. Guyana had already broken ties with the Privy Council under the rule of the People's National Congress (PNC), but for different reasons and at a time of its controversial politics of "party paramountcy" that had also eroded the independence of the judiciary. A significant new amendment, one viewed as a further confidence-building move to ensure independence of the Court from political pressures or negative influences, is the provision to deny access to membership of the CCJ of any member country that defaults on its financial contribution for the institution's operational budget. Given the fact that the CCJ will have both an original and appellate function on disputes relating to the CARICOM Treaty, it is significant that the Preparatory Committee for the inauguration of the Court compromises not just legal representatives of the four initial participating countries. There are also representatives from St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Lucia, member countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) all of which belong to a common Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal and maintain access to the Privy Council as their final appellate court. In the case of some of these countries, termination of appeals to the Privy Council will require both a two thirds parliamentary majority and a referendum for the relevant constitutional amendments. Bringing Haiti into full membership with Least Developed Country (LDC) status and a phased integration process over some five years in Common Market arrangements, was an historic benchmark for the 20th Port-of-Spain Summit to the earlier approval in principle for Haiti's membership that came two years ago at the CARICOM Summit in Montego Bay, Jamaica. The official conference communique clearly does not reflect all of the decisions. But it is known that Cuba, though not a member of the Community or even the wider CARIFORUM group, is increasingly being involved in negotiating arrangements by the Community in preparing for new relations with the European Union (EU), membership of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and in responses to World Trade Organisation (WTO) policies and decisions. Fresh efforts to get a more positive response from Washington to the implementation of the 1997 `Bridgetown Accord' on Caribbean-USA Partnership for Prosperity and Security, were discussed in a review of the region's current relations with President Clinton's administration. An immediate objective is a meeting, possibly in September, with US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright. Aware of their own concerns about issues of human rights, democracy as being raised by the EU in the negotiations for a new Lome Convention, the CARICOM leaders were anxious to signal that the bottom line of their "review" of the political situations in Haiti, Suriname and Guyana, is the triumph of democracy and respect for the will of the people of these countries. We await to learn of specific arrangements to sensitise or educate the region's people about the business of CARICOM and the benefits to them. Including, of course, such issues as freedom of movement of skilled citizens, currency convertibility leading, eventually, to a common currency and a CARICOM passport for intra-regional travel. The leaders made no announcement on their choice for a new Secretary General of the Commonwealth - a post that must be filled for January 2000 - and one over which there is known to be some surprising and even distressing attitudes in choosing between Bangladesh's candidate, Farooq Sobhan, and New Zealand's Don McKinnon.
|