CARICOM Special Summit: Change and Challenges
By Rickey Singh
Bridgetown, (CANA)- How to make the 26-year-old Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) more effective to cope with regional and international challenges, as well as strategising to face major developments in the first decade of the 21st century, will be key elements for next week's special two-day summit in Trinidad and Tobago. At least three working hours will be spent on the opening day of the meeting, scheduled for October 26-27 in deliberating on a central theme: "Concluding the 20th Century and Commencing the 21st", according to official organisers of the event. The meeting, CANA was told Tuesday, is viewed by the host government of Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, current chairman of the Community, as a continuation of the 20th CARICOM Summit which took place in Port-of-Spain last July and has been structured to deal with "outstanding issues of much importance". The twin features of the central theme for the first day's session will be: "A Vision for the Community in the early 21st Century", and "Strengthening of the Community Institutions". All heads of government have already had the opportunity to discuss the working documents with their national advisers. Capacity-building for the Georgetown-based Community Secretariat, empowering the Secretariat with executive authority for implementation of decisions, pushing ahead with arrangements for a new Secretariat headquarters in Guyana, and also defining the powers of heads of government with special portfolio responsibilities, are expected to be among issues pertaining to strengthening of the Community. The two-day day meeting, to take place at the Chaguaramas Convention Centre - venue of the inauguration of CARICOM in July 1973 - will be preceded by a meeting on October 25 of the Prime Ministerial Committee on External Negotiations, chaired by Jamaica's Prime Minister, Percival Patterson. The problems and progress experienced in negotiations with the European Union for a successor arrangement for Lome Four will be among matters to be addressed by the Prime Ministerial Committee on which Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Barbados and St.Vincent and the Grenadines will also be represented. The main report will be given by head of the Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM), Shridath Ramphal. A progress report on arrangements for the establishment of a Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), expected to be inaugurated in October 2000 to coincide with the operationalising of CARICOM as a single market and economy, will also form part of the agenda of the special meeting. Since the CCJ will have original jurisdiction on matters relating to the CARICOM Treaty, the Community governments are said to have mandated a special study on how and why the countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) could be members of the Court while continuing to plan for eventual termination of access to the Privy Council on civil and criminal cases. The initial four countries that will launch the CCJ as their final appellate institution, will be Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. An independent financing mechanism for the CCJ, which will be headquartered in Port-of-Spain, is one of the issues to be considered by heads of government, having already initially engaged the attention of the Community's Finance Ministers. Other agenda issues, CANA was informed by ministerial sources, include continuation of consideration on the status of West Indies Cricket; a scheme for the financing of the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI); and report of CARICOM's fact-finding mission to Haiti. That mission, undertaken by Prime Minister James Mitchell of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, with the consent of President Rene Preval, at last July's CARICOM Summit, focussed specifically on arrangements for new parliamentary and local government elections. The mission had reservations about the delivery capacity of arrangements to ensure free and fair elections in the given time frame and since the submission of its report, the government of Haiti has announced postponement of the elections from December this year until March 2000. All heads of government, including Prime Minister James Mitchell, who recently had surgery, are expected for the forthcoming summit at which the President of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo, will be making his debut since succeeding Mrs Janet Jagan as the new head of state and government.
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