With the challenges to be confronted in international trade and economic negotiations, and the urgent necessity to get our acts together on critical arrangements for the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) and establishment of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), the time for ole' talk and mutual back-slapping must be over.

If the Grand Anse Summit `Declaration’ of some 14 years ago imaginatively charted the path for progress in regional economic integration towards the 21st century, what it certainly lacked was provision to create an effective implementation mechanism for decisions to be given substance in the life of the region's peoples.

The vision that led to the creation of The West Indian Commission, that flowed from the deliberations and decisions of the 'Grand Anse Declaration', was to be frustrated three short years later.

It happened at the Heads of Government Conference in Port-of-Spain in 1992 when Community leaders surprisingly failed to accept the core recommendation of the West Indian Commission to establish a CARICOM Commission with executive power to deepen the process of regional economic integration.

The good news is that next month's four-day CARICOM Summit in Montego Bay which is to be preceded by a two-day retreat by the Community leaders and key advisers, seem set to transform the mood and ways they have been conducting the Community's business.

From the Eastern and Southern Caribbean to Jamaica in the northern subregion, six heads of government, and a few top regional technocrats, have been at work to make the June 30-July 1 Ocho Rios Retreat of Community leaders a serious affair.

With Prime Minister P.J., Patterson, host for the 24th regular CARICOM Summit presiding, the central focus will be on consideration of options for improved governance in CARICOM based on the concept of a "collective exercise" of sovereignty in our 30-year-old Community of sovereign states.

In this context, it is expected that some 11years after it was rejected, the proposal to establish a high-level three-member CARICOM Commission with executive powers to advance and supervise the deepening of regional economic integration is to be revisited by the Caribbean leaders.

Petty squabbles and loose talk about who wants to be the big fish in the small CARICOM pool had successfully torpedoed this core recommendation of the 1992 The West Indian Commission.

The intention was to establish the Commission along the lines of the European Commission that serves the European Union, with adaptations to satisfy Caribbean requirements.

West Indian Commission
Had it been approved at the 1992 CARICOM Summit in Port-of- Spain, as was the expectation of the 15-member West Indian Commission that included some outstanding regional technocrats and intellectuals, we may have avoided much of the implementation problems we have since been experiencing

The proposal for the CARICOM Commission was the cornerstone of the far-reaching recommendations outlined in that seminal document produced by The West Indian Commission.

With such an executive body serving CARICOM, instead of a non-executive Secretariat as an "administrative organ", perhaps there would have been no need for the curious layers of portfolios allocated to heads of government, with some of them simply failing to produce between annual summits and inter-sessional meetings.

Inspired by a mandate from the 14th Inter-Sessional Meeting of CARICOM Heads of Government in Port-of-Spain in May this year, an "expert group", comprising five Community Prime Ministers, has been meeting in varying numbers and places over the past five weeks, to come up with proposals on new options for improved Community governance.

The Port-of-Spain mandate specifically requested the "expert group" to "make recommendations on how best to perfect regional integration".

The mandate carefully avoided getting involved in the sensitive issue of political union, but was motivated by the demands to get ahead with the business of operationalising the CSME and the related CCJ and ensure a more people-focused approach in decision-making and implementation processes.

Regional Parliament
In addition to revisiting the idea of a CARICOM Commission - which could be more than three, possibly five - there is to be a fresh effort to make relevant to the "improved governance", the current innocuous Assembly of Caribbean Community Parliamentarians that hardly meets.

Chaired by the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the other heads of government on the `expert group’ are: Trinidad and Tobago's Patrick Manning; Owen Arthur of Barbados, P.J .Patterson of Jamaica and Lester Bird of Antigua and Barbuda, with the Prime Minister of Dominica, Pierre Charles, being kept abreast as current chairman of the Community.

Following a meeting in St John's attended by most of them and subsequently another meeting last week in Kingston, a report is to be circulated to heads of government, either through the office of Prime Minister Gonsalves, or the Community Secretary General, Edwin Carrington.

It is expected to cover at least six major recommendations, including the creation of a European Commission-style CARICOM Commission with executive powers. But a definitive shape and prescribed empowerment may not come before a follow-up special meeting of Community leaders before year end, possibly in November.

Much would depend, from what I was told on the basis of anonymity, on what transpires, first at the Ocho Rios Retreat, and before the conclusion of the four-day Summit.

Prime Minister Patterson, who will host the CARICOM summit, is said to have commissioned a special report, with inputs from regional academics and technocrats to further inspire deliberations at the Ocho Rios Retreat on "Options for Governance". But much credit belongs to Prime Minister Gonsalves for the initiatives he has been exercising ever since the Port-of-Spain mandate, as chairman of the working group of five.

The new thinking on creation of the CARICOM Commission will be considered within the context of the acknowledged need for urgent reform of the Secretariat to enhance its delivery capacity and make it relevant to today's demands.

Regrettably, some are already trying to float the idea that the proposed CARICOM Commission should perhaps be based outside of Georgetown.

These elements should be made to understand, in whatever appropriate manner, that such a move could only frustrate the realisation of a good idea by creating unnecessary tension in relations with the Guyana Government which is spending some US$8 million to build a new headquarter complex for the Secretariat as a gift to the Community.

Over the years, there have been significant shifts away from the Secretariat in the relocation of institutions/agencies.