Crime, security to dominate CARICOM summit
--- Guyana to make strategy input
By Rickey Singh
Guyana Chronicle
July 2, 2003
MONTEGO BAY -- Crime and security will be one of the major challenges facing regional leaders during the 24th CARICOM Summit which opens this afternoon in Montego Bay, Jamaica's internationally famous tourist resort area on the north coast.
Watch out you speedsters, I’m here to get you
FEEL to `put your foot down’ on the accelerator? You had better think twice, a traffic cop like this one, may be waiting to nab you, using his radar gun.
The device is capable of measuring the speed of any approaching vehicle from a distance. This policeman was executing his duties on the Soesdyke/Linden Highway, on Monday. (Mike Norville photo)
Beefing up national/regional security against terrorism has emerged as a pressing and costly problem following the strikes by terrorists against the United States of America on September 11, 2001.
But for CARICOM states like Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Guyana in particular - and, to a lesser extent, Saint Lucia, Barbados and The Bahamas - the rising rates of murder, kidnappings, armed robberies and criminal violence remain deeply troubling for large segments of populations living in fear.
Prime Minister Patrick Manning for one will bring to bear in scheduled caucus deliberations his own perspectives, based on what's transpiring in Trinidad and Tobago, where gang warfare, kidnappings, drugs and arms trafficking are combining to take their toll.
Jamaica and Guyana also have bitter experiences to draw on in making their own inputs for crafting strategies to combat killings, robberies and criminal violence.
Guiding the deliberations and decisions of the heads of government will be analyses and recommendations from the Regional Task Force on Crime and Security in the Caribbean Community.
Some of the recommendations, made a year ago, are yet to be implemented. And observations in one report from the Task Force make uncomfortable reading:
"The rise in armed crime and violence in some member states as evidenced by the unusually high murder rates", it said, "may not only be a threat to legitimate governments but can become very serious threats to the basic fabric of our societies..."
Since that report, the President of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo, has requested the Caribbean Community Secretariat to develop for presentation to heads of government a proposal of its own for the creation of a regional instrument for CARICOM similar to that of the Inter-American Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States.
Pres. Jagdeo's primary concern in having such an enabling instrument is to counter extra-constitutional attempts to subvert democratically elected governments--under whatever guise. .
For his part, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Lester Bird, having survived the recent dramatic attempt to reduce his administration to a minority in parliament, has now proposed that crime and security to be a core issue in considerations of new options for CARICOM governance.
As Bird sees it, crime and security must be addressed with the same "urgency, passion and seriousness" as that of the creation of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) and the pursuit of external trade and economic negotiations.
He is convinced of the need to create a standing regional rapid deployment anti-crime force, or some such mechanism, comprising the best elements within national security forces, to wage war on crime, including cross-border arms smuggling and all activities designed to undermine and destabilize lawful governments.
It is generally agreed by Community heads of government that tackling effectively crime and security is fundamental to the future development of CARICOM.
Yet, a number of governments are still to create broad-based, non-partisan, National Crime Commissions on Law and Order, which was one of the early major recommendation of the Task Force.
Latest indication suggests that there may less than half of the Community's governments have established broadly-based such anti-crime bodies. Among those reported to have done so would be Barbados, Jamaica, Grenada, Saint Lucia and, just recently, Trinidad and Tobago.
Resulting from their February deliberations on crime and security in Port-of-Spain the CARICOM leaders are expected to advance considerations in Montego Bay for a system of "effective sharing" of information and intelligence.
Also, for the likely creation of a rapid response anti-crime mechanism, using the Barbados-located Regional Security System (RSS) as a core feature in its structure.
A progress report is also expected on the incorporation of a series of Memoranda of Understanding between the RSS and non- RSS countries, among them Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Guyana, to enable collective expertise from the region to provide assistance in operational security matters.