Admin change confirmed as summit ends
Guyana Chronicle
July 7, 2003
CARICOM heads of government at their summit closing news conference at the Ritz Carlton Rosehall Hotel yesterday. From left: Bharrat Jagdeo, President of Guyana; Prime Ministers Owen Arthur, Barbados; P J Patterson, Jamaica; and Ralph Gonsalves, St Vincent and the Grenadines. (Photo: Bryan Cummings)
MONTEGO BAY -- Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders ended their four-day summit here Saturday night confirming that they will establish a new body with executive authority to implement their decisions as they seek to put energy behind the efforts to transform what is essentially a free trade and functional co-operation grouping into a real single market and economy.
But as has been widely expected, the leaders announced that the final configuration of the group, including the depth and range of its powers, will be decided on in November when heads of government review the recommendations of a committee, led by St Vincent and the Grenadines prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves.
It is likely that whatever arrangement is put in place will require domestic legislation, and possibly, in some cases constitutional adjustments, but leaders were at pains to stress that CARICOM will remain "a community of sovereign nations" and not a political union.
A final communiqué on the summit, and a Declaration of Montego, recommitting their resolve to create the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) by the end of 2005 were to be issued late last night.
But P J Patterson, the Jamaican prime minister and CARICOM's current chairman, told reporters that he and his colleagues had, as part of their drive towards the CSME, "taken steps to improve our decision-making by the establishment of a commission, or some other body, charged with the executive competence to oversee implementation".
No date has been set for the commissioners to assume office after the November review final structure proposed by the Gonsalves committee, but Patterson said that the leaders hoped that it would be soon after that.
"We attach great urgency to it and we would want to bring it into being as soon as possible," he told reporters. "...We would want to bring it into being before the end of 2004."
That is the earliest date for the implementation of the CSME, for which Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago say they want to strive, allowing the other 11 states to catch up later. CARICOM's 15th member, The Bahamas, is not a party to its economic arrangements.
A reputation for making announcements but being slow, or failing to implement, has helped to spur cynicism in the region towards CARICOM, which marked its 30th anniversary on July 4 -- the date in 1973 when leaders signed the Treaty of Chaguaramas establishing the community.
A decade ago, a report by a group of eminent Caribbean personalities, led by Sir Shridath Ramphal, a Guyanese who had headed the Commonwealth Secretariat, recommended precisely what the leaders have now come around to -- a commission with executive authority.
The proposal was rejected. Instead, the leaders assigned themselves subject portfolios in an effort to push forward the community agenda. That arrangement worked only marginally better.
But their decision to have CARICOM operate as a single economic space, as well as the impact of globaliZation, have placed pressure on the leaders to do something different and to move with urgency - positions reflected in speeches here over the past week.
In fact, Patterson said last night that the heads of government felt that they had to act to ensure the "practical relevance of CARICOM to the lives of the Caribbean people".
"I would say that the entire meeting was conducted with a sense of purpose, a sense of urgency and a determination" to ensure new arrangements of governance in the community, Patterson said.
The Jamaican leader, keenly aware of the vehemence of his political Opposition to political federation, dealt with the issue of the powers of the commission and Jamaica's sovereign responsibility with great caution.
"It is going to be necessary to decide what is going to be the scope and power of this group," he said as he delicately meandered around the issue of the devolution of decision-making to the commission. He suggested that the arrangements would be similar to the island's membership in the United Nations, which, having joined, the country was obligated to UN decisions.
But St Vincent's Gonsalves conceded there could be implications for domestic law, but argued that whatever difficulties arose were not insurmountable.
"It is not beyond the ingenuity of Caribbean people to craft a workable arrangement," he said.
Barbadian prime minister, Owen Arthur, who has responsibility in CARICOM for the single market and economy, has, in the past, stressed that the process of taking CARICOM into this arrangement would demand a deeper political integration. Last night, saying that CARICOM, in its current form is far from what is now contemplated, he underlined the need to put in place a system that can handle the new regime.
"We are about to enter uncharted waters," he said. "... We are about to make a single market and economy. We have to make sure that we get it right."