WHAT'S GOING ON WITH CARICOM'S 'READINESS'?
CSME Consultation, CCJ launch postponed
By Rickey Singh
Guyana Chronicle
October 26, 2003
IT WOULD come as a surprise for many to learn that the Third Special Consultation on the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME), scheduled to be hosted by the Barbados Government this week, from October 30-31, has been postponed.
Official reason advanced is the unavailability of an appropriate alternative venue to the Sherbourne Conference Centre - traditional meeting place for major national, regional and international events - which is 'fully booked'.
Never before has such a problem arisen when Barbados is involved, by agreement, to host a CARICOM event, especially relating to the CSME for which its Prime Minister, Owen Arthur, has lead responsibility.
If there is more in the proverbial mortar than the pestle, it is going to be difficult to establish beyond any bland official statement.
Planning for the Third CSME Consultation has been vigorously going on for the past few weeks before it was learnt just this past Friday that it was postponed - perhaps until the first quarter of 2004 - for want of a suitable venue in Barbados.
Indeed, even correspondence was arriving by special delivery from the CARICOM Secretariat in Georgetown for the CSME Consultation, the Barbados-based CSME Unit was telephoning previously invited participants to say that it had been postponed to a "later date".
The CARICOM Secretariat would not go beyond confirming the postponement due to unavailability of the Sherbourne Conference Centre. But there is more:
I have learnt that the Special CARICOM Summit scheduled for next month, and which Barbados was originally expected to host, in accordance with an agreement reached at last July's Montego Bay Summit, has now been shifted to Castries, St. Lucia.
The special summit was intended to provide a final update on arrangements relating to the removal by member states, before the end of 2003, of the first batch of restrictions on the single market component of the CSME.
Officially, the shift to Castries of the special CARICOM Heads of Government meeting in Castries will coincide with a summit of leaders of the Organisation of Easter Caribbean States (OECS) to be held over two days, November 13-14.
This special summit on the CSME in Barbados was to have preceded the official inauguration of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) in Port-of-Spain on November 15, as originally envisaged.
The CCJ's inauguration itself now has to be rescheduled following some hiccups, reportedly over budgetary arrangements, although there are Attorneys General who think that there may be other reasons.
The fact that the postponement, at Barbados's request, of the CSME Third Consultation, and the shift in venue of the Special CARICOM Summit from Barbados to St. Lucia to focus on CSME preparedness, may be coincidental.
But that they should also coincide with divergent official views, including that of some Prime Ministers, on arrangements for a CARICOM Commission with executive authority, raise new concerns about the pace and modalities pertaining to the launch and effective functioning of the CSME as the "flagship" of the regional integration movement now marking its 30th anniversary.
The creation of the CARICOM Commission - a central recommendation of the 1992 West Indian Commission Report on governance of the Community that was rejected but revisited and taken on board just last year - has been made a key area of consideration by the Prime Ministerial Working Group headed by Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Establishment of the Commission, or some similar executive mechanism, has been embraced in 'The Rose Hall Declaration on Regional Governance and Integrated Development' that was adopted by the 24th CARICOM Summit in Montego Bay last July.
While some CARICOM leaders and technocrats have been pushing to advance the pace of regional integration and in particular getting the proposed Commission with executive authority on board, others differ in favour of more and wider consultations to avoid getting the integration process into knots that could prove very counter-productive to hopes of creating a single economic space within the Community.
At the just-concluded CARICOM 30th Anniversary Conference on Regional Governance and Integrated Development, organised by the UWI (Mona Campus), two technocrats, Dr. Havelock Brewster and Dr Patrick Gomes - who had previously written on recommendations of the West Indian Commission (Brewster), and argued for a more relevant structure and functioning of the CARICOM Secretariat (Gomes), urged haste with care in the creation of an empowered mechanism like a CARICOM Commission.
Of special significance were the questions raised by Brewster in his critical examination of the 'Rose Hall Declaration Provisions on Regional Governance', contending, for instance, that:
"It is rare, perhaps unknown, for States forming a Community to begin (their declaration) by affirming their 'national sovereignty', and that regional integration will proceed in that political and juridical context...
"To begin with such a 'reaffirmation' (in the Declaration) argued Brewster - who, incidentally, was Coordinator for a field report on the CSME - "is inadmissible since it is actually not a principle originally affirmed in the Treaty of Chaguaramas..."
When he extended his critical evaluation of the 'Rose Hall Declaration' to question the powers that could legitimately be entrusted, under existing treaty provisions, to a CARICOM Commission, in accordance with what's envisaged for its areas of responsibility, Brewster revealed other concerns.
He sees, for instance, as "a recipe for continuing conflict between the Commission and the responsible political organs of the Community (Heads of Government themselves), unless the powers and responsibilities of these bodies (various standing ministerial councils) were to be clearly demarcated..."
What is quite challenging about such a conclusion is that Brewster, one of the co-authors, with the economist Clive Thomas, of 'The Dynamics of West Indian Economic Integration' - that preceded by six years the launch of CARICOM - thinks that "important amendments to the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas would be necessary" to avoid conflicts between the Commission and the political organs of the Community.
With such a challenge to be faced and just two years and two months to go for the promised operationalisation of the CSME - at least its single market dimension - some may well ask, what's really going on with CARICOM's "readiness" arrangements?
By the end of December, the first set of restrictions for a regional single market are to be removed - as affirmed at the Montego Bay Summit. Will the postponement of the Third Special Consultation be used as an excuse by some for failing to comply with that agreement?
And if it happens, will Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago still be committed, as they pledged at Montego Bay, to complete by end of 2004 the entire arrangements for CSME readiness?
There remains to be answered also, with some precise clarity, the new arrangements for the inauguration of the CCJ that is integral to the functioning of the CSME.
Our promised single economic space, however small in hemispheric or global terms, needs to be clearly defined and available ahead of the emerging Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).