In mid-December, the Prime Minister of Barbados Owen Arthur, speaking at UWI's Cave Hill campus asserted that if the Caricom Single Market and Economy is to succeed, regional leaders must immediately look to change the character of the instruments of regional governance. For its forthrightness and the clarity of its analysis of the crisis which overshadows Caricom, the speech must be regarded as a defining moment. Arthur said the concept of integration proclaimed in 1973 and as practiced since, embodied a distinct political dimension. At the political level it conceives of the region mainly as a community of sovereign states in which sovereignty is pooled but never ceded, with the nation state being the locus of decision making in respect of the implementation of regional commitments. Since by consensus in terms of its political integration, the region is to remain a community of sovereign states, an arrangement Arthur said must now be devised at the political level where decisions of organs of the movement can be embodied into community law, and agencies or the agency vested with the power of execution and implementation must be put to work to enforce such community law as a matter of priority...... "The region had to integrate or perish...". (SN November 26.)

The hard choices so succinctly described by PM Owen Arthur involve no less than the worthwhileness of Caricom as it currently exists.

Originally conceived as an instrument for the rapid social and economic development of its Member States, Caricom has made little progress towards that objective. A major cause for the lack of achievement was the failure to implement decisions taken together by Heads of Government or other organs of the Community - witness the decade and a half delay in the establishment of the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME). However because of the threats to overseas markets and the diminution of economic assistance and investment Caricom must now as a matter of the survival of member states look urgently to its own resources. In the case of Guyana, Caricom is already emerging as a market of rapidly growing importance for its export commodities and new manufactures.

In a movement variously described as marking time or ramshackle or irrelevant the recognition of the need for fundamental change in governance at Caricom's Montego Bay Summit last year had come as a welcome sign of a capacity for reconstruction. That summit had agreed in principle and among other things on the establishment of a Caricom Commission or other executive mechanism whose "function will be to exercise full time executive responsibility for implementation of Com-munity decisions in specified areas as well as to initiate proposals for Community action in any such area(s)."

The Montego Bay Summit had requested the so designated Expert Group (a sub-committee of Heads of Government) to elaborate the recommendations with the assistance of a Technical Group "for presentation to a Special Meeting of Heads of Government.........dedicated to taking decisions on these recommendations."

The Special Summit was held in St Lucia in November but its decision went no further than to release the three technical reports to the Community at large "so as to provide interest groups and individuals with an opportunity to make their reactions known." The three reports released through the Caricom Secretariat's web-site deal respectively with the proposed Caricom Commission, the Automaticity of Financing of Caricom institutions and the Assembly of Caribbean Community Parliamentarians. Here we limit the discussion to the commission. The other two, also of high importance, will be discussed separately.

It was a well kept secret that the Chairman of the Technical Group on the proposed Caricom Commission was Sir Shridath Ramphal. The other members of the group are Dr George Belle, Dr Edward Greene, Mr Earl Huntley, Dr Cuthbert Joseph and Mr Roderick Rainford.

Ramphal's chairmanship is significant as it was his West Indian Commission which had first highlighted the need for fundamental change in the government of the Community and proposed the establishment of the Caribbean Commission. However Ramphal and the technical group were constrained to operate within the limits imposed by the Summit. Hence, there had to be careful avoidance of anything that smacks of supra-nationality, in short implementation of decisions must be seen to be through national legislation. Hence the experts provide the following crucial description of the constraints on the way forward having regard to the fact that Caricom will remain a Community of Sovereign States.

"We underline" the Technical Group writes "that the basic system by which Community decisions are translated into community law will rely on national legislation giving legal effect to Instruments of Implementation, themselves approved by Heads of Government or other organs of the Community to whom Heads of Government have delegated "approving" authority. In this regard we attach much importance to the concept of a single Caricom Act in each Member Country giving legal effect in that country to rights and duties arising under Instruments of Implementation. At every stage of the process Member Governments and Member States acting together will be the final arbiters. Community law will rest not on a pillar of supra-nationality but on one of national sovereignty, albeit sovereignty exercised collectively."

That is the context in which the Technical Group made their recommendation. To understand the full import of the situation as described above by Ramphal and his technical group consider the situation as it obtains in the European Union, a grouping of most powerful states who pursue as they wish and in keeping with their sovereignty separate foreign policies. Juliet Lodge, British academic in the area of EU politics notes that: "...... the EC could lay claim to being unique among international organisations primarily because it had a decision making process whose output was both binding upon its members and took precedence over national legislation where EC and national legislation were in conflict...."

Within the limits of sovereignty thus reiterated by Caricom Heads, the technical Group has recommended a system which includes the following elements;

1. The enactment by each Member State of a Caricom Act with the objectives already described above.

2. The establishment of a Caricom Commission initially consisting of a President and two members with its core responsibility being in the area of the Single Market and Economy (CSME).

3. The Commission's implementation of decisions will relate to decisions of Heads of Government and other competent Organs of the Community, not decisions of the Commission instead.

4. On the basis of those decisions the commission will initiate the process of drafting the Instruments of Implementation.

5. The draft Instruments of Implementation will be considered by the Legal Affairs Committee of Caricom before being submitted by the Commission for approval.

6. The draft Instruments of Implementation would be formally approved (with or without modification) by Heads of Government or other approving authority.

7. The Commission will then issue the Instruments of Implementation which will become Community Law having effect in all Member States.

8. If necessary the Instrument of Implementation will be enforced by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) which in its original jurisdiction has the competence to issue an Order of Implementation "in appropriate cases involving the upholding of rights and duties under Caricom law."

Given the constraints imposed by Heads of Government in view of their jealously guarded sovereignty, the system outlined above is clearly the best that the Technical Group could do. It is slow moving, if not circumlocutory. Given the well known political practices within the Community the recommended system could lead itself to endless second thoughts and delays.

The whole point of a Commission is that it would be a powerful implementing mechanism not subject to the pulls and pressures within each state which currently slow down or hinder implementation. Unfortunately the proposed system largely leaves the responsibility for implementation where it now is, in the hands of governments.

Why is it not possible once decisions have been made to leave the whole implementation process with the Commission which of course would be required at all stages to consult widely with governments and Caricom bodies and so on.

Nevertheless the proposed system might work if a strong and effective president is appointed to the Commission. Unhappily, given their current perspectives, Heads may see a strong President of the Commission as a derogation from their sovereignty!

It is tempting to see the Commission as presently conceived as no more than a super-administrative mechanism were it not for the fact that the Commission will also be entrusted with a responsibility to initiate proposals for Community action in any area e.g., CSME for which it has implementing responsibility.

All of this is being done in the name of what was called at Montego Bay the deepening of integration through the implementation of decisions which have been ignored or evaded, let it be put bluntly, by the makers of the decisions themselves. It is important to note that such renewed commitment to integration has not come about as a result of a sudden pang of conscience. That is a very partial perspective. It has come about because of a growing realisation that as clearly noted by Caricom must increasingly serve as a major if not essential part of the region's survival apparatus in a world increasingly indifferent to the fate of all small states. What is baffling is that this realisation has so far not led to the further insight that sovereignty can no longer be maintained as achieved at independence. It is this failure in insight which is leading even now to the too tentative approaches to the implementation of decisions.