This mood was reflected by the Community's Heads of Government both at their 15th Inter-Sessional Meeting in March in St. Kitts and Nevis and at last week's 25th Summit in Grenada.

In the Spice Island, where they once again grappled with the conditionalities for the return to the councils of CARICOM of the interim Haitian regime pending new elections for constitutional governance, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, P. J. Patterson, revisited the issue of the need to raise the bar for the Charter of Civil Society to be a legally enforceable instrument for sanctions for any breach by a member state.

We say revisit because, as the President of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo, was to subsequently indicate, his own support for such an approach would be consistent with the consideration he had originally expressed back in 2002 when he assumed, for the first time, the chairmanship of CARICOM.

Hosting that 23rd CARICOM Summit in Georgetown, President Jagdeo had outlined a set of guidelines for collective action by Heads of Government, among them crime and security and "the strengthening of democracy in our region".

President Jagdeo In noting that Guyana and its other Community partners had signed on to the Inter-American Democratic Charter of the Organisation of American States as a prescription for dealing with extra-constitutional measures to remove legitimate governments, Jagdeo called for "an instrument of our own" to provide for sanctions. That instrument, he left no doubt, could be the CARICOM Charter of Civil Society.

Guyana, like Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, often threatened by criminal networks and destabilisation politics, would be clearly mindful that had a mechanism been in place for the imposition of legally-binding sanctions, appropriate action might have taken place long ago against Haiti's following the dramatic change from constitutional governance to what now exists in Port-au-Prince.

Since the Georgetown Summit, CARICOM leaders have also been intensifying their collective action in responding to the challenges of crime and security in the region.

As the Guyanese Head of State observed, "all of our states, to one degree or another, have been caught up in the spiral of arms and drug trafficking rampaging throughout the hemisphere. Our societies, once safe and secure from violence, are now exposed to a multiplicity of threats..."

Given such expressed concerns, not only by Jagdeo and Patterson but some other Community leaders to preserve constitutional governance, the logical step now is for unanimous decision to be taken by the forthcoming Heads of Government Meeting in Suriname, possibly in February next year, for the CARICOM Charter of Civil Society to have parliamentary endorsement as a legally binding instrument.