Darkness over Grand Anse
Editorial
Stabroek News
July 21, 2004
For their twenty-fifth regular meeting, held two weeks ago Caricom Heads of Government went back to Grand Anse in Grenada where their path breaking tenth meeting had been held in 1989. The Caricom Secretary General in his opening remarks drew attention to the significance of the location as it was in Grand Anse that a number of landmark decisions had been made for deepening regional integration. The 1989 Grand Anse Summit had decided on the transformation of the Caricom Market into the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME), the establishment of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), and the Assembly of Caribbean Community Parliamentarians (ACCP).
If Grande Anse (1989) is a pointer to anything, it is that the levels of commitment and seriousness are under strain as fifteen years later the CSME and the CCJ are still in slow and stumbling process towards establishment . The ACCP was tried in a half-hearted way and has been virtually defunct.
Grand Anse (2004) has done nothing to alter the image of the integration movement as slow moving, faltering and confused. Nevertheless, the Summit was most impressive in its attendance. Every Caricom Member State, except for Haiti which had not been invited, was represented at the level of Heads of Government.
On the question of Haiti, the most salient item on the Summit's Agenda, the problem was how to establish a working relationship with interim Prime Minister Latortue's administration, a relationship short of full recognition but which would nevertheless enable Caricom to play a role in the development of Haiti, which remains a member state. Caricom had to be sedulous in its pursuit of a course of action which would not appear to condone the overthrow of the elected President of Haiti. This position, it should be emphasised, responds not only to sentiment and principle but is a matter of self interest and survival for Caricom Member States. Haiti has demonstrated how easy it is to mount external military intervention in the sub-region. It has also exposed how little protection is provided by the much canvassed OAS Democratic Charter. Moreover, Caricom leaders are deeply aware that although projected as stable societies, the reality is that the region has erupted from time to time into turbulence - three coups (Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname) an uprising (Union Island), secession or the threats of secession (Anguilla, Nevis, Barbuda, Phoenix Island in the Bahamas), prolonged bloody conflicts and disorder in Dominica (before the emergence of the Eugene Charles Government) endemic politicised gang warfare in Jamaica, conflict and sustained electoral turbulence in Guyana.
In short Caricom's continued adherence to non-recognition of the interim Latortue government is dictated by the political realities of the sub-region. Against this background, Heads of Government decided "to create a channel for engagement" with the Latortue administration and to this end sent a five- member Foreign Ministers' delegation to Port-au-Prince. An earlier announcement asserted that several conditions would be attached to recognition including a halt to the persecution and imprisonment of Aristide supporters, and the imperative need for full participation of all parties in elections which should be held as soon as possible. However, as the prior imposition of such conditions would have precipitated a confrontational situation, they are not mentioned in the communiqué but were wisely left for negotiation by the Foreign Ministers. The Caricom Foreign Ministers have since announced that as a result of their talks the way is now clear for Haiti to resume its position in the institutions of Caricom.
However such agreements reached with PM Latortue by the Caricom Mission will be clearly insufficient, as Latortue is being instructed and supported by several powers and agencies. Moreover, the Caricom task force for Haiti has no resources of its own. Hence if a Caricom policy is to be effective it is necessary for Caricom to go beyond the outcome of the current mission and to negotiate high level areas of agreement, especially with the USA and France and the World Bank and the European Commission.
In the case of sugar, the complexity of the issues requires a separate discussion. Here one notes that the Summit according to the communiqué, went little further than outright rejection of the proposals for the reform of the EU sugar regime.
What leaves one in profound dismay is the way in which the structural and institutional measures which are critical for the survival of Caricom have been dealt with. First, that hardy annual, the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME). Prime Minister Owen Arthur who is the lead head for the CSME has recently explained that establishing the CSME is a long and complex process which in a sense will never be completed. So one can properly only speak of its coming into effect when the main features are in place. On this point the Summit agreed to reconvene in special session early in November.
It is the CCJ that gives cause for consternation. The communiqué informs that the summit endorsed the choice for President of the Court, Michael de la Bastide of Trinidad. However to understand the tragic-comic situation in which the CCJ now stands one must recall how it will operate. It is intended as the final Appellate court of Caricom Member States, taking the place of the UK Privy Council. But it is also, and importantly , to have an original jurisdiction in which it will make judgements in respect of Caricom Treaty provisions including judgements on disputes within the CSME.
To make the CCJ operational each state which still looks to the Privy Council must amend their constitution. In Guyana's case where appeals to the Privy Council have long been abolished the constitution already provides for the CCJ but legislation will be required to make it operational.
In the case of Jamaica, the Opposition has until recently held up such amendment by court action. In Trinidad there is a no-go situation in which the opposition is exercising a virtual veto as it insists it will not support the CCJ amendment except as a part of comprehensive constitutional reform. And just before the Summit PM Spencer of Antigua and Barbuda had announced that his government would not be abolishing appeals to the Privy Council. So at the end of the Summit in Grande Anse PM Manning announced that his country and Antigua and Barbuda will only be implementing the original jurisdiction of the CCJ, a route which other states may go. As Mr Manning put it, some states will be partly in and partly out, a phrase which could be a refrain for a Caricom Anthem!
But it is when one turns to the so-called Governance proposals that dismay darkens into despair. It will be recalled that last year's summit at Montego Bay, Jamaica had issued the Rose Hall Declaration which had recognised the urgent need for far reaching institutional change. It spoke of the development of the system of mature regionalism in which critical policy decisions will have the force of law throughout the region. To this end the Heads of Government agreed that a Caricom Commission or other executive mechanism which would have full time executive responsibility for implementation of Community decisions would be established. This and related proposals were seen as decisions which would breathe fresh life into the faltering movement and were therefore widely welcomed. These Rose Hall decisions were sent to a number of technical groups to recommend on how they could be operationalised. The group on the Commission was chaired by Sir Shridath Ramphal whose West Indies Commission had first made the commission proposal. The reports of these groups on the instructions of the special Caricom Summit in Castries in November last year had been put on the Caricom website to encourage widespread discussion. One was led to expect that the just concluded Summit would have taken steps towards the implementation of their recommendations. Instead, one is astounded to find that in Grand Anse, the Heads decided that the reports of the groups on the government proposals should be discussed at an early meeting of the Assembly of Caricom Community Parliamentarians (ACCP). To understand the meaning or meaninglessness of this decision consider this: The ACCP is, as already noted, virtually defunct. Since its establishment in 1994, it has only met three times. Member states have shown little enthusiasm for it and have been unwilling to host meetings. There is no budgetary provision for it. It may take quite a long time to reach agreements within national parliaments, on the composition of delegations, to find a host country with a parliamentary secretariat capable of dealing with its work, and in finding funds to support the meeting. Moreover, it is unlikely that the delegates sent from national parliaments will have any knowledge of the issues involved. It is to be noted that the revival of the ACCP is in fact part of the Rose Hall Governance proposals on which a Technical Group has reported. In short, the Grand Anse decision to refer the governance proposals to the ACCP is like suddenly requesting a patient to advise his doctor! The governance issues are not being kicked sideways but off the Agenda.
One must also note that while the Governance proposals were being sidelined, the Summit discussed a report on restructuring the Caricom Secretariat for "its more effective functioning particularly as regarding the implementation of decisions."
This situation is, to use an English understatement, not understood. The Rose Hall Declaration clearly had entrusted responsibility for implementation of decisions to an Executive Commission. Moreover, in dealing with the restructuring of the Secretariat the Summit stated that the aim would be to enhance the Secretariat's effectiveness as the administrative and technocratic arm of Caricom. To make the Secretariat an implementing mechanism would require far reaching treaty and constitutional amendments in each state so as to give it power to intervene in internal affairs. This is virtually an attempt to transform the Secretariat into the Commission.
One may not be far off track in seeing this development as a second attempt to shunt aside the Executive Commission proposal. In this respect, one recalls the observation of Dr Vaughan Lewis regarding the fate of the earlier WI Commission's recommendation for a Caricom Commission. "...... the establishment of a Caribbean Commission was opposed" Vaughn Lewis notes "not only by a majority of the political directorate but also by the technocratic leadership of the Caricom Secretariat who tended to see it as leading to the creation of a dual headed institutional arrangement with a blurred division of roles and labour".
There is now a real danger that the Secretariat may be perceived as part of the Caricom problem and not part of the solution.
The rosy dawn of the Montego Bay Rose Hall Declaration has at Grand Anse moved quickly into darkness, without there ever having been a noonday.