Rational people looking on at the Caribbean integration project, with specific emphasis on the work of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) Secretariat and its supporting agencies, can understandably be expected to be very concerned about the relevance of the existing institutional infrastructure and its actual impact on the movement's originally-stated objectives.
Ironically, this arises from the somewhat unforced error of purporting to have immediate relevance to every single thing under the sun. Bureaucrats and politicians, you see, have this nasty habit of doing just that. Put these two groups together with an under-informed, frequently misinformed citizenry, and you get a strategic plan that's over 200 pages long with a proposed solution to every conceivable ill.
Now, follow this up with a dozen broad "priorities"–suitably phrased so as not to leave anything out from the original plan to solve all the problems of the world–and what results is a menu informed by a succession of recipes for disaster.
In the meantime, there are many people who are openly critical of the Caricom project who are utterly clueless as to the origins, goals and achievements of the movement. There are also those with great knowledge of the system who are philosophically opposed to the notion of a Caribbean paradigm, particularly as configured by Caricom, and others who support the movement based on a false belief in its original intent.
It is also true that there is a difficulty with identifying priorities when almost everything is an emergency. In every area of Caribbean development, there is an inescapable urgency to address significant shortcomings.
Questions of environmental sustainability, particularly against the backdrop of more frequent extreme weather events, resource shortages, food insecurity, low economic diversity, a constant brain drain and dysfunctional political systems all conspire to inhibit our individual and collective abilities to move to a point of relative social and economic independence.
Quite understandably, there are also those who believe that the platform for addressing such needs ought to be expanded outside of the formulation expressed through the original Treaty of Chaguaramas back in 1973. Indeed, the establishment of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) in 1996–I was in Cartagena for the signing of the ACS Convention in 1995–arose out of precisely such a concern, eloquently expressed in the findings of the West Indian Commission of 1992.
I am not saying that everyone should make time to read the Commission's report, Time for Action, but it would help. But not all are interested in the fine details so we rely on second-hand pronouncements mainly by uninformed politicians and public servants.
As a consequence, we find that the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) has been victimised more through ignorance than dispassionate dissection of its performance over a period of more than ten years, and the Caricom Single Market project dismissed as having the potential to only marginally contribute to the building of critical economic mass. As a consequence, politicians and state operatives treat CSME imperatives as nuisance arrangements to be resisted and not as vital elements of a paradigm with the potential to carve a path to true development.
The stark reality is that as separate, sovereign entities, the small-island and coastal states of the Caribbean will not reach very far on their own. This includes T&T–as delusional about our sustainability as we tend to be.
If nothing else, the current economic crisis here–and it is a crisis–is teaching us a few hard lessons. Ask the Bank of Guyana about its suspension of trading in TT$ when it was detected that Trinis were systematically sapping the country of US currency. Witness, as well, the more critical attention being paid by T&T exporters to regional markets–even as a succession of sub-regional challenges continues to plague Eastern Caribbean economies.
Yes, the temptation is to take scatter-shot aim at the moving targets. But the people in our employ in Georgetown and the leaders in our respective capitals must embark on a far more enlightened, focused journey to address discrete needs and not project a false sense of being able to solve all our problems.
For this, we do need better quality leadership at all levels–a requirement best influenced by more enlightened citizens.
For the moment, the outlook is rather bleak. The massing of regional forces among the Spanish-speaking island states is already under way with the gradual emancipation of Cuba and its people. Geo-political realignments originally linked to the failed Chavez adventure, via PetroCaribe, remain hazy alongside great uncertainty occasioned by political developments in Washington and the United Kingdom.
The open regionalism that became fashionable in the 1990s needs a reformulation to cater for the new realities, including a fresh look at who "we" really are. The agenda for change needs to be brought into much greater focus and fine-tuned. The ad hoc-ism that brought cricket, reparations and other occasional incursions into a programmed approach to economic independence–areas which, incidentally, earned studied avoidance by the Caricom SG in his 2017 statement–needs to end.
By now, rational advocates of opting out must surely be revisiting the available options. There aren't many left. A different Caricom remains one.