A per­ma­nent gov­er­nance coun­cil is be­ing es­tab­lished by Cari­com lead­ers to ad­dress the "im­ple­men­ta­tion deficit" and oth­er prob­lems ham­per­ing the move­ment and ef­fi­cien­cy of the 37 re­gion­al group­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and St Lu­cia Prime Min­is­ter Den­zil Dou­glas con­firmed yes­ter­day.

Dis­cus­sions on the pro­posed coun­cil be­gan on Mon­day and con­tin­ued yes­ter­day morn­ing. The agen­da yes­ter­day al­so in­clud­ed dis­cus­sions on tourism and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. Per­sad-Bisses­sar chaired that ses­sion last evening

Lead­ers were al­so dis­cussing with Per­sad Bisses­sar, her pro­pos­als for redi­rect­ing the Pe­tro­le­um Fund to cater for the needs of women, chil­dren and the en­vi­ron­ment. As well, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was meet­ing yes­ter­day with Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter Bruce Gold­ing to dis­cuss the Air Ja­maica/Caribbean Air­lines sit­u­a­tion. She said she was op­ti­mistic of a pos­i­tive out­come on this. On the pro­posed gov­er­nance coun­cil for Cari­com, Per­sad- Bisses­sar said spe­cif­ic rec­om­men­da­tions were made for re­view and ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion of Cari­com's mul­ti­plic­i­ty of com­mit­tees, since these ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over time. The need for moves to kick-start the 37- year-old re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tion on­to a path of ef­fi­cien­cy and speed­i­er im­ple­men­ta­tion has been a key talk­ing point among lead­ers, in­clud­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

From Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ar­rival on Sun­day, she told T&T re­porters of her con­cerns that Cari­com had lapsed in­to the sta­tus of "com­mit­tee af­ter com­mit­tee" and need­ed to pol­ish up on its ob­jec­tive of meet­ing the needs of the Caribbean peo­ples and im­prov­ing their way of life. Say­ing she was not sat­is­fied with the sit­u­a­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar called for new gov­er­nance arrange­ments for the re­gion­al body. Ac­knowl­edge­ment of Cari­com's ail­ing state was al­so de­liv­ered by in­com­ing Cari­com chair­man Ja­maican PM Bruce Gold­ing at Sun­day's open­ing cer­e­mo­ny. Not­ing re­gion­al crit­ics of Cari­com, Gold­ing called for the sum­mit to be a turn­ing point for Cari­com. Con­cern may al­so be fu­elled by the lack­lus­tre sum­mit at­ten­dance by lead­ers. Of the 14 lead­ers, six were ab­sent as the meet­ing be­gan on Sun­day and two more left yes­ter­day, Cari­com of­fi­cials said.

Af­ter dis­cus­sions on the pro­posed gov­er­nance coun­cil, Dou­glas said yes­ter­day: "If the re­gion­al move­ment is re­al­ly to meet the peo­ple's needs, it has to have a gov­er­nance struc­ture which will en­sure pos­si­bly a per­ma­nent coun­cil to con­tin­ue on a dai­ly ba­sis to look af­ter the in­ter­ests of the com­mu­ni­ty. "There has been be­fore, a coun­cil of min­is­ters, but now we're talk­ing about a per­ma­nent coun­cil to be struc­tured slight­ly dif­fer­ent­ly," he added. He said the modal­i­ties would be worked out over the next three months. Dou­glas said it was the lead­ers' idea. Ja­maica, how­ev­er, is re­port­ed to be bring­ing a new pro­pos­al on the is­sue to the ta­ble. Dou­glas, though, said: "Not nec­es­sar­i­ly...we're say­ing there needs to be a per­ma­nent body to look af­ter the in­ter­ests and in­tri­ca­cies of mat­ters we make de­ci­sions on, to have them im­ple­ment­ed–the ques­tion of im­ple­men­ta­tion seems to be a prob­lem."

"We be­lieve all heads are on board that the im­ple­men­ta­tion is not work­ing and we want to make it work, what­ev­er de­ci­sion is tak­en will be bind­ing," he said. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said rec­om­men­da­tions al­so were made on im­ple­men­ta­tion, since res­o­lu­tions were of­ten passed and im­ple­men­ta­tion on this lagged. She al­so said the ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion and re­view would al­so take in­to ac­count the role and func­tion of the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at. She said much of the rec­om­men­da­tions came be­fore this week. St Vin­cent PM Ralph Gon­za­les, who has com­plained that a lack oflead­er­ship is sti­fling Cari­com, is among sum­mit ab­sen­tees, re­port­ed­ly ill. His coun­try is rep­re­sent­ed by a del­e­ga­tion head­ed by Ellsworth John, who said yes­ter­day that Gon­za­les was feel­ing "bet­ter." A se­nior mem­ber of the Cari­com head­quar­ters team told the T&T Guardian it was "in­ter­est­ing" that some who had aired grous­es about lack of Cari­com lead­er­ship had not seen it fit to at­tend the sum­mit where Cari­com's gov­er­nance and af­fil­i­at­ed is­sues were ex­pect­ed to be on the agen­da.

Yes­ter­day, Dou­glas said he was sure what­ev­er came out of the coun­cil pro­pos­al would be ac­cept­able to Gon­za­les.