We raise to­day with deep con­cern the re­cent ap­point­ment of Dr Ed­win Car­ring­ton to the post of Plenipo­ten­tiary Am­bas­sador to Cari­com. We do this not to ques­tion the ap­point­ment of the for­mer sec­re­tary gen­er­al of Cari­com, or in­deed the ne­ces­si­ty of hav­ing some­one of his cal­i­bre and ac­com­plish­ments in such a po­si­tion. What con­cerns us is the ab­sence of an ar­tic­u­lat­ed sub­stan­tive ba­sis for the func­tion­ing of Dr Car­ring­ton and what is to be his role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in the short and medi­um term. The po­si­tion is one which has been made by pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments. Un­der the UNC of Bas­deo Pan­day, for­mer for­eign min­is­ter Ka­malud­din Mo­hammed was slot­ted in the job, and lit­tle was known about the work of the am­bas­sador. In the suc­ceed­ing PNM gov­ern­ment of Patrick Man­ning, Jer­ry Narace was giv­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

In the in­stance of the lat­ter, when he re­port­ed to the me­dia he talked about im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket with a fo­cus on the grant­i­ng of work per­mits and a few trade is­sues. The is­sue is now raised with re­gard to Dr Car­ring­ton be­cause this coun­try and all of Cari­com can­not af­ford to have such an ex­pert on re­gion­al af­fairs, who has been deeply in­volved in at­tempt­ing to bring in­to ex­is­tence the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my, sim­ply set­tled in a sinecure job. We raise a red flag too be­cause an­oth­er Cari­com ap­point­ment, that of Makan­dal Daa­ga as am­bas­sador to Cari­com on cul­tur­al is­sues, has so far, as any­one in the pub­lic knows, pro­vid­ed ze­ro re­sults. It is well-known and ac­knowl­edged by many lead­ers, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, that Cari­com is a ma­jor un­der-achiev­er. Put more pre­cise­ly, the present gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers has failed mis­er­ably in the at­tempts to ad­vance the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment be­yond the base put down by pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions.

At present the two most im­por­tant el­e­ments of Cari­com are adrift some­where in the Caribbean Sea.

The Sin­gle Mar­ket has not re­sult­ed in an ap­pre­cia­ble in­crease in the free move­ment of cap­i­tal and hu­man re­sources across bor­ders; not the ex­pect­ed mon­e­tary union, at min­i­mum the easy con­vert­ibil­i­ty of cur­ren­cies in mem­ber states; nei­ther the har­mon­i­sa­tion of fis­cal poli­cies and a range of oth­er mat­ters all de­signed to in­crease trade among mem­ber states as stip­u­lat­ed in the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas. Most re­cent­ly, the lead­ers ad­mit­ted that the Sin­gle Econ­o­my, which takes in­te­gra­tion to a deep­er and wider lev­el, can­not be achieved and had to be pushed back to 2015, per­haps an­oth­er un­at­tain­able dead­line. The in­evitable con­se­quence of such non-achieve­ment of the ba­sic ob­jec­tives and rea­sons for as­pi­ra­tions to in­te­grate the economies and so­ci­eties of the re­gion is that the world is not re­main­ing still and soon enough the ob­jec­tives of the last decade will lose their rel­e­vance.

No one is at the mo­ment more aware of the prob­lems of Cari­com and at the same time hav­ing a grasp of what needs to be done and the im­per­a­tives of solv­ing the prob­lems than Dr Car­ring­ton. Po­si­tioned dif­fer­ent­ly, per­haps bet­ter able to take de­fin­i­tive de­ci­sions as stip­u­lat­ed by the gov­ern­ment in Port-of-Spain, Dr Car­ring­ton may be best able to in­flu­ence ac­tion. Al­so, his could be a per­sua­sive voice to his own prime min­is­ter as to how T&T could quick­en and trans­form Cari­com. It would be a tragedy to hire Dr Car­ring­ton for the pur­pose of mak­ing it look good rather than a re­al in­ten­tion to ad­vance the in­te­gra­tion move­ment. The world has passed us by in the Caribbean; set­ting the for­mer sec­re­tary gen­er­al to work with a mean­ing­ful agen­da and the po­lit­i­cal re­sources to achieve it is vi­tal.