A last­ing res­o­lu­tion to the back-and-forth state­ments be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Cari­com chair­man Dr Ter­rance Drew, Prime Min­is­ter of St Kitts and Nevis, may well need to be de­cid­ed by the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ).

In fact, that kind of dis­agree­ment be­tween and among mem­ber states is ex­act­ly one of the rea­sons why the Port-of-Spain-based court was es­tab­lished in the Orig­i­nal Ju­ris­dic­tion of the Cari­com Treaty.

“The third func­tion (of the court) is to re­solve with fi­nal­i­ty dis­putes that arise be­tween Mem­ber States,” stat­ed the first CCJ pres­i­dent, Michael de la Bastide, in one of his ear­ly ar­tic­u­la­tions on the role and func­tion­ing of the court. At the time, the CCJ pres­i­dent went fur­ther to so­lid­i­fy his point, not­ing that all mem­ber states of Cari­com are “ob­lig­at­ed to fol­low the rul­ing”.

Yes, noth­ing stops politi­cians with dif­fer­ing views on any par­tic­u­lar mat­ter from con­stant­ly re­fu­elling con­tentions, main­ly for the pur­pose of sat­is­fy­ing sup­port­ers, but the fi­nal­i­ty of any CCJ de­ci­sion would have to be re­spect­ed. If not, the in­te­gra­tion move­ment would dis­in­te­grate, and frankly, much more is at stake than the dis­agree­ments which have arisen.

Not that the elec­tion of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al is unim­por­tant, but the heart and soul of Cari­com—trade, in­tra-hu­man in­ter­ac­tion, the re­gion’s act­ing on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage and more—are at the core of its sur­vival.

There­fore, mat­ters which se­ri­ous­ly threat­en re­gion­al uni­ty need to be tak­en to the court in its orig­i­nal ju­ris­dic­tion for fi­nal ar­bi­tra­tion.

In the court, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all sides to the con­tention will have to back up their in­di­vid­ual claims with hard ev­i­dence and will be held to ac­count for the state­ments made by their at­tor­neys. No po­lit­i­cal ole talk and coun­ters will be al­lowed to stand by the judges of the CCJ and the ex­pec­ta­tion will be that the court, which has a rep­u­ta­tion for ex­pe­di­tious­ly and ju­di­cial­ly deal­ing with mat­ters be­fore it, will con­tin­ue to up­hold that prac­tice and rep­u­ta­tion it has es­tab­lished as a re­li­able court for all mem­ber states of Cari­com.

This in­ter­ven­tion of the CCJ is im­por­tant be­cause every day that the queru­lous ex­changes go on be­tween and amongst the lead­ers, po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tors and sup­port­ers of the politi­cians in­volved, the more heat­ed and dif­fi­cult a res­o­lu­tion will be­come. There­fore, the mat­ter needs to end through a fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion by the court be­fore the an­tag­o­nisms hard­en and there is more dif­fi­cul­ty for a way for­ward.

The fact is too much is at stake by way of the ben­e­fits of the in­te­gra­tion move­ment in trade, func­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion in hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties, se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty in the re­gion, and in the fact that Cari­com peo­ple have a long his­to­ry of fa­mil­ial re­la­tion­ships and that can­not be smashed by the con­tentions of any­one seek­ing to gain an up­per hand.

The longer the ex­change of words goes on, the more in­crim­i­nat­ing and in­sult­ing it be­comes, and soon enough, the as­ser­tions of na­tion­al over re­gion­al in­ter­ests will be­come en­trenched in the ar­gu­ments on all sides.

Un­doubt­ed­ly, there are too many re­al chal­lenges and “rivers to cross” for the in­te­gra­tion move­ment to dwell any longer on this mat­ter.