CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar says work needs to be done on im­ple­ment­ing CARI­COM mea­sures.

"Af­ter fifty years we must re­flect on CARI­COM’s achieve­ments and short­com­ings in hopes that we as a re­gion can suc­ceed and ad­vance in our goal of im­prov­ing the stan­dards of liv­ing of CARI­COM cit­i­zens,” she said in a state­ment, “and mak­ing us a peo­ple of glob­al ex­cel­lence in the ar­eas of the­o­ret­i­cal and ap­plied re­search re­gard­ing chal­lenges we face, es­pe­cial­ly in ar­eas like cli­mate change, eco­nom­ic in­no­va­tion that will en­sure con­tin­ued pros­per­i­ty for all, sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, unim­ped­ed free­dom of move­ment among CARI­COM cit­i­zens, and ex­celling in a cul­ture of pre-em­i­nence that will but­tress our pros­per­i­ty.”

In her state­ment re­flect­ing on the re­cent CARI­COM Sum­mit, Mrs Per­sad Bisses­sar stat­ed:

“When our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren cel­e­brate the first cen­tu­ry of the ex­is­tence of CARI­COM, they must with pride en­joy the fruits of the ad­vance­ments made by those be­fore them. While there is much to be proud of, any­one with a clin­i­cal eye can ob­serve that the re­gion­al move­ment suf­fers from an im­ple­men­ta­tion deficit.”

Ac­cord­ing to the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, as a re­gion, we re­main with­out a clear, con­sis­tent pol­i­cy with re­gard to in­de­pen­dent ob­servers (even from with­in the re­gion) for elec­tions. 

She al­so as­serts some im­prove­ments need to be made.

“What mea­sur­able re­sults has the CSME yield­ed? What strides have been made in the past 50 years to en­sure re­gion­al food se­cu­ri­ty? Or CARI­COM self-suf­fi­cien­cy? Or make a mea­sur­able im­pact on the is­sue of cli­mate change? Or the per­va­sive in­va­sion of sar­gas­sum sea­weeds which threat­ens our tourism sec­tor and ma­rine life?  Or re­duce our debt-to-GDP ra­tios? Or na­tion­al lead­ers pro­mote trust in ex­ist­ing in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions so that we can all rest as­sured that the CCJ for ex­am­ple can be trust­ed to re­main in­de­pen­dent of an­ti-de­mo­c­ra­t­ic re­gion­al lead­ers?" she asked.

Mrs Per­sad Bisses­sar said Guyana has put for­ward plans to bring about re­gion­al food se­cu­ri­ty, but ques­tioned how many Mem­ber States had tak­en de­ci­sive, time­ly ac­tion to im­prove and im­ple­ment this goal.