Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

On the open­ing day of the 51st Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing last week in St Lu­cia, 25-year-old Rahym Au­gustin-Joseph de­liv­ered a sting­ing analy­sis of the state of the re­gion­al bloc. His words were so sober­ing; Heads of Gov­ern­ment like Mia Mot­t­ley and Dr Ir­faan Ali were pic­tured nod­ding along at times. So­cial me­dia users con­grat­u­lat­ed him for his ster­ling speech, which, by many es­ti­mates, was longer than the re­marks of some lead­ers.

Au­gustin-Joseph didn’t trav­el far to get to the meet­ing. He was born in Bex­on, a rur­al area in Cas­tries, the cap­i­tal of St Lu­cia, but he is cur­rent­ly in Eng­land. In No­vem­ber 2024, he was named the Rhodes Schol­ar for the Com­mon­wealth Caribbean, where he is pur­su­ing post­grad­u­ate stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford, deep­en­ing his ex­per­tise in law and pol­i­tics.

His rise has been steady over the last sev­en years. First, he com­plet­ed a Bach­e­lor of Laws (LLB) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), Cave Hill Cam­pus, with first class ho­n­ours. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he al­so grad­u­at­ed from UWI with First Class Ho­n­ours in Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence and Law, where he was se­lect­ed as the Vale­dic­to­ri­an of the Grad­u­at­ing Class of 2023.

His charis­ma made him ide­al for the cen­tre stage of the Cari­com Meet­ing, but his views on pol­i­tics were formed in a far sim­pler up­bring­ing. “I grew up with my grand­par­ents, my moth­er, etc, who lis­tened to the ra­dio, watched news every night, and lis­tened to po­lit­i­cal shows and ex­pressed of me to have an opin­ion with­in the so­ci­ety, so I start­ed to form sort of for­ma­tive ideas about the so­ci­ety and what it should look like. These crys­tallised in school with the sub­jects I stud­ied; his­to­ry and so­ci­ol­o­gy and law, and there­fore I cre­at­ed a more in­formed view,” Au­gustin-Joseph told Guardian Me­dia last week.

Even his pro-Cari­com stance start­ed with the in­ner work­ings of how in­te­gra­tion helps the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States (OECS), of which St Lu­cia is a part.

He added, “See­ing or un­der­stand­ing and read­ing the schol­ar­ships of the OECS, so to speak, about how much more ad­vanced we can be as a unit helped. But al­so, in study­ing re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion law and study­ing pol­i­tics and sci­ence at the UWI, I con­cre­tised the love and the un­der­stand­ing of the in­ner work­ings of Cari­com and how best we can look at im­prov­ing it. I think that pro­vid­ed me with a much greater res­o­nance.”

Does he have as­pi­ra­tions of one day stand­ing at a Cari­com Meet­ing as a Head of Gov­ern­ment? Au­gustin-Joseph said he in­tends to prac­tice law “for a few years and then see if the peo­ple of St Lu­cia are will­ing to have me.”

Re­gard­less of what his fu­ture holds, the St Lu­cian pro­vid­ed an un­usu­al­ly blunt as­sess­ment for a youth speech on the state of Cari­com at a time when the or­gan­i­sa­tion has been pulling in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions. At the cen­tre of the storm is the reap­point­ment of Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett, which has gone to the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice.

In a one-on-one sit-down on The Big In­ter­view, we were able to dive deep­er in­to re­gion­al is­sues. The in­ter­view will air tonight on CNC3 at 7.30 pm. Au­gustin-Joseph said of the tur­moil, “My point sim­ply has al­ways been that the work of the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment is not to elim­i­nate the dif­fer­ences. It’s not to elim­i­nate the dis­agree­ments. It’s not to elim­i­nate the quar­relling and the ar­gu­ing. It is en­sur­ing that we can rec­on­cile these dif­fer­ences.”

By the end of the meet­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar seemed to sug­gest that they were on the road to rec­on­cil­i­a­tion af­ter a tu­mul­tuous few months played out in the pub­lic do­main.

But even for a young leader like Au­gustin-Joseph, the ef­fec­tive­ness of Cari­com is a con­stant ques­tion. Asked whether its in­ef­fi­cien­cies re­dound to struc­tur­al de­fi­cien­cies in the pow­er that lies with the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, he said, “There is that one school of thought that says we need to be able to give more pow­er to the cen­tre, which is the Sec­re­tari­at, which is in an OECS com­mis­sion-like, to be able to im­ple­ment de­ci­sions for the whole. There is that view that we need to en­gage in supra­na­tion­al­ism, as it is called, and di­rect ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty and a max­i­mal­ist ap­proach to re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion, which is that coun­tries give up an­oth­er lay­er or oth­er lay­ers of their sov­er­eign­ty to be able to al­low the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment to suc­ceed with­out ham­per­ing and with­out move­ment. I think that is the des­ti­na­tion in which we need to go... Among the po­lit­i­cal elite, there isn’t that view of go­ing the full way with­in the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment; what we there­fore still need to do, with­in this par­tic­u­lar mod­el, is im­ple­ment de­ci­sions faster.”

One im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty Au­gustin-Joseph hopes Cari­com lead­ers im­ple­ment in the next five years is free move­ment.

“Al­low peo­ple and goods and ser­vices and their skillsets to move freely and un­en­cum­bered in this re­gion and look at the changes that it will bring. Al­low them to be able to move, re­duce the tax­es on the trans­porta­tion, fix up the re­gion­al trans­porta­tion, air ser­vices, fix up the car­go process­es that we’ve been speak­ing about. Re­move all that du­plic­i­ty with­in the CSME cer­tifi­cate. Har­monise all of the low-hang­ing fruits that make peo­ple’s move­ment easy, be­cause if the flights are re­al­ly ex­pen­sive, you cer­tain­ly can’t make life hard­er when you come in the coun­try. So, the abil­i­ty to recog­nise one’s dri­ver’s li­cense, the abil­i­ty to recog­nise the na­tion­al ID card as part of move­ment. Al­low peo­ple to be able to just see that they’re able to get up and go to any of the coun­tries to­mor­row be­cause they see this op­por­tu­ni­ty on­line and they want to find that em­ploy­ment and take care of their fam­i­ly.”

The goal of true re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion con­tin­ues for his gen­er­a­tion, and whether the peo­ple of St Lu­cia are one day “will­ing to have him or not”, Au­gustin-Joseph is no doubt the fu­ture of Cari­com.