After 35 years, Caricom is deep in the vortex of political fragmentation. The result, we believe, is a paralysis of economic integration and the restriction of regional co-operation to a minimalist agenda.

The commitment to the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) was never strong and it is in a free fall of decline. Prime Minister Ralph Gonzalves of St Vincent recently declared that the promise of the CSME is unlikely to be fulfilled or in a manner advantageous to the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS).

Jamaica's Dr Omar Davies stated recently in Port of Spain a truth that must be acknowledged. That the targets of the CSME are unrealistic and unattainable, for example, a common regional currency. Prime Minister David Thompson of Barbados is pleading for commitment to the CSME.

Caricom is not a natural physical region nor was it a market-driven economic region. Caricom unity has always been fragile and, to an extent, artificial. The notion of the West Indies was as much an administrative construct of British colonial authorities. Working together started as co-operation epitomised by the West Indies cricket team. The success of the team propagated and perpetuated the myth of Caribbean unity. All that binds the "imagined community" of Caricom are the institutions of co-operation such as the Caribbean Development Bank and the University of the West Indies.

Caricom was always prey to virulent centrifugal forces emanating from the rampant nationalism consequent on the vast physical distance between member states. There is no contiguous land mass shared by Caricom states in the way that it frames the European Union. In spite of physical remoteness there have been lucid intervals of common purpose.

The retirement of prime ministers P J Patterson and Owen Arthur deprived the region of its elder statesmen and visionaries. The candidates to assume leadership of the region are all encumbered.

Prime Minister Patrick Manning is preoccupied with Trinidad's transition to developed country status amidst crime and racial politics. President Bharrat Jagdeo is bogged down in the longest economic depression any country has ever endured. Prime Minister Bruce Golding is undoubtedly capable but does not have the time or inclination to dissipate energy in endeavours which have neither consensus nor timeline. Mr Gonzalves has the ambition and the intellect but cannot resist the opportunism of playing to the audience immediately in front of him.

The rest are adrift in a wide Sargasso Sea of indecision. Haiti is only a member of Caricom in name, and that is not going to change because of the tragic farce that passes for politics. Belize is a Central American country with the majority of the population speaking only Spanish.

Without the Caricom Secretariat in Georgetown and the export of rice there would be little contract from the rest of the region. Suriname is, by location, part of South America, but is Caribbean by political necessity. The Bahamas wants nothing to do with a region in which most of the populations are potential illegal migrants. The OECS sees no gain from the CSME and believe the answer to this is deepening their sub-regional integration. Their signing on to the CSME had to be bought by the promise of transfers from a regional development fund.

At this time, the disunity is palpable, as evident in the inability to agree on a common platform for the US-Caricom Summit in New York, with each country peddling its own investment opportunities. In similar circumstances in the past, secretary-generals like Messrs William Demas and Alistair McIntyre were able to fill the leadership vacuum. There continues to be a question mark over the present Secretary General Edwin Carrington.

The current summit of Caricom leaders had better take heed.

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