For some of us, an election campaign is one huge party, no pun intended. But there is a serious side to it which we ignore at our own peril.

The profound multi-dimensional crisis of the Caribbean is deepening and the intellectual and political leadership to extricate the people of the region from this dire situation is hardly anywhere in sight.

Let’s take one dimension of the economic problem as an example:

The post-banana eastern Caribbean is debt ridden, mono-sectoral (tourism), fiscally unviable and too small to be internationally competitive in production of goods. Barbados, the exemplar of stable macroeconomic policy has just been downgraded by Standard and Poors and is likely to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Jamaica will have to make serious fiscal and debt management decisions in conjunction with the IMF starting in early 2012. Guyana which was showing signs of economic life for the first time since the 1960s will face political instability given the inconclusive result of last month’s general election. Trinidad continues to be bouyed by energy-based industries but is now borrowing heavily from the international development banks. The cash machine is closed for the foreseeable future or at least until the financial sector is re-capitalised.

Haiti and Cuba are special cases of being undeveloped by non-participation in the global economy. Both have a long way to go in economic modernisation and democratic governance. The Dominican Republic is surviving but its manufacturing will be displaced by China and tourism will limp along in the shadow of the US recession. Belize will continue to struggle until it is fully integrated with Central American infrastructure and Panama’s dynamic.

Of course, the social and political dimensions are just as worrisome e.g. crime, drug trafficking, brain drain, corruption, unemployment. Space does not allow for elaboration of these issues each of which warrants fulsome treatment in this space.

For us to have a chance at resolving these problems, the political leadership of the region has to be willing to admit the existence and depth of the crisis and to tell the people the stark truth. There must be a realistic and penetrating analysis of the crisis as a prerequisite to formulation of appropriate remedial and transformative policy. Both our politicians and technocrats have failed us in this regard.

The bankruptcy of the bureaucracy is patently displayed in the daily incompetency of the public sector. The intellectuals have not produced a new economic idea since Regional Integration of the 1960s and State Capitalism in the 1970s. But they have been content to fulminate about the manifestations of the crisis to which they have contributed.

Yes, the global economic crisis has had a particularly severe impact on the small, developing economies of the Caribbean, but we must stop attributing all the blame to events and trends in the global economy and on the actions of developed countries. The region was already vulnerable because of its own policy failings, outmoded thinking and ineffective ossified institutions.

The countries and regions that have continued to grow were in a better position than the Caribbean when the crisis exploded e.g. Latin America, Canada and Asia. Those that were hardest hit were already in bad shape e.g. Western Europe, the United States and the Caribbean.

We must select leaders who understand the imperatives facing us.