TODAY’S column is a follow-up to last Tuesday’s breaking news on the crisis facing Caricom as published in the Jamaica Observer. Since then, I have obtained the copy of an eight-page letter forwarded by Vincentian Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves to Secretary General Irwin LaRocque, telling it like it is, on the Community’s future.

First, I must observe that this does not seem a season for good news for the Caribbean from the perspective of either the region’s premier institution for financing economic development — the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) — or from the Secretariat of the Caribbean Community as it struggles to manage our economic integration movement.

Within a week of each other earlier this month, the CDB’s president, Dr Warren Smith, was pointing to a “high level of uncertainty” in regional prospects and policies amid new threats of “credit downgrades” facing a number of its borrowing member countries, while the Caricom secretary general was in the process of disseminating a report to Heads of Government that underscores the deepening “crisis” that threatens the very survival of the Community.

Later, there emerged a letter from Gonsalves to LaRocque in which Gonsalves identified as a “central failure” of Caricom its weakness to function as a “people-centred” movement. He specifically referred to an “inbuilt lethargy in our collective political leadership” and also the “bureaucratic inertia” that could no longer be tolerated if the Community is to survive.

The report circulated by the Secretariat relates to a mandated study on Caricom’s future by a Project Management Team (PMT) of experts that candidly declared the economic integration movement to be in a “state of crisis” and gave three reasons, namely:

* Longstanding frustrations with its slow progress;

* A serious weakening in its structure and operation over a number of years; and

* Continuing economic retrenchment since the 2008 financial crisis and risk of a further downturn in 2012…”

In urging a collective pursuit with haste by member governments for “fundamental changes” in the current operations and structures of the Community Secretariat, the team of experts’ findings, seen by this columnist, make clear that unless such changes occur, then “Caricom could expire slowly over the next few years as stakeholders begin to vote with their feet…”

A gloomy prognosis indeed from the team of experts who have proposed the speedy establishment of a temporary ‘Change Office’, to operate on a skeleton basis, pending “fundamental” changes to transform the Secretariat into a management administration, equipped with modern technologies, to grapple with today’s regional/international challenges.

Moving “resolutely”

There are no guarantees that the assumptions and conclusions will be readily accepted. But disagreements will have to contend with the harsh reality that time is not on the side of the region’s political directorate when it comes to biting the bullet for transformation of the management structure of the Secretariat and cease the old habit of failing to implement decisions unanimously embraced.

For his part, Prime Minister Gonsalves, in a timely critical analysis of the state of Caricom, has told the secretary general that the immediate challenge facing the Community “is for us, the Heads of Government, to move resolutely, beyond minimalism in integration, which inexorably leads to regression; and talk of “pausing”, that is but a “euphemism for standing still which, in a dynamic world, is sliding backwards…”

The team of experts report will be a major issue for deliberations by Heads of Government at their forthcoming Inter-Sessional meeting on March 8-9 in Suriname, presided over by President Desi Bouterse as current chairman.

Prime Minister Gonsalves may have to contend with some candid rebuttals to his own critical assumptions and conclusions about “inbuilt lethargy in our collective regional political leadership” and of “bureaucratic inertia”. However, if in the end the spirited discussions result in the changes deemed urgent, then this could only be to the benefit of the people of Caricom.

Spirited appeal

The Vincentian leader, who has some four decades of involvement, in various capacities, with matters pertaining to regional economic, political, social and cultural developments, in a passionate appeal for “change”, told Secretary General LaRocque: “We must make our union in Caricom more perfect because it is a great cause for our people’s enduring benefit… I know all about the restraints of ‘islandness’; of territorial ‘nationalism’ or even chauvinism, domestic priorities, philosophical differences, different regional emphases and ‘learned helplessness…’

“Through the mist of all of this,” he added, “we have it in us to overcome these, and other obstacles and limitations, through a deeper and better integration.”

As if conscious of the sharpness of some of his assumptions in his letter to LaRocque, Prime Minister Gonsalves was to conclude on a personal note by declaring: “Perhaps I have written too candidly. I have probably offended some, or at least ruffled feathers. I truly intend no offence, but I believe that after almost 40 years as a political activist in our Caribbean, including 11 years and continuing as prime minister, I have earned the right to speak and write plainly and freely…”

At this moment of need for “urgent reflection”, therefore, as he sees it, Gonsalves urged that “collectively we act swiftly” and resorting to the title of the West Indian Commission Report of 1992, he emphasised the relevance of that old clarion call: “Time for Action”