Caricom’s next steps

June 9, 2021 

Wesley Gibbings

On August 15, Belizean diplomat, economist, and former politician, Dr Carla Barnett, will take over at the Caricom Secretariat in Georgetown at a time when a combination of all three skillsets of hers, and more, will be required to navigate the integration movement safely through the most perilous period in its 48-year history.

If the pandemic challenge has proven one thing, it is that the brittle post-colonial substructures of the movement require extensive excavation and refurbishment.

This goes beyond the discrete institutional pillars of economic integration, human and social development, foreign policy coordination, and security. For, in the end, all of these would need to be fundamentally repurposed.

They have certainly proven to be near useless in this crisis, not in the direct sense of a role in regional public health coordination through CARPHA, for instance, (though there is a lot to be said here) but as cohesive mechanisms to manage the general well-being of the region at a time of urgent need.

It took 28 years to revise the 1973 Treaty of Chaguaramas. Further changes are needed 20 years later. Among the first tasks would be to reformulate its architecture and to decide who is coming along for the rest of this long ride.

Jamaica has already determined an exit route. The Bahamas has persistently kept at least one foot outside. And Haiti has not always displayed good neighbourliness - whatever our own negligence toward a country whose chaotic entry into the fraternity has never been reconciled.

These three come to mind particularly in the aftermath of last November’s OAS vote on Venezuela when T&T fell victim to a disrespectful, cynical lie. This is hard to forget or to forgive. I have mentioned other disappointments in past columns. This one though …

Meanwhile, the Caricom “travel bubble” popped early because the promise of a greater protective/nurturing mechanism for social, economic, political, and cultural resilience had already ruptured in our faces.

At each turn, it has mostly been everybody for themselves, rendering invalid the prospects for meaningful, joint action in the application of health and travel protocols, the coordinated acquisition of vaccines, and a single, resilient face and voice before the world.

It has also been impossible to tidily compartmentalise even the most specialised functions of the state in addressing a crisis that is taking lives and leaving growing numbers in despair, pain of all varieties, and facing death. How is COVID-19 not as much a regional security question as it is a public health challenge?

In T&T, for instance, we are learning too slowly yet surely that the pandemic is not solely a matter for a ministry of health.

Against such a backdrop, Dr Barnett, together with interested regional leaders, would do well to dispassionately assess all regional options for survival. However, engaging the massive tasks will require institutional assets the Caricom bureaucratic establishment and its associated institutions do not currently possess or are able to harness.

For example, the Caricom Secretariat is not a modern organisation within the meaning of 21^st century institutions of its kind. If Dr Barnett does not understand this, she will go nowhere with any of the aspirations she has already found the time to identify.

By August 15, people in all member states should know her well. It is not in the stock of the professional instincts of public servants to pursue such an objective. Her predecessor proved the point.

But Dr Barnett has fought elections, sat in the senate of Belize, and traded punches with the best during assignments spanning different political administrations. Media shyness will thus not be treated with magnanimity.

She is also a former deputy Secretary-General of Caricom who knows the ins and outs of the Georgetown arrangements.

There is much work to be done. Caricom’s “open regionalism” as a way of engaging the rest of the world is up for frank review. Existing institutions need to be evaluated and rationalised.

There are those out there foolish enough to believe that any of us can set sail on our own or cleave to perceived opportunities not borne out of our own realities. There are others who believe we can make a future for ourselves and generations to come, right here. Dr Barnett has, as part of her unwritten terms of reference, the task of steering countries and people in such a direction.