Caricom’s cherry picking

Last weekend, the 32nd meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of Caricom was held in St Kitts. It was reported that Ms Lolita Applewhaite, acting secretary general of the group, assured citizens that Caricom was “alive, on the move, and here to stay.” We beg to differ. Caricom may technically be alive, but we would like to be informed in what direction it is moving. Does backwards count? As to whether it is here to stay, we are doubtful about that.

Ms Applewhaite described Caricom as a “living organism”. She would know that living organisms earn that appellation if they exhibit certain characteristics – seven to be exact. But these characteristics are not just nominal – they are integrated to ensure that the organism not only survives its environment, but eventually transcends it. The bottom line for Caricom, formed 34 years ago this July 4th, was to integrate the countries of Caricom into a “community” that could not only navigate its members through the ever-treacherous waters of the international state system, but to actually push them into the top tier.

We are not at all impressed with the characteristics that Ms Lolita chose to define Caricom as being “alive”. Conceding that the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME) was the very raison d’etre of the organisation, she yet went on to extol “strides” in spheres such as education, health, trade, foreign policy coordination, and functional cooperation. To be blunt, this is a bit of cherry picking to make her case look good.

The abovementioned strides are not to be dismissed, but they were simply intermediate steps in the realisation of the CSME. Now that the CSME has been placed on indefinite “hold”, there is a good chance that those gains will be eroded as each member state works on individual modi vivendi alongside other states. Take trade, for instance. Jamaica and T& T signalled their intentions when the Free Trade Association of the Americas was being floated and they were prepared to enter into bilateral relations with the U. S.

But we do not want to single out Ms Lolita, who further exhorted us to “embrace and nurture Caricom”. She is, after all, a bureaucrat; we do not expect her to argue for her redundancy. She has to put a good gloss on the present unfortunate pass to which Caricom has arrived. Bureaucracies are motivated by two imperatives: their budgets and their rule books. As van Mises pointed out, their staff spend their time convincing politicians firstly to increase their budgets, and secondly, to turn over the rule book-writing job to them. It seems that the Caricom bureaucrats have succeeded in both tasks. It was certainly no coincidence that, at the same opening ceremony, the prime minister of Barbados and the president of Suriname both complained about the “meagre” secretariat budget of US$11.4 million annually. This, they claim, is giving the secretariat “a basket to fetch water.” They committed the organisation towards more fund-raising for the secretariat.

It is, however, not just the secretariat that needs strengthening for Caricom to become “alive” and start moving forward. And in going along with the bureaucracy-driven approach, some of the leaders are demonstrating their own self- interest in deferring the downplaying of the CSME. Caricom needs a governance body with some teeth. Unless the leaders of the member states are prepared to concede some of their authority to such a body, the secretariat will always be “fetching water”— whether with a basket or a bucket.

This was demonstrated in the stance of Barbadian PM Freundel Stuart, who castigated “naysayers and doomsayers” of Caricom even as he defended his country’s obdurate stance on the “free movement of peoples” – one of the pillars of the CSME. As President Jagdeo said, we need more “results than process”.