The indication from Prime Minister Patrick Manning, following this month’s Caricom Interssessional Meeting of Heads of Government in Belize, that the heads had decided that the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) would henceforth be reporting to the Caricom Secretariat, and through the secretariat to heads, had an aura of suddenness about it. Oddly, the decision was not in the communiqué issued after the meeting, but in a separate press release issued by the secretariat indicating what Mr Manning had said.
President Bharrat Jagdeo’s announcement, a little before the intersessional, that it was not Guyana’s intention to have the CRNM negotiate for that country, had brought to the attention of the general public once again, the President’s dissatisfaction with the institution. This he had expressed during and after the negotiation of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union. But other heads seemed to want to let sleeping dogs lie after the verbal back and forth following the conclusion of the negotiation, conceding to the President a partial victory in the acceptance of this government’s view that there should be an opportunity for review of the EPA after five years.
But clearly his concern continued, and he was probably not alone, though the most vociferous. Secretary General Carrington had himself seemed to indicate after the EPA negotiation that the secretariat was not in the loop, so to speak, during and after the negotiation. And it seemed to some observers that indeed the secretariat seemed to function as a mere messenger to the heads during the process, with little input or advice particularly with respect to the relationship between the negotiation’s outcome, and other related integration concerns of the community. The current situation therefore seems to right this deficiency.
But does it? The fact of the matter, it seems to us, is that the EPA process only brought into the open concerns about the CRNM (or as it use to be referred to, the RNM) almost since its establishment. There had been periodic suggestions then and after, from ministers of the Council on Trade and Economic Development (COTED, functionally responsible for the negotiations) that they too were not in the loop, and that the CRNM seemed to have an authority all its own, with the privilege of reporting directly to the heads of government. This perhaps stemmed from the institution’s early existence when, headed by Sir Shridath Ramphal, the functional link seemed really to be between the head of the then RNM and the Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on External Relations. Observations to this effect were not surprising; after all, Sir Shridath, as Foreign Minister of Guyana had had a long connection with the long-standing Lead Prime Minister for External Relations and Chairman of the Committee, Mr P J Patterson, the two men (Patterson then as Foreign Minister) having played substantial parts in the success of the 1975 Lomé Convention agreement.
It seems that the heads were generally content with the CRNM’s autonomy after Dr Richard Bernal assumed the mantle as Director-General of the institution. And indeed it might be argued that concerns about its direction assumed larger proportions only after some heads, prompted in part by the regional academics and civil society organizations, began to develop concerns not simply with the manner of the institution’s management, but with its policy direction as far as the EPA negotiation was concerned. Prior to this, it seemed to be generally felt that, though there might be infelicities in the management of the CRNM, it did seem to have a certain drive and consistency of purpose under Dr Bernal, and that perhaps the Caricom Secretariat was not organized, in terms of staffing and related resources to undertake the negotiating tasks of such scale and complexity.
Oddly enough, however, the very basis of the CRNM’s independence – its largely external financing (grants from various countries and institutions) seemed to reinforce a perception of independence also from the other parts of regional institutional arrangement. Yet curiously, on the other hand, when controversy started as to its policy direction, that very fact was used by some of its critics, to argue that perhaps the CRNM was prone to be a policy pawn of those with whom it was negotiating. A serious allegation indeed. But by then the controversy was well out of hand, as punches and counterpunches were being thrown in what was now the ‘EPA war.’ It has even been said that the very donors supporting the CRNM were averse to seeing the CRNM as a unit of the secretariat, preferring its institutional autonomy.
But if we were to stand back a little from the day-to-day controversies, it is possible to see this episode as just one in a continuing saga having to do with the issue of the restructuring of Caricom as an organization, and thus with its ancillary and subsidiary instruments. It hardly bears repeating that the arrangements establishing the prime ministerial sub-committees and other Caricom institutional relationships, were a sort of politicians’ second-best alternative after their rejection, in 1992, of the institutional reorganization proposals made by the West Indian Commission, headed by Sir Shridath, in its report, Time for Action.
Some of these have worked and some haven’t. And the dispute over the EPA that went up the pole to the heads themselves, seems to suggest that, faced with what was admittedly a substantial challenge, the arrangements for that negotiation failed to function. Failed to function, that is, in the sense that the outcome failed to inspire confidence among our citizens.
But some have seemed successful when timely innovations were made to cope with the lack of institutional capacity of the secretariat, as more and more functions have been piled upon it. The decision to establish a special CSME Unit in Barbados to service the work of then Prime Minister Owen Arthur as lead head for bringing the single market and economy to formal completion was one. And so, it would seem, has been the establishment of the Council for National Security and Law Enforcement (CONSLE) with a separate Implemen-tation Agency for Crime and Security, located in Trinidad & Tobago with Prime Minister Manning as the lead head.
The fact of the matter, it is becoming clear, that the rejected-suspended institutional restructuring work instigated by the West Indian Commission Report, remains uneven and unfinished. Too many efforts are responsive and therefore ad hoc. The scramble to respond to the CLICO affair, as its ramifications, in concordance with the liberalization process that is at the base of the single market, entangle governments, is an instance of this. The tools necessary to manage the consequent, even if incipient, growth of a single economy are being found wanting, as we continue to ponder the pros and cons of regional monetary integration.
Yet the myriad external processes prompting these challenges are increasing, not diminishing. It would do us well to read a recent discussion of these from within the Secretariat itself, viz a recent speech by Dr Edward Greene, Assistant Secretary General, at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, ‘Caught in A Global Hurricane: Debating the Caribbean’s Development Challenges in An Uncertain World.’ It suggests that unlike the usual saying, the race is indeed to the swift. And that swift institutional responses, even after the failure of heads to deal with the proposals of the 2007 report of the Caricom Technical Working Group on Governance, ‘Managing Mature Regionalism,’ are becoming more, not less, urgent.
