‘Reculer pour mieux sauter’ – the French maxim means ‘to take a step back in order to jump better’ or, in other words, to retreat in order to achieve a stronger position – was supposed to be a favoured tactic of Napoleon Bonaparte. Caricom seems about to take the same course, or so the optimists believe, while the cynics might say that it has almost always been a case of one step forward, two steps backward.
“Caricom to retreat in order to advance,” was the way Professor Norman Girvan put it on his website, following the announcement that Caricom heads, at their inter-sessional meeting in Grenada, last month, had accepted President Bharrat Jagdeo’s invitation to gather again for a special two-day retreat in Guyana, “confined to discussing the way forward for Caricom.” We suspect that the goodly professor had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. Either that or he was granting the leaders the benefit of the doubt, given their apparent inability to discuss and agree on the way forward when they had the opportunity to do so in Grenada.
At the opening ceremony of that meeting, the Jamaican Prime Minister, Bruce Golding, had stated that he and his colleagues would “have to address the persistent concern that Caricom is not working” and he had acknowledged that the regional integration process was suffering from an “implementation deficit,” as highlighted in a study by Prof Girvan, and that the people of the Caribbean were now bemoaning the “benefit deficit.” Such candour is an important first step towards correcting Caricom’s known deficiencies, but wasn’t Mr Golding himself guilty of glossing over his own government’s ambivalence towards Caricom, as reflected in the opposition of his Jamaica Labour Party and his administration to the Caribbean Court of Justice and his government’s reluctance to agree to the funding that the Caricom Secretariat reportedly needs?
Our editorial of March 9, 2011 (‘Caricom and its governments’) has already expressed our impatience with the “rhetorical communiqués” that have, sadly, become the norm after Caricom meetings, but some of the meaningless verbiage of the most recent effort bears repeating, if only to underline a certain backing away from Mr Golding’s more direct language.
The heads noted that “there appeared to be a loss of momentum with regard to the regional integration agenda” and “agreed there was a need to reassess approaches with a view to determining modalities that would re-energise the Regional Integration endeavour, in accordance with their vision.” And against the background of the well-known challenges confronting the region, the heads “urged that the Community should not allow itself to be discouraged by the often expressed views that Caricom was in crisis… [and] urged instead that the Region be viewed as being at the crossroads of opportunity.” Whether this is just spin or an exercise in self-delusion, it is difficult to say, but the public is not that easily fooled by such verbal gymnastics.
If all the ills besetting the regional project, all the clamouring in the media for action and all the advice and analyses of learned and informed men and women committed to the collective survival and flourishing of our small states only amount to a perception in the studied opinion of the heads, then what confidence can the public have in their mysterious and undocumented “vision” – not to mention their illogical use of capital letters – when it seems that some of them have their heads firmly buried in the sand?
Nonetheless, President Jagdeo should be commended for taking the initiative to convene the retreat in Guyana, which may be held some time in May. It is reported that Sir Shridath Ramphal, one of the Caribbean’s elder statesmen and a dedicated regionalist, was a member of the presidential delegation in Grenada. The evidence, and it is admittedly only circumstantial, would therefore seem to indicate that the President, with Sir Shridath in his corner, has a plan for knocking heads together, diplomatically of course, and generating some movement forward on the path to integration.
If this is his aim, we wish him every success. We would only ask that he factor into his strategy ideas for bringing Caricom closer to the people through, to begin with, investment in and commitment to sustained community-wide media outreach and the active engagement and involvement of civil society in the processes of arriving at and implementing decisions. This may not be the only way to address the implementation and benefit deficits – indeed, our editorial last week also called for the inclusion of opposition parties – but it would be a significant step forward, with no hint of a backward-looking agenda, to a qualitatively stronger position. After all, for regional integration to succeed, it has to be people-driven.
