Taking the next step towards Caribbean integration

by Tony Fraser 22.AUG.08

The most significant challenge to the attempt to establish a new framework for Caribbean integration is to devise a workable and acceptable political structure to facilitate the implementation of decisions. It comes as the leaders see the Caricom Single Market and Economy failing to achieve objectives.{{more}}

All of the major analyses of CARICOM’s shortcomings have concluded that the political infrastructure has not been in place to ensure that decisions taken are implemented, and done so expeditiously.

Therefore, a search for the political instruments is what justifies this new attempt by prime ministers Manning, Gonsalves, Thomas and King.

All of the region’s best economic minds, from Lewis, Demas, through Brewster and Thomas, Girvan and others, have outlined the economic rationale and structural programmes for the people of the Caribbean to fully benefit from combining the resources of national states.

The 40-year old proposals to combine the raw bauxite of Jamaica, Suriname, Guyana with the energy resources of Trinidad and Tobago, the use of the vast hinterlands of Guyana and Suriname for agriculture and forestry, with labour and expertise of the Eastern Caribbean and that of the University of the West Indies remain the best examples of how the resources of the Caribbean can be best utilised.

Combined in such a manner to produce finished and semi-finished products, the Caribbean can end its existence as a seller of cheap raw materials and purchaser of the expensive manufactured and industrial products of the developed world.

Today, the financial resources of Trinidad and Tobago and the emergence of a few large-enough private sector regionally-based corporations bring other dimensions to the old formulae.

So, too, there is a significant-enough tourism industry, and an offshore financial services sector to develop a modern economic base for Caribbean economic integration.

In the region, we not only have the economic blueprints proposals of the likes of Demas and Lewis, but still present are many of those whose seminal works on Caribbean integration were published two decades ago.

So, too, should room be left for this generation of economic thinkers to bring the 21st century reality to integration. What we have not been able to do is to devise the political structures, and the “political will” to take and implement the hard decisions.

Yes, Prime Minister Gonsalves, there is no “will-ometer” to gauge decisions. There are, though, discernible actions and dispositions which we can indicate whether leaders have the will or not.

The first challenge to the will is to fashion and agree on an infrastructure to facilitate political decision-making and implementation of actions.

The existence of the OECS draft, as indicated by Prime Minister Gonsalves at last week’s news conference in Port of Spain to announce the intention to integrate, is a good first step. Now as the Vincentian Prime Minister rightly says, the draft, inclusive of a restructured Secretariat, commissioners, a Parliament, etc., will have to be expanded from its original OECS frame by the Vaughan Lewis/Cuthbert Joseph team to meet the needs of an expanded polity.

The second challenge of Political Will would be for the leaders to demonstrate the capacity to climb down from “cardboard thrones”. Any confederation would require some measure of ceding of sovereignty and the national political titles of the present.

Then there is the necessity to acquire a vision of the Caribbean and its political geography, inclusive of the multi-island states.

Only in cricket and for brief periods, the Worrell and Lloyd eras, have we understood that it is first necessary to establish a Caribbean frame to allow individual nation-brilliance to shine forward: Sobers remained Bajan; Kanhai and Lloyd, Guyanese; Murray, Trinbagonian; Roberts and Richards, Antiguan, Marshall, Bajan, Dujon and Holding, Jamaican.

Together, they were unbeatably West Indian.

However, the ultimate challenge is for the political leaders to understand quite clearly that edicts from on high, and the work of technocrats, however well-intentioned, brilliant and cogent, will not achieve the political union being aspired to, to fully realize the Single Economy.

To paraphrase Lloyd Best: you cannot wake up one morning and announce at a news conference that political integration is to be achieved in the Caribbean.

What is vital is participation and buy-in from the population and institutions of the region. It will not suffice for leaders to consult with their cabinets and seek by decree to have their countries cede a measure of political sovereignty in a supra-national Caribbean state.

It is also unacceptable for ruling parties to ostracize opposition parties from what has to be a national consultation and agreement.

Leaders have to be careful about making statements seemingly dismissive of the opposition in favour of pure constitutionality; legality must merely facilitate political agreement by the national community.

Therefore, in addition to constructing the infrastructural framework for political and administrative integration, a programme of information sharing and a process of consultation, and one that allows for feedback and agreement, are absolutely necessary if this new initiative is to get off the ground.

More so because in countries such as Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname, the ethno-political issue has to be considered and accounted for.

It would be politically naive for a PNM Government to think it will easily convert the Indo-polity of Trinidad and Tobago into a minority in a politically integrated OECS with its Afro-Caribbean majority.

Similarly, no one should expect Indo-Guyanese to live easily within a structure that converts it from majority to minority.

Therefore, the confederation that has to be constructed is one that will consider the multi-island nature of the likes of St. Kitts/Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda and others.

Similarly, the structure has to facilitate the multi-ethnic composition of states such as Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname. One hundred and fifty years in the Caribbean have not achieved complete trust and harmony between Indos and Afros; a political structure that overwhelms Indos will not realise unity. Even the Canadian confederation has not made French-Canadians comfortable.

It is also insufficient for Prime Minister Stevenson King to assert that the new initiative will not disrupt the wider CARICOM Single Market and Economy.

It would be more prudent to demonstrate how the coexistence of the two would be achieved.

How is the new initiative to be taken by Jamaica, which since Bustamante has never showed the slightest interest in a political federation of any kind? What of The Bahamas?

In addition to the proposed consultation of prime ministers Manning and Thomas with the rest of the OECS, discussions have to be held with Guyana and Barbados. Economic integration between the OECS and Trinidad and Tobago would be too narrow a base and needs the greater scope of those two economies, and polities. If not, we could return to the arithmetic of Dr. Williams: one from ten leaves nought.

Positively working for the four CARICOM leaders embarked on this venture is their willingness to admit that the present formulation is not going to achieve a dynamic Single Economy into the future and their intention to search for another form.

But that is only a start of what must be a process.

Tony Fraser is a Trinidadian-born Caribbean journalist with deep Vincentian roots.