Latest update April 23rd, 2024 12:59 AM
Jul 07, 2008 Editorial
Today is a national holiday – CARICOM DAY. We are one of only three member states in our integration movement to have so honoured the idea of a unified Caribbean. The other two are the smaller island nations of Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. That fact, in and of itself, is very telling.
This newspaper has recently been very critical of CARICOM, but let there be no doubt about where our heart lies.
Our criticisms arise out of a profound sense of disappointment in the refusal of our leaders to fulfill the dream that was expressed thirty-five years ago — for us to utilise the ties that were forged by our common heritage to bind us into a grouping that could better confront the threats to our survival than each of us could, singly. We believe in that dream.
Objectively, no one can deny that the logic of a globalised world dominated by transnational corporations, trading blocs, and mega states demands that a set of countries, the majority of which have populations of less than a million each, would be best served if they could develop a more coherent unity of action on the world stage.
And it is this logic that forces the leaders of CARICOM to continue to publicly support the stated aims of the organisation. But the fact that, in thirty-five years, we have not moved the requisite distance to achieve those goals is indicative of only one fact: the support of most of those leaders amounts to little more than lip service.
The fundamental problem arises out of the gross disparity in the economic development of the member states. The gap between the per capita incomes of the Bahamas and Haiti is a forty-to-one chasm.
The better-off countries – and this goes for the people as well as the leaders – fear that closer integration, such as the free movement of peoples, would lead to them supporting “freeloaders”. As educated people, the leaders know that whatever short-term disruptions might issue out of closer integration would be far outweighed by the long-term benefits, but being politicians and not statesmen, they are willing to play to the crowd.
They protest that they are not willing to surrender “sovereignty” to the regional body, but have no problem in surrendering sovereignty to the World Bank (conditionalities not only on economic matters but even on governance), the IMF (more conditionalities), the EU (with the present EPA that they are all going to sign this month), the WTO (reducing tariffs and discarding preferences) etc, etc.
The refusal to share sovereignty with one’s Caribbean brothers and sisters, but to trample over each other to do so with the former colonial powers suggests the possible presence of some sort of self-loathing that invokes the old Marx Brothers’ quip: I would not belong to a club that would have me as a member.
But maybe we cannot expect better from political leaders who are now far removed from the founders of CARICOM, who had personally experienced the trauma of the colonial relationship. But even they had their weakness for the role of “petty Caesars,” and it took the efforts of non-political statesmen like Arthur Lewis, William Demas, etc – in and out of CARICOM – to remind them of their historic duty to the West Indian people.
We need such persons to rise to the fore today to bring us back to the path of real integration. Those in positions to do so, we have to sadly conclude, just do not cut it. They do not have the wherewithal, and evidently not even the inclination, to bring their reluctant peers to “cleave” to our need for unity.
Most of us know David Rudder’s anthem of WI Cricket, “Rally Round the WI,” but we close with his words which remind us that it’s not just about cricket:
This is not just cricket
This goes beyond the boundary
It’s up to you and me to make sure that they fail
Soon we’ll have to take a side
Or be lost in the rubble
In a divided world that don’t need islands no more
Are we doomed forever to be at someone’s mercy?
Little keys can open mighty doors
Big tree, small axe. Rally round the West Indies!
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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