Editorial | CARICOM leaders must agree to treaty amendment

It would be a great disappointment, a further sap of people’s faith, in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) if regional leaders, at the virtual summit, beginning tomorrow, fail to agree on mechanisms for the community to become a multispeed institution in which like-minded members can move ahead with initiatives, allowing the stragglers to catch up when they feel capable of so doing. The technocrats refer to the idea as enhanced cooperation.

But whatever the process is called, its great benefit is its potential for breaking the logjam in CARICOM and addressing what, euphemistically, is often referred to as the community’s implementation deficit – its perennial failure to fulfil the obligations of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas (RTC) – or to follow through on the decisions taken by the leaders at their summits. In that respect, it is a matter of regret that regional governments, including Jamaica’s, didn’t, as we suggested several months ago, take CARICOM citizens into their confidence on the proposals that are on the table. Engagement in the debate and the perceived pros and cons of the options would help to give the regional people a sense that they own the institution – as it were, another opportunity to build momentum in favour of the community.

CARICOM should make it the last one, starting with a greater engagement of stakeholders by its secretariat. There can be few institutions in which the search for information and data, especially on current matters, is so much like entering a black hole. Far too much is classified.

NOT A NEW IDEA

The idea of a multitrack CARICOM isn’t new. Indeed, it is in some respects contemplated in the RTC, which establishes different treatment for the community’s more and less-developed members. Moreover, the heads of government have on a number of occasions made decisions and issued declarations implicitly recognising the wisdom of a multitrack community. But except for the accommodation of the subregional group, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), the community hasn’t, in any significant way, given substantial expression to the concept.

Several factors have, however, now converged to increase the likelihood of something being done – finally. CARICOM’s ongoing economic crisis, characterised by the region’s high debt and low growth, caused its leaders to appoint a task force, led by the Barbadian economist, Avinash Persaud, to suggest ways to pull the community out of its stagnation. These problems were exacerbated, and the urgency for action enhanced, by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which pushed regional economies into a faster downward spiral.

In their report delivered last year, the blue riband task force, which included the current director general of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, and one of her predecessors, Pascal Lamy, produced an easily digested document that offered a series of specifics and ideas that regional countries might pursue to build resilience against catastrophes as well as lay the basis for growth. They also tabled a few seemingly radical ideas. One such was for the expansion of the right of CARICOM citizens to freely move in the community for work if they have passes in Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) subjects rather than being available to a handful of professions or people with university degrees.

STRONG CASE

But their more fundamental and potentially far-reaching recommendation was the strong case the task force made for a multitrack CARICOM, or for enhanced cooperation if five of the community’s 15 members agree to move on a matter if others are not ready. This was clearly the second-best option in developing CARICOM into a genuine single market and economy, the task force conceded, but added: “Variable speeds on a limited set of issues can get us moving again. Many of the CSME decisions that are stuck today have been stuck for a while even though a majority of member states are in agreement, and were they to press forward, it would cause no harm to the others.”

Indeed, as the commissioners argued, there are initiatives that some countries were ready to sign on to but about which others would be enthusiastic once they were shown to work.

But a variable track arrangement will require amendments to the CARICOM treaty, on which the community’s legal affairs committee has been working for several months, and on which there appeared to be consensus by the prime ministerial subcommittee on the CSME, led by Barbados’ PM, Mia Mottley.

We agree, as has been proposed, that the variable-speed carve-outs should be a last resort and that there are areas critical to the centrality of CARICOM, determined by the leaders, from which there can to be no variable track derogation. We support, too, that when members resort to enhanced cooperation, the obligations thereof should bind only those participants, excluding those who are not part of that pact.

Frankly, this newspaper perceives nothing in the proposed amendments that would do great violence to the ideals of the community. While there are guarantees that states would use the new options, they could very well kick-start the CSME and save CARICOM. That is why the leaders should press the reset button, and therefrom, set the dials for full speed ahead.