Letter of the Day | CARICOM indeed needs to reboot itself

THE EDITOR, Madam:

As a Jamaican and Caribbean person, I strongly support the CARICOM analysis in The Gleaner editorial of July 5. I am hoping that the last line ‘If we are right, CARICOM might just reboot itself’ turns out to be so.

I have always believed that the five or six million of Caribbean people have been overgoverned, overtaxed and left poor because of a serious overduplication of governor generals, prime ministers and ministers of this, that, and the other.

The harsh reality is that common sense and the benefits of critical mass suggest that, like the EU which the editorial refers to, size matters. Unfortunately, in all of this, meaning the dissolution of the West Indies Federation, we cannot forget that it is Jamaica who drew the ‘first blood’ of what England attempted to give us for centuries of deprivation while it enriched itself out of our unpaid blood, sweat and tears and while it took away our ‘somebodyness and personhood’

In this respect, unfortunately, we have not always had a Michael Manley or Forbes Burnham to give us the intellectual ‘forward march, together’ charge. But now, as the editorial pointed out, we have Mia Mottley in Barbados. I, for one, believe that, if the Barbadian voters are seeing eye to eye with the rest of us, in addition to the promised freedom of movement resolution in 2024, much more could be achieved over the next few years if Ms Mottley has anything to do with it.

Hopefully, if even in our great-grandchildren’s time, England will come around to paying reparation for its atrocities during slavery. At least it gave us a respected university (even if our ‘duplicated governments’ will not pay their share of its cost). Trouble is, outside of the CXC (plaudits to them) they (regional graduate politicians with outstanding exceptions) have not learned much useful lessons in effective collaboration. Put another way, they have failed us in ‘electing’ to remain ‘naked emperors in their insularity’ versus stepping up to the big picture and taking us along with them into a better place, and future, where collectively we speak with the voice of six million strong (say in reparation) instead to the inaudible whisper of a few.

Regrettably, despite its being on-the-ground success, for example in medicine, there seems not to have been enough graduates from The University of the West Indies with a mission critical bigger ‘regional is better’ mindset, and so, for example, instead of having one regional stock market, we have five, for the five or so million of us.

It is probably not as easy as I think it is, or should be (many miles of sea that separate us) but, my hope is that the long-ago-taken initiatives toward the single market and economy will, at last, overcome Dr Ralph Gonsalves’ ‘implementation deficit’ and come into being, including the Caribbean Court of Justice as our supreme court of appeal

LLOYD VERMONT