EDITORIAL - If Mr Golding wants CARICOM to move ...

Earlier this week, Jamaica's prime minister, Mr Bruce Golding, added his voice to the recent chorus on the failings of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

The substance of the weakness of the Community, Mr Golding suggested to delegates at a conference in Kingston of the Caribbean Public Services Association, was its failure to make the most of the economic offerings of the global market. The member states, he argued, had expended too much energy trading with each other, thereby merely shuffling around, among themselves, the value of regional output.

Said Mr Golding: "This is where I think CARICOM needs to make a fundamental change, and instead of looking at each other with our separate pair of eyes, we need to put those 14 pairs of eyes together and look at the rest of the world. CARICOM is too small to provide the space that we need to grow; too small in numbers and effectiveness of its purchasing power."

The remarks probably sounded deep and insightful, delivered in Mr Golding's mellifluous cadence. Except that Mr Golding comes across as merely an interested observer of the CARICOM project rather than the leader, for four years, of a country that is critical to any direction taken by the Community, of which he had an extended stretch as chairman.

In that regard, Mr Golding appeared to have been oblivious of the speech delivered in the Jamaican capital by the Caribbean nationalist, Sir Shridath Ramphal, two days before his own, at a venue adjacent to the one where he gave his. It is recalled that Sir Shridath led the commission that nearly a quarter of a century ago delivered a report, A Time for Action, that proposed a governance structure for CARICOM - a matter over which the Community still struggles.

Lamenting CARICOM's myriad of "unfulfilled pledges, promises and unimplemented decisions", Sir Shridath placed much of the blame on an immature political culture, "fixated by the obsessive compulsions of local control".

In other words, the failure of CARICOM's member states to devolve some of their sovereignty to a centre, despite, as Sir Shridath put it, "the checks and balances against supranationality", has led to a rigid governance where decisions, slowly made, are implemented even more slowly, or not at all. Or, as a boxing analyst once said of Frank Bruno: he had the physique of a statue of a Greek god and the agility to go with it.

There are two issues, therefore, that Mr Golding should contemplate if CARICOM is to make the progress he believes it can.

The first is Jamaica's leverage as the political leader of the Community and the economic force it exerts at a key market. Any substantial action in CARICOM has to be driven either by Jamaica and/or Trinidad and Tobago, with support from Barbados. Mr Golding can exert that authority and assume what ought to be Jamaica's leadership of the Community.

The second matter is the appointment of the new secretary general in Ambassador Irwin LaRocque. If it is not yet the case, Mr Golding should insist on the empowerment of Ambassador LaRocque to pursue CARICOM's clear agenda.

Indeed, the Jamaican prime minister should push hard for the adoption of the priority work programme that was laid out by his Grenadian counterpart, Mr Tillman Thomas, at the heads of government retreat in June.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.