Barbados, Trinidad's actions confirm the spirit of CARICOM is dead

Richard Blackford, Guest Columnist

In 1973, I participated as a member of the Jamaican contingent in the Trinidad leg of the annual Cadet Exchange Programme. Our camp grounds was at Chagauramas Bay, a stone's throw from where Caribbean leaders, including Jamaica's Prime Minister Michael Norman Manley, were meeting and would later, on July 4, 1973, sign the Treaty of Chaguaramas, which gave life to the Caribbean Common Market (CARICOM).

On reflection, it was a heady experience for me as the magic of Manley's rhetoric had captivated me (like numerous Jamaican youngsters at the time) and the idea of being in Trinidad at the same time as the prime minister gave spring to the strides of this contingent of young Jamaicans.

The signing of the treaty establishing CARICOM was a defining moment in the history of the Commonwealth Caribbean. Although a free-trade area had been established, the Caribbean Free Trade Association did not provide for the free movement of labour and capital, or the co-ordination of agricultural, industrial and foreign policies.

The objectives of the Community, identified in Article 6 of the Revised Treaty, were: to improve standards of living and work; the full employment of labour and other factors of production; accelerated, coordinated and sustained economic development and convergence; expansion of trade and economic relations with third States; enhanced levels of international competitiveness; organisation for increased production and productivity; achievement of a greater measure of economic leverage and effectiveness of member States in dealing with third States, groups of States and entities of any description, and the enhanced coordination of member States' foreign and foreign economic policies and enhanced functional cooperation.

SEVERAL REVISIONS

Between 1989 and 2000, there have been several revisions of this Treaty, aimed at strengthening its provisions and making it workable throughout the region, allowing the transforming of the Common Market into a single market and economy, in which factors move freely as a basis for internationally competitive production of goods and provision of services.

Forty years after its birth, CARICOM, I am sorry to say, means absolutely nothing for me and thousands of other Jamaicans.

The experience of Shanique Myrie and her ill-fated visit to Barbados two years earlier, as well as the group of 13 Jamaicans denied entry to Trinidad last week confirms that the spirit of CARICOM is dead.

For if the members of a single market and economy are denied that very basic freedom of movement between territories, then the idea of CARICOM is as dead as the proponents of 40 earlier years are today.

It is the people of the region who man the borders and ports who give effect to treaties such as this, not governments. Obviously, the ideas of individual government ministers and the psyche that drives these port officers are completely detached.

Jamaicans are not the only CARICOM nationals having these experiences in Barbados and Trinidad. Ask the Guyanese, the Vincentians, and nationals from other islands.

After reading of the latest experiences of my fellow Jamaicans on their visit to Trinidad, I am now convinced that the switch of our Jamaican passport for one that is labelled 'CARICOM' does me no service.

I doubt our Government will see the signal that this is a dead idea and return us to a Jamaican passport. Maybe it is a good time to go get myself that United States passport. After all, I have earned it.

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