St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves (pictured above) has recently expressed frustration about the slow pace of integration.
MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica – Ten Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders and representatives of other regional governments have started off their annual summit with a call from host Prime Minister and incoming CARICOM Chairman, Bruce Golding, to make this year’s meeting a turning point for the regional grouping.
He made the appeal at the summit’s opening ceremony yesterday evening, attended by a gathering that included government officials from various CARICOM governments and diplomats, but was marked by the absence of five other regional heads, including St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves who has recently expressed frustration about the slow pace of integration.
Golding admitted that many people in the region are disillusioned with CARICOM and believe that it has not lived up to their expectations and admitted that the region has not yet achieved “even the goals that we as the contemporary heirs of that legacy have set for our time”.
“The issue of CARICOM's governance structure cannot any longer be avoided. As we go onto this Conference, we are called by commentators to put up or shut up, to make this thing work or forget about it,” he said.
“Of all our failings, perhaps our greatest is to believe that we can unite the Caribbean without first uniting the Caribbean people. That is an issue this Conference must take up in the context of the governance structure that we must address. Let Montego Bay, as it has done in the past, be a turning point, a new beginning.”
The Jamaican leader said the need to work together has become even more urgent because of emerging new challenges that confront CARICOM countries separately and collectively, among them the global recession which he said has “severely dislocated” regional economies.
“We do not have the resources or the fiscal space to support effective stimulus packages to refloat our economies. Our economies are naked, shivering for warmth in the blizzard of the global crisis,” Golding said.
“We remain orphans in the global financial arrangements, not regarded as poor enough to qualify for special treatment, but not advanced enough to survive without special treatment. The international community has largely overlooked the plight of small, highly-indebted, middle-income countries because we do not pose a threat to the global economy although the global economy poses a serious threat to us.”
Golding has assumed leadership of CARICOM following Haiti's inability to do so after January's devastaing earthquake.
In addition to the Jamaican Prime Minister, the leaders of Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago are attending the 31st Heads of Government Conference.
Prime Minister Gonsalves is reportedly ill and unable to attend the meeting; Barbados’ ailing Prime Minister David Thompson last week began a two-month leave of absence; and Suriname is still to choose a leader following general elections in May. The other two Heads who are not attending are Belize Prime Minister Dean Barrow and Montserrat’s Chief Minister Reuben Meade.
Those leaders unable to attend have sent representatives in their place.
This July 4th to 7th CARICOM summit is also being attended by the heads of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation of American States.
