By Balford Henry, News EditorIT TOOK St. Vincent and the Granadines' Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves some 30 years to achieve his ambition of becoming Prime Minister of his home
country, but he seems determined to hustle towards regional
integration.
And wow! That word integration is a grave one. It's like a red flag in a field of recollections of federation to some of us.
Quite rightly, there were Jamaicans who put Gonsalves back into his place, when he tried to infringe on our courtesy and get too involved in our general election campaigning. The explanations he came up with didn't cut it and the general feeling seems to be, as it should be, that he had plunged into unwelcomed waters.
But, the issue of Gonsalves and his intemperate incursion is not as simple as it appears on the surface. In fact, our own Prime Minister, P.J. Patterson, let the puss out of the bag when he told Gleaner editors and senior journalists recently:
"Let me say to you, the people in the entire Caribbean have a critical interest in the outcome of the elections in Jamaica as do we in any other territory in the Caribbean."
Certainly, the rest of the Caribbean has a critical interest in the next general election in Jamaica, but it is not just for the same reasons of the past, or even for the reasons why we would have similar interest in their elections, alone.
The fact is that there is an obvious fear among some CARICOM leaders that a change in Government in Jamaica could set back the current process of co-operation, or integration.
Firstly, it is clear that even while some CARICOM leaders are quite content with the process of co-operation, there are others, like Gonsalves, who expect more, in fact much more: He wants integration or "a form of confederation."
Free movement of people in identifiable skills and a common or single CARICOM passport wouldn't be enough. Dr. Gonsalves has urged, as a minimum, "a confederal structure that recognises integration as the future for CARICOM."
Obviously, he is not in agreement with Eric Williams' equation that one from 10 leaves 0. And if he does, he probably believes that all it needs to get this thing going again is to convince the 1 to join up back with the 0.
POLITICAL UNION
"Let us again put the issue of political union on the agenda and proceed to it with measures, practical steps which truly mean something to the people of the region," he told the 2001 CARICOM summit in the Bahamas.
The fact that it was Bustamante who led Jamaica out of the West Indian federation, not to mention Hugh Shearer's strong nationalist challenge to Walter Rodney's re-entry in 1968, when Gonsalves, himself, was the head of the Student's Union at Mona and leader of the demonstrations which followed the Rodney ban, plus Seaga's firm stand against integration makes it no real surprise that he strongly detests the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).
But, believe it or not, there is at least one point on which Seaga and Gonsalves could find common ground in this election campaign to the chagrin of Patterson.
Gonsalves is one of the CARICOM leaders who has reservations about the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).
His view is that he could only favour the court as far as its original jurisdiction is concerned. His Unity Labour Party (ULP) is not satisfied with the CCJ in its appellate form and wants improvements first to regional Resident Magistrate's courts.
"We are making it plain that we would like to see the Privy Council retained as our final court of appeal... We support a Caribbean-wide Court of Appeal we would put that on the agenda, but that would not be the final court of appeal," was his campaign stand in 2001.
He has argued that, in this globalised world, it was better to have an international court, which is what the Privy Council is, than to have a nationalist one.
"Persons are concerned about the final court of appeal on the basis of political interference and people are concerned about the fact that regional institutions do not have a very good history in terms of getting funding," Dr Gonsalves says.
"You can starve a chemistry department at the University of the West Indies of certain kinds of equipment, I don't think you can starve a final court and many people don't pay their dues in the region, so these are considerations which concern people," Dr Gonsalves explained.
Talk about how politics sometimes makes strange bedfellows.
