( left - right ) DOUGLAS and MUSA
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC:
ST. KITTS-Nevis Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas says Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders will have to consider some form of a political union in order to achieve the economic goals being planned for the region.
"I believe very strongly that we as heads of government need to recognise that this is going to be a necessary step. It is one good thing to say that we are in fact an economic entity, but we need to ensure that the political steps are also being taken to achieve our specific goals," Dr. Douglas told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).
"That is why we support very fully the idea of the CARICOM Secretariat advancing towards the CARICOM Commission. It needs to have teeth. It needs to have some power and authority to implement decisions, which are being taken," Dr. Douglas said.
But, Belize Prime Minister Said Musa said while political unity would help advance the economic integration of the region, he believed it was an issue that must be decided by the people of the region.
"In other words, what is in a name? Why do we have to form one state, federated state, when we can achieved the same objective if we have the kind of political, economic and social unity within the region working together," he told CMC.
"I think it can be achieved without the name of a federation," Musa said.
The issue of political union has long haunted the Caribbean ever since the collapse of the West Indian Federation in 1962, four years after it was established.
DEFIANCE
In 1987, the leaders of the sub-regional Organi-sation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) agreed that they would "engage in a process of comprehensive consultation within their countries, including a referendum on this matter before deciding on further appropriate steps."
But Antigua and Barbuda made it clear it was not interested in participation in a political union and the six other OECS states in 1987 agreed that the union "would strengthen and increase the benefits which had already been gained by the present cohesion of member-states in the OECS."
However in recent years, the idea of a political union within the sub-region has been relegated to the back burner.
Last week, noted regional economist, Professor Clive Thomas, delivering the sixth William Demas Memorial Lecture in Guyana, rekindled the issue, noting that efforts to create a CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) would fail if there was no political union.
"Fifteen sovereign states cannot create a single economic space, a single market perhaps, but never, never a single economic space in any meaningful way. Political union, therefore, is the inescapable logic of a single economic space given the world in which we inhabit," Professor Thomas said.
