EDITORIAL - CARICOM after Edwin Carrington

Edwin Carrington's announcement that he will, at the end of the year, leave as secretary general of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), after nearly two decades at the helm, is of itself not an unwelcome development.

After all, 18 years is a long time for a single individual to be at the head of any institution, especially one like CARICOM - and its secretariat - that, as is widely acknowledged, is under pressure to convince its constituents of its relevance and is in need of new energy and focus. And Edwin Carrington is 72.

It would, however, be a grave disservice to Mr Carrington, and a display of ignorance about the administration of the regional project on the part of those who would do so, to lay all the blame for CARICOM's weaknesses and failings at the door of the secretary general. It would be equally bad to attempt to belittle the institutional advances of CARICOM during Mr Carrington's watch.Edwin Carrington, a former secretary general of the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries, arrived at the CARICOM secretariat in the immediate aftermath of the decision of the regional leaders to transform the free trade and functional cooperation group to a single market and economy, which was followed closely by the recommendations of Sir Shridath Ramphal's committee on how to improve decision making and policy implementation in CARICOM

Mr Carrington presided over the revision of the CARICOM treaty and the launch in 2006 of the CARICOM Single Market - a meandering process that required 15 years. And yet, many of its elements, including undertakings of the free movement of labour, are not universally in place. This failure, and others to do with implementation are not primarily the fault of Edwin Carrington, even if he could be accused, as he sometimes is, of not running an efficient secretariat. It is essentially the failure of political leadership, as was recently observed by Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of St Vincent.

Predictable implementation

And that substantially rests on Jamaica, the community's political leader, and Trinidad and Tobago, its economic power. A single market and policy coordination organisation like CARICOM demands predictable implementation of agreed action and the absence of second-guessing by a single member or group of members in response to the domestic constituencies.

This presumes a ceding of some sovereign authority to a supranational centre, as has been achieved by the European Union (EU) and was contemplated by Sir Shridath Ramphal's group. Regional leaders have been afraid to move in this direction which, in any event, demands the muscle of Kingston and Port of Spain for it to happen.

Jamaican governments, even of the People's National Party which tends to be more supportive of the regional movement, remain haunted by the failure of the West Indies Federation and tend to be scared of accusations of using CARICOM as 'federation via the back door' At the same time, Trinidad and Tobago's usually unstated politics of ethnicity and that fear of the rich of being overrun by hordes of poor lend to their reticence.

Hopefully, Mr Carrington's departure will help CARICOM undertake the renewal its so urgently needs. That, however, is about political will.

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