Free movement from Monday - St. Lucia

WED, JULY 27, 2011 - 3:00 PM

CASTRIES, St Lucia – The St Lucia-based organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) says it is making final preparations for the August 1 free movement of nationals from the sub-region.

It said the initiative will involve the six independent member states namely Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and St. Kitts and Nevis, with Montserrat expect to join by September followed at a later date by Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands.

Lisa Louis-Phillip of the OECS Secretariat's Regional Integration Unit said every effort was being made to ensure that all administrative arrangements agreed to by the working group have been put in place in time for Monday.

"We have been seeking to ensure that whatever procedure and arrangements that are in place are not complicated and does not prohibit nationals from moving from one state to the next," she said.

"OECS nationals will require at least a valid ID card to benefit from the free movement of labour which takes effect from Monday August 1," Louis-Phillip added.
She said the committee had agreed to a number of procedures, such as the document to be used for re-entry.

"That is important as well as a completed ED form, these are the two most important documents that an OECS national moving to another protocol state would have to present to an immigration officer," she noted.

"At that point the individual would be granted an indefinite entry into that state once immigration is satisfied that all security and other reasonable precautions have been taken," Louis-Phillip added.

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Barbados snubs Shanique Myrie's Lawyers

(Jamaica Observer) More than four months after Jamai-can Shanique Myrie was finger-raped, verbally abused, locked up and kicked out of Barbados, the Barbadian Government is yet to respond to correspondence from her lawyers.


Shanique Myrie

Attorneys Anthony Hylton and Michelle Brown, who represent Myrie, say they have made repeated attempts to get the government of that eastern Caribbean island to address the issue but to date no positive response has been forthcoming.

Myrie, who was detained at the Grantley Adams International Airport in March, claimed that she was subjected to two demeaning cavity searches, locked in a cold, filthy room and kicked out of the country the following day, despite not being found with any contraband or in contravention of that country’s laws.

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Old problems for Caricom's New SG

THE formal appointment of Irwin LaRocque as the new secretary general of the Guyana-based Caricom Secretariat is expected to be completed this week with a letter from current Community chairman Dr Denzil Douglas, the prime minister of St Kitts and Nevis.
For almost six years, starting in September 2005, the Dominican-born economist has been functioning as one of three assistant secretaries general of the 38-year-old Community. His chief responsibility was Trade and Economic Integration.
At 56, LaRocque's choice as SG has come as a surprise to officials of various regional organisations, who prefer not to be quoted, as well as to the Community Secretariat staffers, who prefer to comment more on his "politeness" and "respect for procedures" within the administrative structure than on other factors.
He was chosen from a shortlist of five candidates, submitted by a "search committee" that was established by the Heads of Government last August following the decision of Edwin Carrington to retire at the end of 2010 after 18 years as secretary general. That development itself took place against the backdrop of what some have euphemistically termed a " very frank dialogue" in Jamaica involving Carrington and then Caricom chairman Prime Minister Bruce Golding.
So, after some ten months of work by a "search committee" whose terms of reference, including the required skills and expertise of a new secretary general, were never clearly outlined as public information, the five shortlisted candidates were interviewed by the Caricom Bureau and, finally, by a process of telephone conversations, LaRocque was announced as the new secretary general.
As some highly respected and experienced regional technocrats and thinkers see it, Caricom's 15 Heads of Government now have a new SG on board in the person of an "in-house" appointee, but are still far removed from dealing with the pivotal factor to which they themselves have often referred -- the urgent need for a "comprehensive review" of the structure and functioning of the Secretariat.


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A Requiem for CARICOM by Peter Wickham

(This article appeared in the Nation Newspaper but was not available on line. I have reproduced it here with the author's permission and attached an image of my work called "Hatchlings - A Requiem". The work is a laying in state of CARICOM...fifteen national entities sitting in nests on a shredded revised treaty of Chaguaramas.)

A Requiem for CARICOM

The title of this article might appear to be both premature and unfortunate; however anyone looking critically at recent events is left to conclude that the development of CARICOM is off the “front burner” for the time being and it is useful that the CARICOM Heads have finally admitted to us that it’s progress is not high on their list of priorities. This realisation causes me considerable discomfort since I have been committed to the cause of regionalism for several years without much good reason. In all of this I assumed that the region’s political leaders and bureaucrats shared my vision for this region and genuinely believed that we really were stronger as a unit; however I am now compelled to agree that schemes which seemed to signal some meaningful development of this Caribbean Community had more to do with the exploitation of some tangible benefit that a regional politician or bureaucrat identified for themselves or their country. It is therefore now useful to review the past few of CARICOM’s development with the benefit of hindsight and perhaps a hefty dose of cynicism.
This project of course stated with the 1958 West Indies Federation which had nothing to do with the Caribbean people or leaders, but was a Colonial Office project to unload 14 possessions that had stopped being profitable but were clearly not “worthy” of independence like India. This disaster ushered in the era of independence which was a proverbial “game changer” regarding regionalism since this would force us to compete among ourselves since we essentially all did the same thing. Thankfully, three visionaries named Barrow, Burnham and Bird, though perhaps we could mimic the European Community in their integration efforts in the same way that we mimicked their governance for decades. The vision of these three men was not entirely altruistic, but it was useful that they got things started and co-opted a Trinidadian named William Demas whose commitment is unparalleled. Demas worked hard to make the Caribbean Community a reality and to my mind was only handicapped by a vision of regional development that was both Eurocentric and “Trade-centric”.
These gentlemen meant well, but shamelessly borrowed from a European construct and rejected the occasional indigenous thinking that often sought to emerge from within the region. The end result was CARIFTA, followed by CARICOM which is a cheap “knock-off” of the European Community had long since evolved. It was therefore not surprising that “deficiencies” were identified after 10 years and as we approached the 20th Anniversary it was necessary to take a serious look at the project in an attempt to understand why it was going nowhere. The methodology selected by the Commission was as predictable as their prescription; hence we had our own version of the Royal Commission that set out under the distinguished Chairmanship of Lord Moyne. Naturally the WIC Report was equally voluminous and suggested a solution to our problems that required the establishment of new institutions, funds and projects. Ironically, this heavily bureaucratic approach was applied on one side, while on the other side the WIC called for “Hassle Free Travel” which is intrinsically anti-bureaucratic; however this would require a new bureaucracy to implement.
It did not take long for things to return to “Normal” in the Caribbean with regional bands and journalists being denied entry and in some instances being asked to leave the county. In the meantime our ever-expanding team of regional bureaucrats set to work on their new projects to facilitate trade expansion and to micromanage the little trade between islands. Institutions like the RNM were presented as being important to our survival and we had to find the recourses to fund its work. The vast majority of us don’t understand what these intuitions do, why these are so expensive to fund and why tangible results are seldom ever reported, but we continue to believe that we cannot live without them. To my mind it seems odd that we fund agencies to enhance trade capacity, market exports, negotiate trade agreements, standardise exports standards, collect, collate and analyse trade data and only two or three territories actually export any significant quantities of goods, the vast majority of which are intra-regional anyhow. As we battle the worst global recession since the 1930s the enormous and sophisticated “trade capacity” appears not to have been particularly useful especially in places like Barbados where Tourism has been our saviour.
One of the positive signs coming from the CARICOM Heads has been the apparent enthusiasm for the CSME. This was piloted by Barbados and considerable work was done on it by PM Arthur which the other heads also appeared excited about. The fact that this same Arthur behaved in a way that was clearly anti-regional recently demonstrates the extent to which this project was always about what was expedient. Support for the CSME was and will continue to be born of the realisation that unless we made ourselves look more like the EU (even if in theory) the World Trade Organisation might argue that we are not a regional grouping and force us to treat all other states equally, which is not an option. Since this immediate threat has been removed, the Heads can now comfortably announce that they are not moving on with new CARICOM initiatives.
In the meantime Caribbean people continue to have problems of a regional nature that CARICOM is unable or unwilling to address. The original concept of hassle free travel was set aside on September 11th, while some of us have gone further in our efforts to harass nationals of other states when they enter ours. We now have the case of the regional airline REDjet being denied entry to another CARICOM state, while Barbados is modifying its rules of access to Health Care and inadvertently excluding persons who have lived here for extended periods. The recent announcement that CARICOM was holding off on any new projects was therefore the most honest the Heads have been in some time.
Peter W. Wickham (peter.wickham@caribsurf.com) is a Political Consultant and a director of Caribbean Development Research Services (CADRES)

THE BIG INTERVIEW - Jagdeo’s way ahead

SUN, JULY 03, 2011 - 10:59 AM

The tenure of Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo is nearing its end. While attending his last CARICOM Summit as Head of Government, Jagdeo spoke frankly to regional journalists, including NATION Managing Editor Tim Slinger, in St Kitts yesterday.

He was candid on several topical issues, including freedom of movement across the region, REDjet and West Indies cricket.



Q: This is your final appearance at the CARICOM Heads of Government conference. After 12 years, what are your impressions of the regional body?

Jagdeo: For too long we’ve held up these lofty ideas of the Treaty of Chaguaramas and almost in a sacred way without focusing enough on how we break those down into projects and programmes and get those implemented.

The only way that we’ll change the perception of CARICOM is not just through a PR job . . . . There are a lot of positive things about CARICOM but the more ordinary people can feel regional initiatives impacting on their lives.

The fishermen in Barbados, in Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada and Guyana and Suriname can have their fisheries agreement that allows them to move seamlessly across these countries and fish, then without any hassle they will start to say CARICOM is working. So it builds support through specific initiatives.

There is that sense of urgency that we need to create the mechanisms for that new approach. A change in mindset.

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ALL AH WE IS ONE - Time for boldness

BY TENNYSON JOSEPH | TUE, JULY 12, 2011 - 12:00 AM

RECENT NEWS on the regional integration movement has not been encouraging. The talk among the people who have been entrusted with the health of the living body is now of corpses and obituaries.

The Prime Minister of St Kitts, Denzil Douglas, ironically advocates a “slowing down” of the movement towards a single economy and tries to pass that off as a new advance, superior to the enthusiastic support for deeper integration once espoused by the founding fathers.

A clearer example of generational retreat and of “one step forward, two steps backward” cannot be found.

Leaders, who can hardly be stirred from their slumber to give a positive report on the achievement of long-overdue tasks, discover a new-found energy that fuels only cross-talk and mauvaise langue and are at their best only when verbally beating the integration project into the dust.

What is worse, all of this is coming at a time when the failure of stand-alone, single-island development is now beyond question, exposed as it is by the comatose nature of the Caribbean state in the face of the Great Recession. Indeed, if the scent of death can be picked up, it is not of the integration project, but of the false claim that any Caribbean territory can survive on its own.

Read full article here.