GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Stabroek News – Obviously, when we focused, in last Friday’s editorial, on PJ Patterson’s cry from the heart and forthright warning about the perils of neglecting Caricom, we thought that his argument was well reasoned and very persuasive. We still do. He and we may, however, have missed a most important point. In identifying Caricom’s principal defects, viz, ineffective governance, the implementation deficit, the delay in re-engineering the Secretariat, the sloth in advancing greater freedom of movement, and “the failure of the Community to tackle the burning issues of concern to our people,” the former Jamaican prime minister was perhaps too conciliatory towards his erstwhile colleague heads of government. Rather than merely acknowledging the primacy of domestic problems over “sound regional strategies,” he could have more forcefully stated that narrow domestic interests, the lack of a regional vision – or the unwillingness to subscribe to one – and, by extension, a glaring absence of leadership continue to undermine the collective wellbeing of Caricom. Indeed, whilst invoking the halcyon days of Caricom coherence, collective strength and unity and voicing support for a common foreign economic policy, Mr Patterson is guilty of glossing over the present reality; there are growing divisions in the area of foreign policy, in spite of the existence of the Council for Foreign and Community Relations (Cofcor).
