Rationalizing the Functions of the Organs of the Community

• Author: P.I. Gomes
• Pages: 94-103

94 NEW CONCEPTIONS OF REGIONAL GOVERNANCE

INTRODUCTION

The need for rationalization and improved performance of the Organs

of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and its related bodies has been

long recognized as an issue of grave concern by the wider stakeholders and

members of the public, as by officials and technocrats directly involved in

the regional integration movement (Hall and Blake in Hall 2001, 203-21).

Attention to the structure, functions and scope of the Community’s

Organs was brought to the fore with the 1989 Grand Anse Declaration and

the commitment to a CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME), which

accompanied the call for a Commission to chart a future for the West Indies

into the ‘Twenty-first Century’.

Since the Report of the West Indian Commission of 1992 (Time for Action)

there remains considerable ambiguity on the scale and scope by which

major Organs of the Community, as identified in the Revised Treaty of

Chaguaramas, should be rationalized with a view to achieving a more

effective implementation of critical decisions of the Community and thereby

advancing the regional integration movement.

In this paper, a synopsis is provided of the main initiatives undertaken

or proposed in a search for appropriate institutional mechanisms to support

decision making and implementation. Following that, an assessment is made

of those Organs of the Community which are pivotal to timely implementation

of decisions and how their functions might be rationalized. The paper

advocates a case for the CARICOM Secretariat (CCS) to become a permanent

mechanism with executive authority, delegated from the Conference of

Heads of Government, as a necessary perquisite to meaningful ‘integration’

in a ‘maturing regionalism’. The fundamental question of how executive

authority is to be delegated or shared and simultaneously satisfy ‘a

reaffirmation that CARICOM is a Community of Sovereign States’, as stated

in the Rose Hall Declaration (July 2003), is posed as giving rise to

‘operational dysfunctionality’.

RATIONALIZING THE FUNCTIONSRATIONALIZING THE FUNCTIONS

RATIONALIZING THE FUNCTIONSRATIONALIZING THE FUNCTIONS

RATIONALIZING THE FUNCTIONS

OF THE ORGANS OF THE COMMUNITYOF THE ORGANS OF THE COMMUNITY

OF THE ORGANS OF THE COMMUNITYOF THE ORGANS OF THE COMMUNITY

OF THE ORGANS OF THE COMMUNITY

P.I. Gomes

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