Confronting CARICOM’s implementation deficit

KINGSTON, Jamaica - THE recent announcement by the secretary general of the Caribbean Community, Irwin LaRocque, of fresh efforts to restructure the management of the regional economic integration movement would most likely raise new questions about the commitment of Heads of Government to implement decisions unanimously adopted.
We are now into the third week of 2013 and as far as I am aware, no Head of Government of the 15-member Caribbean Community and Common Market has made any public statement that offers new thinking that could encourage confidence-building for the future of our regional economic integration movement.
Apart from customary political platitudes among the Heads of Government about the "value" of CARICOM in a rapidly changing globalised political and economic environment, there has been pitiful absence of meaningful assurances to stem the tide of rolling cynicism over lack of new efforts to make a reality of the promised seamless regional economy (CSME).