A limiting perspective

GEORGETOWN, Guyana – Between the host prime minister’s opening speech and the final communiqué of last week’s CARICOM summit, there was, as feared in many quarters, a distinct lack of comfort with regard to concrete action to reinvigorate our faltering regional integration project. Certainly, there were many fine words uttered. Most Caribbean leaders can be as eloquent as West Indies pacer Tino Best can be enthusiastic, and they were just as liberal in their use of rhetoric as the fast bowler was profligate in his delivery of wide balls against Sri Lanka earlier this week. But the language of the communiqué was as uninspiring as ever, perhaps understandably so, since there were no breakthrough decisions to broadcast. To be honest, there were no huge pre-meeting expectations. Yet, even in the most sceptical of breasts there must have beaten a slight hope that the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Chaguaramas might provoke a moment of epiphany – that the gradualist, not to say fainthearted, approach would be discarded in favour of bold, decisive and urgent action.