Take `hard look’ at institutions – Prime Minister Anthony

(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, Dr. the Hon Kenny Anthony, wants the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to take a “hard look” at the Institutions that it has created.
In remarks at the historic, two-day Twenty-Fourth Intersessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Prime Minister Anthony expressed full support for the initiatives that were being taken to transform and empower the CARICOM Secretariat.

The process of change has already begun at the Secretariat where a Change Facilitation Team has started working towards restructuring the principal administrative organ of the Community, in keeping with a mandate issued by Heads of Government.

While the case for transformation of the Secretariat was “more compelling” in what he described as “this guava season”, Prime Minister Anthony was not convinced that emphasis on the Secretariat was enough.

“The real question is whether the emphasis on the Secretariat is enough. The problems that we face may well lie in the structure and underpinnings of the institutions of the Community which were created by the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas. Reforming the Secretariat may not yield the results that we seek. We have to take a hard look at the institutions which we created,” he said on Monday.

The institutions created by the Treaty, the Prime Minister said, had become “bureaucratic, unwieldy and lethargic,” and applications for economic redress seemed not to be concluded in a timely manner.

“It is little wonder that some say that we spend more time and resources in attending meetings rather than making decisions. The real question is this: Do we need all of these so called Councils and should they meet as frequently as they do?

“These questions may be tiring, even premature, but they cannot be ignored,” Prime Minister Anthony warned.
The reform process, crime and security, transportation, movement of persons within the Community, and cricket were among the matters the Heads of Government considered during the meeting which concluded Tuesday evening.

The Twenty-Fourth Intersessional Meeting marked the first time that Haiti hosted a Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government since becoming a member of CARICOM in 2002. His Excellency Michel Martelly, President of Haiti, assumed the Chairmanship of the Community in January.