To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar may be the most re­cent­ly elect­ed and least ex­pe­ri­enced na­tion­al leader at­tend­ing the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing, which starts to­day, but it is to her that the lead­er­ship of the Caribbean may well be turn­ing to lend an at­ten­tive ear. As the leader of the most ro­bust eco­nom­ic pres­ence in the Caribbean, her words and po­si­tion state­ments are like­ly to dri­ve the di­rec­tion of the dis­cus­sions and the spir­it of the meet­ing. Per­sad-Bisses­sar has made it clear that she will not be pur­su­ing her pre­de­ces­sor's en­thu­si­as­tic in­ter­est in forg­ing po­lit­i­cal unions with oth­er na­tions in the Caribbean un­til those ini­tia­tives have been clar­i­fied in con­sul­ta­tion and some lev­el of con­sen­sus em­braced. But the man­i­festo of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, while mak­ing that po­si­tion clear, al­so com­mits the Gov­ern­ment to "re-en­gage ful­ly with the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion process and con­tribute to the strength­en­ing of the over­all Cari­com frame­work, in­clud­ing the CSME."

It's clear that at this stage of Cari­com's de­vel­op­ment, or de­te­ri­o­ra­tion, de­pend­ing on how you choose to mea­sure it, that mean­ing­ful re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion needs to be more ag­gres­sive­ly pro­mot­ed on the agen­da of Cari­com's lead­er­ship. This is crit­i­cal not just to the de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion but to the qual­i­ty of our trade prospects in a volatile world econ­o­my. Trinidad and To­ba­go may come to the ta­ble as a re­gion­al eco­nom­ic pow­er­house, fu­elled by its fos­sil fu­el as­sets, but in­ter­na­tion­al­ly there is lit­tle to sep­a­rate one par­tic­u­lar­ly blessed is­land in the Caribbean from its less well-en­dowed neigh­bours in the arch­i­pel­ago. A clear, sus­tain­able and mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial agen­da of re­gion­al co-op­er­a­tion that draws the is­lands of the Caribbean to­geth­er in­to a more uni­fied group has been on the ta­ble for far too long. Mean­while, the suc­cess of sim­i­lar gath­er­ings around re­gion­al and cul­tur­al ax­es have done much to lever­age the na­tions of Eu­rope and Latin Amer­i­ca to a more pow­er­ful pres­ence on the world stage.

At the core of such an agen­da must be the res­ur­rec­tion of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME), which was, right­ful­ly, po­si­tioned as the back­bone of any se­ri­ous ef­fort to cre­ate a more ho­moge­nous mar­ket­place for tal­ent, prod­ucts and ser­vices through­out the Caribbean. What lit­tle eco­nom­ic Caribbean in­te­gra­tion there is to­day ex­ists en­tire­ly dri­ven by prof­it cen­tres iden­ti­fied by the more ag­gres­sive busi­ness in­ter­ests op­er­at­ing in the Caribbean to­day, but even those cor­po­rate ef­forts are hob­bled by the in­abil­i­ty of the gov­ern­ments of the Caribbean to agree on gen­er­al busi­ness prac­tices that would lu­bri­cate cor­po­rate mi­gra­tion, and by ex­ten­sion, knowl­edge shar­ing and de­vel­op­ment through­out the re­gion. This is still a Caribbean in which the ac­tions of a sin­gle drug lord can bring the busi­ness of an is­land to a vir­tu­al stand­still, in which ef­forts to in­te­grate air trans­port through­out the re­gion are stymied by mat­ters of in­ter-is­land pride and ri­val­ry. It shouldn't take the tragedy of Haiti to bring the shoul­ders of Caribbean na­tions to­geth­er to dri­ve a sin­gle task.

Glob­al­i­sa­tion dri­ves na­tions to low­er their trade bar­ri­ers and to lever­age the ad­van­tages that each na­tion of­fers. A more uni­fied Caribbean pres­ence par­tic­i­pat­ing in the world econ­o­my can de­liv­er a larg­er, more di­verse re­source than any one of its is­lands in­di­vid­u­al­ly, but struc­tur­ing a frame­work for these is­lands to work to­geth­er has been a chal­lenge that its lead­ers have proven un­able to ad­dress. Em­bed­ded in the pos­si­bil­i­ties of Cari­com and clear­ly ev­i­dent in the spot­ty im­ple­men­ta­tion of the CSME is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that it places on each is­land to rise to the op­por­tu­ni­ties and to find re­dress for the li­a­bil­i­ties that true free trade in tal­ent, goods and ser­vices bring to their economies. The chal­lenges faced by the less de­vel­oped na­tions of Cari­com in im­ple­ment­ing the CSME con­tin­ue to be a stum­bling block to the full in­te­gra­tion of the ini­tia­tive and so­lu­tions have been slow in com­ing. Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty at to­day's Cari­com con­fer­ence to redi­rect the con­ver­sa­tion away from pro­tec­tion­ist ter­ri­to­ri­al­ism to­ward mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial re­gion­al­ism and to en­cour­age her peers in gov­er­nance to be­gin open­ing chan­nels ded­i­cat­ed to break­ing down bar­ri­ers be­tween these is­lands, trade walls erect­ed cen­turies ago by colo­nial pow­ers that are ir­rel­e­vant in the face of our shared chal­lenges in an era of glob­al eco­nom­ics.