Gail Alexan­der

Her girl­ish flow­ered dress, pink mi­ni-sweater and white wedge-heeled san­dals gave no im­pres­sion on Tues­day that she had come to cut big men down to size. Fi­nan­cial­ly speak­ing, that is. But new Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ap­par­ent­ly suc­ceed­ed in do­ing just that–and then some–at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed 31st Cari­com sum­mit in Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica. In­deed, sum­mit host, Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter Bruce Gold­ing, who whirled Per­sad-Bisses­sar round the dance floor at a post-sum­mit re­cep­tion on Wednes­day night said he had run against many peo­ple, but not against any­one like her.

Gold­ing re­marked he was glad he didn't have to.) That the 31st sum­mit was go­ing to be dif­fer­ent was ev­i­denced not on­ly by the pres­ence of the fresh­man Prime Min­is­ter from T&T, but al­so by the re­duced num­ber of lead­ers at­tend­ing the cau­cus at a time when Cari­com has come un­der fire for laps­ing on its man­date. En­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment's mantra of change.

At ex­act­ly a time which Cari­com chair­man Gold­ing on Sun­day had urged should be a turn­ing-point for the 37-year-old re­gion­al body which so re­quires over­haul that–on his ad­mis­sion–is still be­hind on its sig­na­ture Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my sys­tem. From the time she ar­rived last Sun­day (from Mi­a­mi), Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ut­ter­ances to lo­cal re­porters sig­nalled it was not go­ing to be sum­mit busi­ness as usu­al on sev­er­al scores.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar kicked to the curb the pre­vi­ous Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion's "god­fa­ther" pol­i­cy where the re­gion was con­cerned, pro­mot­ing a re­vamped hard­line po­si­tion on re­gion­al fund­ing cit­ing lo­cal fi­nan­cial con­straint. Nor was her dis­sat­is­fac­tion over Cari­com's cur­rent state any less. Per­sad-Bisses­sar who was ac­com­pa­nied on the trip by her (looka­like) sis­ter and a line of male aides, emerged on the first work­ing day in an olive-green pants suit, look­ing lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the rest of her suit­ed male col­leagues. On the day she un­der­took the tough job of chair­ing the re­gion's Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee–and re­vealed T&T would not be fund­ing fur­ther re­gion­al pro­grammes–Per­sad- Bisses­sar, how­ev­er, had dressed in girl­ish pink.

Though mak­ing her pres­ence felt in Cari­com's wal­lets, no­body mut­tered any­thing (much) about iron ladies or the name of for­mer UK PM Mar­garet Thatch­er. But Per­sad-Biss­esar's po­si­tion was clear­ly not well re­ceived by all. St Kitts Prime Min­is­ter Den­zil Dou­glas point­ed­ly re­fused to com­ment at a me­dia brief­ing on Per­sad-Bisses­sar's stance that T&T's fi­nan­cial con­straints could not ac­com­mo­date ex­pan­sive re­gion­al as­sis­tance. But Dou­glas stren­u­ous­ly lob­bied for con­tin­u­a­tion of a re­gion­al lab fa­cil­i­ty that had been promised by the for­mer Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion. Grena­da and oth­er states al­so called for T&T to go for­ward with the radar/pa­trol boat sys­tem pro­posed by the PNM. It must have been to her sat­is­fac­tion that sum­mit's end brought agree­ment for some states to cough up ar­rears on cer­tain pro­grammes and for the floun­der­ing re­gion­al move­ment to try for re­group un­der di­rec­tion of a per­ma­nent coun­cil of lead­ers (Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­clud­ed.)

If Per­sad-Bisses­sar's mu­si­cal ren­di­tions at the end of Wednes­day's post-sum­mit re­cep­tion were any­thing to go by, re­gion­al heads shouldn't re­al­ly "Wor­ry about a thing," but prob­a­bly get down to work­ing out the var­i­ous is­sues. She might not nec­es­sar­i­ly have been in­flu­enced by Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Ban Ki-Moon who quot­ed Bob Mar­ley's "Get Up, Stand Up..." at the open­ing func­tion last Sun­day. (Much to the au­di­ence's glee, the UN sec­re­tary gen­er­al had in­toned stiffly, but game­ly: "I will get up. I will stand up . And I won't give up the fight.") On Wednes­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar's at­tempt at Mar­ley's "Three Lit­tle Birds," was much smoother than his, af­ter she in­ter­cept­ed the band's mi­cro­phone and launched in­to song, en­cour­ag­ing fel­low heads to join her on­stage, singing.

How­ev­er, her sum­mit theme for na­tions and Cari­com–to han­dle their own re­spec­tive sto­ries–may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be stuck in their heads af­ter Wednes­day. PNM MP Colm Im­bert de­fend­ing the PNM's back­ing of Cari­com pro­grammes and funds, said: "It's easy to look at from a dol­lars and cents point of view and say the mon­ey will be bet­ter spent in T&T. But one has to re­mem­ber that T&T sup­plies 75 to 80 per cent of man­u­fac­tur­ers' goods with­in the Cari­com re­gion and this is one of the largest mar­kets for T&T goods. "The sit­u­a­tion cre­ates a lot of jobs for lo­cals so if Cari­com states do not have the abil­i­ty to pay, it will af­fect T&T man­u­fac­tur­ers' busi­ness es­pe­cial­ly," Im­bert said. "There­fore you have to help re­gion­al states be­cause if you don't they won't have pur­chas­ing pow­er and this in turn will af­fect T&T's econ­o­my.

"It's there­fore short­sight­ed to look at it as sim­ply say­ing we don't have mon­ey and could cre­ate a down­turn in the T&T econ­o­my." Im­bert al­so de­fend­ed the off­shore pa­trol boats whose de­liv­ery date Per­sad-Bisses­sar had com­plained about. "They are fin­ished tri­als and one should be on the way from the UK this month, an­oth­er by year end and the third ear­ly next year," he said. "The last Gov­er­ment al­so had an arrange­ment for liq­ui­dat­ed dam­ages from the UK re­gard­ing de­lays."

How far T&T and the re­gion would have reached with the re­spec­tive de­ci­sions of the sum­mit re­mains to be seen by Sep­tem­ber when heads meet to mon­i­tor progress. If Per­sad-Bisses­sar's de­but sum­mit per­for­mance is an in­di­ca­tor, how­ev­er, Cari­com–rather than the la­dy PM of T&T–should start look­ing to im­prov­ing its house­keep­ing.