Paradigm Shifts & Structural Changes - in Pursuit of Progress in the Caribbean Community

Order this book online at www.trafford.com

or email orders@trafford.com

Most Trafford titles are also available at major online book retailers.

First published as Survival and Sovereignty in the Caribbean Community in 2006 by Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston, Jamaica

© Copyright 2013 The Integrationist.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the editors.

All correspondence should be addressed to the: Editor,

The Integrationist, 10 North Road, Bourda, Georgetown, Guyana.

Email: theintegrationist@yahoo.com

Telephone: (592) 231-8417

Websites:    www.theintegrationistcaribbean.org

www.theintegrationist.org

ISBN: 978-1-4669-4180-9 (e)

Trafford rev. 02/22/2013

7-Copyright-Trafford_Logo.ai    www.trafford.com

North America & international

toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada)

phone: 250 383 6864 ♦ fax: 812 355 4082

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1

Abortion In Jamaican And International Law

Professor Stephen Vascianne1

Chapter 2

Why Caricom?

Lloyd Sewar

Chapter 3

The Caricom Development Fund: Economic Sense Or Political Expediency?

Professor Havelock Brewster

Chapter 4

The Changing Environment Of Oecs International Economic Relations And Some External Policy Implications

Professor Vaughan A. Lewis

Chapter 5

National Planning By Small, Non Strategic Developing States In The Face Of Declining Overseas Development Assistance

Professor Compton Bourne

Chapter 6

Caricom: Non-Intervention And Intervention1

Professor Cedric Grant

Chapter 7

Jamaica In The International Arena: Leader Or Follower? Historical Perspectives On Jamaica’s Contribution To The International Community

The Most Hon. Prof. Kenneth Hall

Chapter 8

Transnational Threats: Drug Trafficking And Its Impact On International Security: The Caribbean Perspective

Colonel Linton Graham

Chapter 9

Caricom Current Status And Future Prospects

The Most Hon. Professor Kenneth O. Hall

Chapter 10

Modelling The Economy

The Hon. Lloyd Best and Dr. Eric St Cyr

Contributors

PREFACE

There are four concepts that readers of this publication should bear in mind as they peruse its papers.

One is that the world looks different depending on the vantage point one chooses; but variation of vantage point does not necessarily vary reality. Geographers, and others whose work forces them to deal with the requirements of ‘mapping’, are familiar with this concept. Thus, maps of the world based on Mercator’s projections look different from those based on Sanson’s (sinusoidal) projections, with the latter showing the world as if the viewer were at the centre and all else were seen from that vantage point. In these papers, some of the leading thinkers of CARICOM have looked at the world from the vantage point of individual CARICOM countries or from that of CARICOM taken as a whole, and have recorded their visions—concerns, expectations, aspirations, and sometimes prescriptions.

Another relevant concept is that wherever one finds groups of entities relating to each other, there is the persistent, never finally resolved, question of whether an individual entity should, in pursuit of its own interests and well-being, cooperate with the others, or from time to time, defect. This question is of course also linked to notions of sovereignty within the context of allegedly cooperating relatively newly independent nations. Thus, there are papers that recognise the non-benign character of competition among nations in the world, and recommend forms of Caribbean integrationist action to counter the competitive initiatives of other groupings; and there are papers dealing with the strategies of individual CARICOM countries as they deal with the neighbouring members of their own grouping. Cooperation and defection both within and without are considered.

A third concept is that agents in a complex adaptive system, and this is what individual CARICOM countries within CARICOM are, cause evolution in the system and often drive it to the edge of chaos by their adaptations to the perceived challenges posed by external circumstances. Thus they ensure survival through paradigm shifts and structural changes. Many of these presentations reflect the thinking behind this writhing adaptation in pursuit of survival and hopefully, progress. Of specific interest is the threat to sovereignty, and to national and international security, related to the trauma of burgeoning narco trafficking in the region.

The fourth concept is perhaps the most difficult to describe, since it involves at least two conundrums. These are that the act of observation often changes the realities of that which is being observed; and that in understanding thoughts often only the starting point and the conclusion are really necessary, without the obfuscation of the intermediate meanderings. Perhaps readers of these papers, especially those who are not academics, will benefit from recognizing this possibility which formed the basis of the PhD thesis by Dr. Graham Rawlinson entitled—The Significance of Letter Position in Word Recognition¹, an adaptation which reads as follows:

It deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.

Note

¹.   Rawlinson, G. E. The Significance of Letter Position in Word Recognition. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Psychology Department, University of Nottingham, Nottingham UK, (1976).

INTRODUCTION

Each of the ten papers that together comprise the main portion of this publication is associated with an introductory kind of abstract specific to it. Those abstracts are given below in the order in which the papers are presented in the publication. Taken together, the papers represent views on CARICOM covering a wide spectrum of issues—from conception, through current trials and tribulations, into bold peeks into the future. This statement is true in more senses than one.

For instance, in the dimension of conception, not only is attention focused on deliberate interruption of the process of generating human resources—‘abortion’ (cf. the paper by Professor Stephen Vasciannie—Abortion in Jamaican and International Law), but attention is also focused on the origins of and queries about the continuing appropriateness of the original dreams that have led to the CARICOM we now have (cf. the paper by Lloyd Searwar Why CARICOM?). The allegedly ‘self-evident’ turns out to be worthy of rethinking, sometimes with wider stakeholder involvement than originally had been thought necessary, as a result of changes in world circumstances and reviews of the meaning of democracy.

Current trials and tribulations encompass not only the difficulties of implementing the CSME with adequate protection for allegedly weaker member states of the Region, but also the more fundamental problem of securing individual and joint survival and progress in a world of non-benign, ruthless, market-led competition. The papers by Professor Havelock Brewster (The CARICOM Regional Development Fund: Economic Sense or Political Expediency?), and by Professor Vaughan Lewis (The Changing Environment of OECS International Relations and Some External Policy Implications) are examples of these types of concerns. In a not dissimilar sense of currency and as problems in need of response, but each with a different focus, are the papers by Professor Compton Bourne (National Planning by Small, Non Strategic Developing States in the Face of Declining Overseas Development Assistance), by Professor Cedric Grant (CARICOM Non-Intervention and Intervention), by the Most Hon. Professor Kenneth Hall (Jamaica in the International Arena: Leader or Follower, Historical Perspectives on Jamaica’s Contribution to the International Community), and by Colonel Linton Graham (retd.)(Transnational Threats: Drug Trafficking and its Impact on International Security: The Caribbean Perspective).

The bold peek into the future is perhaps best exemplified by the contributions of the Most Hon. Professor Kenneth Hall (CARICOM Current Status and Future Prospects), and by the redoubtable pair of the Hon. Lloyd Best and Dr. Eric St Cyr (Modelling the Economy—focused on Trinidad and Tobago). The second contribution is particularly interesting because it dares to try to impose paradigm shifts on both the methodology to be used, and on the desirable destination to be sought, if future generations are not to decry the current generation for its myopia.

Though the papers can reasonably be categorised as stated above, each paper has elements of all three categories of concern; and the balance of emphasis really will finally reside in the mind of the reader, depending on that mind’s most recent state of stimulation and trauma. We have been fortunate to receive papers by Professor Cedric Grant and Mr Lloyd Searwar, from whom we shall receive no more, since they have passed away. We offer our sincere condolences to their families.

Abortion in Jamaica and International Law

The role of human resources in the development processes of any nation is accepted as obviously pivotal, even where that role and its effects are not completely understood. A corollary is that any action that might impinge on the generation of human resources, in terms of quantity or quality, is deemed worthy of serious analysis. Thus, the Malthusian cloud of demise through over-population, has floated over the development landscape, and has been accompanied by concepts of population control. Several methodologies have been designed to frustrate fecundity in the face of the implacable drive of our selfish genes for immortality through replication. In this milieu, abortion has a prominent place of dubious honour; and the laws and practices of states often reflect uncertainties and internal inconsistencies across the spectrum of honourable and dishonourable men and women. The case of Jamaica, a prominent member of CARICOM that often assumes a leadership role, is the subject of this paper that examines abortion in the context of Jamaican and International Law.

As a starting point, the social and political environment in Jamaica is briefly examined. Some of the internal contradictions of moral and medical origins, and consequently of precept and practice, are highlighted. Inevitably they impact on Jamaican Law—on the Constitution; on Legislation; and on the common law, in the form of decisions by judges. The observation is made that the Constitution does not specifically and directly state anything about abortion. That observation is however, tempered by noting that through Section 14 which pertains to the right to life for a person, the question does arise about whether a foetus is legally a person; a matter that has not been tested in the context of Jamaican law.

Within the ordinary Legislation, the focus is placed on sections 72 and 73 of the Offences against the Person Act. Therein, contextual difficulties of interpretation abound. The two main ones refer to whether there is a distinction to be drawn between lawful and unlawful abortions; and whether the prescribed penalty of life imprisonment for those who indulge in or aid and abet the act of abortion, is mandatory or maximum. In these matters, the legal significance of the 1939 case of R v. Bourne is examined. The case involved the distinguished surgeon Dr. Alex Bourne who had performed an abortion on a girl under 15 years old, who had become pregnant after being raped. The caution is given that much reliance should not be placed on the arguments underpinning Macnaghten J.’s judgement, about which Lord Diplock, approximately 40 years later in 1981, had written: "No disrespect is intended to that eminent judge . . . if I say that his reputation is founded more on his sturdy commonsense than on his lucidity of legal exposition." The caveat is also given that the policy guidelines set out by the Ministry of Health in Jamaica, in relation to medical doctors performing abortions, may be of little effect in the interpretation of the law by the Director of Public Prosecutions. One conclusion is that Jamaican law does not provide unequivocal answers to some important questions about abortion.

In the light of this conclusion, possible guidance is sought from International Law—International Treaties [such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 6(1)), and the American Convention on Human Rights]; and specified practices by States informing customary international law. Neither the Treaties nor Customary Law provides unambiguous answers. As is demonstrated by statistics quoted from the Centre for Reproductive Rights, there is wide variation in the practices of states. In the final analysis, the paper concludes that the deeply controversial questions posed by abortion need to be addressed, not simply by lawyers, but by policy-makers sensitised to ‘the core values of society with respect to life, individuality, and privacy.’ This advice may well mean that in abortion we are facing a ponderous issue not resolvable by CARICOM as a regional group.

Why CARICOM?

The paper entitled ‘Why CARICOM?’ by Lloyd Searwar is perhaps best appreciated and understood if readers take account of the following self-explanatory note by David de Caires, Editor-in-Chief, which appeared in the Stabroek News, April 2006:

A few weeks before his death I had spoken to Lloyd Searwar about the possibility of him addressing the question of whether CARICOM was beneficial to its member states in his weekly editorials. He agreed to do so. I spoke to his widow last week Thursday, the day after his funeral, and she mentioned that Lloyd had left some written work. I immediately sent for it and discovered two editorials captioned ‘Why CARICOM?’ parts 1 and 2. It was strange, and moving, to see once again the spidery hand on the lined, yellow foolscap pages, that had been such a regular feature every Monday morning for the last five years. She said that she did not believe he had finally polished the work, as was his custom, but having read the two editorials I found that they maintained his usual high standard.

We therefore publish posthumously the first of two editorials by the late Lloyd Searwar on the subject of CARICOM. Quoting the late William Demas, he came to the conclusion that though there had been many problems, the alternative for the small member states was marginalisation or absorption by a more powerful regional state.

The paper presented in this journal marries the two planned editorials, with the second part (the intended second editorial that would have been published ‘next week’) simply following on from the first. A consequence of its origins is that it has the engaging attractiveness of an offering intended for the wider intelligent public, as opposed to one for the relatively rarified narrow environment of academia; but this has been achieved without any concessions to depth, width, or accuracy.

The question posed demands an answer; and indeed, as Searwar points out, it will continue to so do for as long as CARICOM exists with no variation in the clear goal, the dream, in the preamble to the Treaty of Chaguaramas—Sharing a common determination to fulfil the hopes and aspirations of their peoples for full employment and improved standards of work and living.

Nevertheless, while CARICOM’s basic objectives and aspirations may remain invariant, the domestic environment of individual members, and the international environment in which these objectives are pursued, are continually changing. Accordingly there is a persistent interplay between matters of sovereignty and matters of foreign policy, within the group and between the group and the powers that be in the wider world. Further, the strategic importance of CARICOM has not proven to be an invariant ‘given’, as both technological and political changes affect the world scene. These changes focus attention on new theatres of war and non-war competition.

Searwar captures the main specifics of these developments, lays them out simply, and starkly, but with the empathy of a native observer. It is from this standpoint that he considers the device, not usually considered by proponents of Caribbean Integration, of the possible use of referenda to put ‘demos’ into the practice of democracy in CARICOM, determining what the peoples of CARICOM think, and even confronting the possibility that they might conjointly opt for absorption into a more powerful country or group of countries in pursuit of their dream.

The CARICOM Regional Development Fund: Economic Sense or Political Expediency

Professor Havelock Brewster, Executive Director of the Inter-American Development Bank, and Honorary Professor of Economics, Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, University of the West Indies, has brought his considerable knowledge and experience to bear on the issue of establishing a CARICOM Regional Development Fund (CRDF).

Beginning with the Preamble to the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, he spells out the rationale for the Fund and very early makes the point, that any notion that such a Fund might be an analogue of the Structural Funds of the European Union is severely misplaced, and gives cogent reasons for that view. These reasons, taken together with the anomalous circumstance that the Per Capita Income of several of the states perceived to be disadvantaged, rivals or exceeds those of the prospective CARICOM donor countries, are given as an adequate basis for declaring the model of Fund accepted by the CARICOM Heads of Government not to be making ‘Economic Sense’.

There is, however, the political reality that Eastern Caribbean States (ECS) have insisted that this model of Fund be implemented. Few more pointed examples of self-serving defection replacing cooperation within a group can be cited, as the paper notes that the ECS participation in the CARICOM Single Market and Economy appears conditional on the activation of the Fund.

The paper proposes an alternative model of Fund, with key advantages of sustainability over a longer period, and administrative pluses of building on already existing institutions.

The Changing Environment of OECS International Relations and Some External Policy Implications

This paper is the Opening Address that Professor Vaughan Lewis gave on 24 August 2005, to a High Level Retreat of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States on the Preparation of an OECS Trade Policy Framework. To facilitate the presentation, Professor Lewis concluded with a ten-point summary of the main points made during his Address. Readers of the paper may well find it useful to begin by reading that summary at the end of the paper, and then filling in its analytical underpinnings by reading the presentation from the beginning as they normally would.

Professor Lewis began by reminding his audience of the nearly forty-year old observations that Dr Eric Williams had made, caveats he had offered about the unlikelihood that Commonwealth preferences such as those for citrus and sugar, would survive British entry into the European Common Market. Dr Williams had pointed to the fact that the whole mood of the world was changing against preferences; and he strongly advised that the time taken for Britain to gain entry into the European Economic Community should be used to reduce our dependence on Britain either by lowering our costs of production or by judicious forms of economic diversification.

Basically, the territories that were to become member territories of CARICOM did not utilize these emerging fortuitous circumstances as suggested. They spent time, energy, and resources, in a King Canute type attempt to hold back the waves of change that yielded globalization, liberalization, free market realities, and the overwhelming supremacy of the WTO over preferential arrangements. The new rules apply not only to the field of agriculture but also to areas such as financial services; and the larger, industrialized countries are no longer accepting special and differential treatment as an acceptable arrangement.

The disabilities of small size are repeatedly highlighted—small is vulnerable; and the OECS is urged to take the lead in arguing for the mechanism of structural or cohesion funds to be applied to enable engagement in production and trade on a competitive basis. A strong recommendation is that, through appropriate regional diplomatic action and CDB assisted research, the opportunity be seized of the Economic Partnership Agreement negotiations with the European Union, to try to link the issues of trade policy and development policy, to provide a rationale, and resources for, the structural adjustment of our countries that is needed at this time. In all these circumstances, we must be prepared to revisit the type of regional integration we deem necessary, evolving from the 1973 Treaty of Chaguaramas framework through appropriate widening and deepening, to respond to the emerging international economic liberalization and its new rules.

National Planning by Small, Non-Strategic Developing States in the Face of Declining Overseas Development Assistance

To A Mouse

      The best laid schemes o’ mice and men

      Gang aft a-gley

      An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain

      For promis’d joy

Robert Burns

This folk wisdom captured by the rebel Scottish eighteenth century poet, Robert Burns, who saw his father die, worn out from hard farm work and bankrupt, is an accurate three centuries old precursor of the paper penned by Professor Compton Bourne. Though Professor Bourne does not aspire to poetic heights in his presentation, he does present with admirable lucidity, the facets of the problem of small, non-strategic developing states planning for progress in a milieu of declining overseas development assistance—a rat race run by mice.

The paper charts a course of exposition of the issues by beginning with a perspective on planning. It notes that there are choices made about the nature of planning in which a country indulges. The choices range from the comprehensive rigidities of truly central planning to the more flexible attempts at indicative planning where a wish list of characteristics of the desired Promised Land is highlighted. In the case of the Caribbean, the government has often donned the mantle of planner as part of its assumed responsibility to marry economic prosperity to newly won nationhood. The paper notes that, a la Burns, these well-meaning attempts often ‘gang aft a-gley’.

The weaknesses inherent in being a small, non-strategic state are next highlighted in an empathetic but realistic exposition. That exposition focuses on both the economic dimensions of what is, and what might be; and the political dimensions of what might be achieved in the international environment in which domestic survival and progress are being defined and pursued.

The concepts concerning the contribution that Foreign Aid, also called Overseas Development Assistance (ODA), might make to the pursuit of domestic economic survival and progress, are then briefly examined. That examination briefly surveys the published technical theoretical literature on the matter, and recounts the actual flows that have taken place globally in recent times. Against this general background, the recent ODA trends in the Commonwealth Caribbean are then highlighted, with specific attention being drawn to the fact that net inflows are declining and have been unreliably volatile.

The national planning options available, based on the nature of planning, on the weaknesses inherent in being a small, non-strategic state, and on the trends in ODA flows, represent a Byzantine mosaic in which it is well nigh impossible to specify blueprints for success. However, there are guidelines presented. These include: fostering international relations in accordance with one’s own strategic interests; identifying opportunities for mutually beneficial alliances; doing one’s best to raise domestic savings rates and improve the efficiency of savings; avoiding the pitfalls of incurring commercial debt; and managing aid more efficiently. This cocktail of prescriptions is nevertheless not guaranteed to protect from the Burns jeopardy of the best laid plans of small, non-strategic developing states ‘gang aft a-gley’, an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain For promis’d joy.’

CARICOM Non-Intervention and Intervention

Professor Cedric Grant poses and offers answers to two related questions -How had the world evolved in the matter of Interference and Interventionin the Internal Affairs of States?; and How had the affairs of CARICOM, as a group and as individual states, been treated with as that evolution had taken place? The answers comprise the paper entitled CARICOM: Non-Intervention and Intervention.

As its starting point, the paper quotes Article 2.7 of the UN Charter that includes the statement "Nothing contained in the present Charter should authorise