By Kimberly Ramkhalawan
June 27, 2023
With just under one week to go before the Caribbean Region converges in Trinidad for CARICOM’s 50th celebration, Antigua and Barbuda held its flag raising ceremony to mark the occasion as a nation part of the regional body.
But its Prime Minister Gaston Browne remains hopeful of a return to the ideals of the founding fathers of the West Indian Federation of a political union among Caribbean states.
His statement, Browne says “despite our small sizes, we wish to create a Union of States and territories that would be like a bundle of sticks. That was the objective of our forbearers. Together, we intended to be stronger and far more resilient than you could be if you travel alone. As we celebrate 50 years since the signing of the Treaty of Chaguaramas, our countries collaborations have proven the early generation to be right, the CARICOM is made of the nation’s state’s stronger force, especially in multilateral institutions, and each could have hoped for”.
He remarked that the theme ‘50 years strong, a solid foundation to build on’, “captures the history of a binding agreement spawned by fire thinking West Indian thinkers and scholars of that period”. And with CARICOM being one of the oldest surviving English movement in the developing world, it was something all its people should be ‘justifiably proud’.
Commending the regional body for its 50 year existence, he called it a ‘living integration’, a ‘tremendous accomplishment and testimony about people’s determination’.
Prime Minister Browne, shared that through integration, its ultimately seeking to improve the living standards of all its people, and to achieve a resilience and sustainability. Nevertheless, he shared that despite its various challenges, the exogenous shocks that the region would have sustained during the decades, it has survived, all while pursuing its working together to increase the region’s resilience to “bounce back quicker or for that matter to bounce forward”.
He was sure to pinpoint the naysayers that have often questioned the relevance of CARICOM, stating that through the movement, it has been able to create many areas of functional cooperation, especially in “education, health and responses to natural disasters”, citing the many CARICOM agencies that have helped many nations, that had they stood alone they would have sunken, including CARPHA which was instrumental in the fight against the recent pandemic, as well as Pan Caribbean partnership against HIV/AIDS, PANCAP, CXCs, CDB and the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center (5Cs), all of which have shown “CARICOM to be the shining light on the hill”.
And while he noted, the CARICOM focused energy on the establishment of the Caribbean Single Market Economy, CSME, PM Browne added that it was a work in progress and which it “will continue unrelentingly, until it is achieved”. He lamented that while it was necessary to create a note to modernize the common external tariff, CET, he says “LDC’s have not benefited proportionally compared to the MDC’s, we know example that some MDCs continue to compete with LDCs resulting in some displacements”
With that in mind, he expressed optimism that a Single Economy will be a reality at some point, “because achieving this single economy is less daunting than a political Union”. Noting that it too remained a work in progress, there was incremental progress, and shared hopes to see “within the upcoming maybe 24-36 months, some additional achievements would be seen”. Browne added that high hopes for seeing a “greater conversion of currencies using the establishment of a regional stock market”.
However, he called for CARICOM to intervene in the LIAT issue, calling it a regional institution that should be respected, it required “regional commitment to restoring it in the interest of CARICOM people to ensure that there is greater connectivity”. He questioned how can you have “a successful integration movement if the people cannot move”. PM Browne, called for his regional compatriots to “go past the insularity and the national priorities in which imagine their regional competing forces that would like to see the demise of LIAT and to recognize importance of such an institution to complement the efforts of CAL, and that ultimately some form of publicly funded transportation will be critical to achieving sustainable transportation within the region”. He added that it was a “flawed notion that we must rely exclusively on private sector assets as it was not a sustainable solution”. Prime Minister Browne underscored that it was the belief of Antigua and Barbuda “that ultimately a reorganized recapitalized LIAT, leaving behind all of the legacy issues behind one that will operate professionally one that will operate on a profit basis that will be the answer to our regional transportation woes”.
Meanwhile, as to Antigua and Barbuda joining other CARICOM member states in declaring July 4th a public holiday, PM Browne says it’s highly unlikely despite a note taken to Parliament on Wednesday this week. He says in the past the country did observe the day, but had removed it from its calendar given the number of public holidays it already celebrated. With the concerns of it hampering productivity and business, PM Browne says they will see.