African Unification Front
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2001
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UNIFICATION OF THE AFRICAN COMMUNITIES IN THE CARIBBEAN
The Eastern Caribbean's newest prime minister is trying to put sub-regional unity back on the agenda as members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) face their toughest financial and political challenges in two decades.
Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, said the St Lucia-based organisation is the only platform that can ensure the continued viability of its nine tiny member states: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, the British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.
On their own, he argued, the countries lack "the institutional capacity to do certain things" and therefore should cede some of their sovereignty to an "OECS authority" that would take on certain tasks on behalf of all members in what he terms a "confederal" arrangement.
The sub-region, he added, needs to "fashion a system where a lot of sovereign state functions could better be (performed) by an OECS authority."
Gonsalves's push comes on the heels of a call from Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Lester Bird, to dismantle the OECS Secretariat and transfer some of its functions to the St Kitts-based Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB), which issues the East Caribbean dollar.
The OECS itself acknowledged, in an internal memo last year, that "member states are either unable or unwilling to sustain the organisation at current budgetary levels" and "it is necessary to effect cut backs in the size and budget of the organisation."
Despite considerable budgetary trimming, many OECS members' dues payments remain in arrears. National budgets are tight, Gonsalves said, yet the sub-region's countries "want to do every single thing that a sovereign state is supposed to do and they just don't have the money to do what sovereign states are supposed to do."
Outgoing OECS Director-General Swinburne Lestrade put it in more diplomatic terms: "We (the OECS Secretariat) are in a very good position to appreciate the fact that all of our member states are financially strapped and will from time to time experience difficulty in meeting their financial obligations to the organisation."
The OECS, which celebrated its anniversary last week, was established in the tiny federation of St Kitts and Nevis in 1981, a time of tumult in the Caribbean.
Prime Minister Maurice Bishop had risen to power in Grenada through a military coup d'etat in 1979 and would later die in a 1983 counter-coup. St Lucia's government collapsed in 1981, leaving short-lived Prime Minister Winston Cenac to sign the treaty establishing the OECS. The Milton Cato administration in St Vincent and the Grenadines was on its last legs.
Gonsalves, a radical opposition politician at the time, was a leading figure during talks in the mid-1980s to develop the idea of a politically united Windward Island grouping.
Gonsalves held discussions with St Lucia Prime Minister Kenny Anthony on the proposed use of the island's international airport as an air transport hub that would clear passengers destined to St Vincent.
He said he had already held talks with the prime ministers of Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis, and Barbados - not an OECS member state - about facilitating passport-free travel among those countries.
Gonsalves said he stands ready to match any offer by an OECS neighbour to drop passport and work permit requirements for nationals of their respective countries.
The idea has been bandied about for many years, even at the level of the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM), which, under a proposed Single Market and Economy, has committed itself to promoting the free movement of people among member states.
Lestrade noted that OECS members have been slow to take up the common market idea. The ECCB, common currency, and an imminent OECS stock exchange "constitute the key pillars of economic union. Therefore what we need to do is to put the additional measures in place to get us there," he said.
The bloc also has been slow in getting other key projects off the ground. These include common customs administration, harmonised tax administration and fiscal policy, and a common development strategy.
Nevertheless, Gonsalves said he believes a political union involving the OECS countries is the only viable way of addressing the major economic woes of the sub-region - a significant portion of which is held precariously together by the banana industry's uncertain earnings.
Vaughan Lewis, a former prime minister, served for 13 years as the OECS director-general. Kenny Anthony, the incumbent prime minister, has been general counsel to the CARICOM Secretariat. George Odlum, political leader of St Lucia's 'Alliance' of opposition groups, was executive secretary of the West Indies Associated States Council of Ministers, which preceded the OECS.
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