Feb 10
A shorter version of this was delivered at the Caricom Regional Civil Society Consultation, Port-Of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, on 10 February 2011.
I want to suggest that we treat this gathering as political meeting–a meeting for political consensus-building, strategising, and networking among civil society organisations; on how best to impact regional and national political decision-making.In particular, may I suggest that our aim should be no less than to restore a sense of direction, and of vitality, to the regional integration moment…
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Norman,
you may not remember me as I retired from DFID and CDB in 2002, after 25 years of challenging but enjoyable service in the Caribbean. I have retained a lively interest in the region and have been helped in this by you blog which I read avidly on a daily basis. I have found recent articles by Ramphal, yourself and other on Caricom very stimulating. Sadly though there is an element of deja vu: Much of what is said now differs little from waht was being said 25 years ago. The rhetoric and the rerality are still far apart.
John Harrison
If I can help at all let me know. Keep the faith.
John Harrison
Thanks, John, for this comment!
Norman
Hi Prof.,
Your call for a Caribbean popular assembly is, in my opinion, the key to saving the regional dream and identity (which is without doubt more lacking in my Jamaica than anywhere else). Popular assemblies are also the key to addressing the problem of governance in the individual member-states. There, I suggest, is where we need to begin rather than wait on the regional political directorate to institute this reform to serve as a restraint on their power. May the Egyptian revolution serve as a timely reminder that people power must be instituted from the bottom up. You seem to be appealing to the CARICOM Regional Civil Society leaders to lobby for the establishment of this assembly, rather than to take responsibility themselves for its establishment, beginning with that of local and national assemblies. This would still constitute top-down governance.
Respect!
Ruel
I join with Ruel on the call for “Popular Assemblies,” in other words people Assemblies, that is the way forward out of this present endemic quagmire, especially in my Jamaica.
Oswald