Beware: democrats at work

Our esteemed prime minister, here in Trinidad and Tobago, has his own ideas about the integration of the Caribbean islands. Every so often he will suddenly say Let's get together with Grenada, or Let's get together with Guyana, or both. Then the idea sinks again without trace. People have become used to this as a sort of prime ministerial whimsy.

But lo and behold, last week the newly elected prime minister of Grenada arrived here on an official visit; and as time went on we learned that the prime ministers of St Vincent and St Lucia had also come, and the foreign ministers of Guyana and Barbados, and that a memorandum of understanding had been signed. Trinidad and Tobago would seek economic integration by 2011, and political integration by 2013, with any or all of the nine members of the Organisation of East Caribbean States (which means pretty much the whole island chain from Grenada to St Kitts).

Economic and political integration of the English-speaking Caribbean islands has been a dream since the 1950s. Except when it comes to votes in international organisations, it makes no sense at all for every little island to be a sovereign state, from the two and a half million people in Jamaica right down to populations the size of a small town. Each has to bear the costs of statehood, reinvent the wheel, sustain a whole government and bureaucracy and infrastructure, fence itself in with its own currency and immigration and customs controls and tariffs and duties and overseas missions and all the rest of it.

But the islands have never managed to make significant progress towards any sort of real partnership. The Caribbean Community (Caricom), pursuing this chimera since the early 1970s, is talking of postponing economic integration from the already much-postponed date of 2015, with political integration to follow sometime (perhaps) before doomsday. Everyone pays lip service to the idea, but no one believes it will work, or that any Caribbean leader past or present would make any real sacrifices in the cause of unity when the time came. Caricom and integration are now associated with hot air and political talkfests. Here in T&T, the latest vision aroused virtually no public interest.

Personally, I feel astounded by it, and I wonder just how serious these good gentlemen can be. Nobody even knew this was under discussion. The populations involved have not been informed or consulted. Not a word has been said in any of the parliaments. No one knows what the prime ministers have in mind: a single nation? A federation? A US-type union? A European Union in the Caribbean?

It's as if the prime ministers simply snatched a passing fancy out of the air and announced it as a new policy after a good dinner. It's exactly the sort of process which will ensure that the scheme doesn't work: policy announced from the top to a cynical population without even being properly thought out. The Trinidad and Tobago prime minister seems to be playing the same game with constitutional reform: tell people what's going to happen and expect them to be grateful.

Integration of several of the East Caribbean island states could be an excellent thing. But the very first people to be told about it and asked for their reactions should be the parliaments and populations of the states involved. The islands are not toys for their leaders to join or sunder as they see fit.

And it should be very clear what sort of integration is meant, what people are being asked to consider. Just hatching a vague idea and telling everyone that a memorandum has already been signed is not the way genuinely democratic leaders would go about it. Nor would they dismiss the very idea of consulting the main opposition party, on the dubious grounds that such a change would need only a simple majority in parliament (which the ruling party of course has).

One letter-writer in today's papers, attempting to interpret what the whole thing meant, speculated that it was a win-win deal for the prime ministers. The smaller islands would benefit from Trinidad and Tobago's relative wealth and job market, while the Trinidad ruling party would benefit from a whole new pile of votes.