PJ Patterson receives CARICOM’s highest order

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, July 3, 2009 – The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is being advised by one of the stalwarts of the regional integration movement to put an executive mechanism in place to drive the integration process forward.

Former Jamaica Prime Minister PJ Patterson, who last evening received the grouping’s highest order – the Order of the Caribbean Community (OCC) – at the Heads of Government Conference which began in Georgetown last evening, said a way must be found to ensure action on important decisions in the process.

“The litmus test for effective governance is not measured by the decisions taken when Heads meet; it is whether action follows. The greatest threat to the credibility of CARICOM lies squarely in the failure to implement solemn declarations and decisions made Conference after Conference,” he said.

“Surely mature regionalism will remain a pipe dream unless authority is vested in an executive mechanism which is charged with full time responsibility for ensuring the implementation within a specified timeframe of the critical decisions taken by Heads or other designated organs of the Community. For how much longer can a final decision be postponed on upgrading the institutional machinery if the Community is not to become comatose?”
 
Patterson, who was the Jamaican Prime Minister from 1992 to 2006, insisted that regional economic integration is an imperative: “There simply is no other way out, especially in these rough and perilous times,” he said.