If the CARICOM summiteers emerge from today's final session of their conference in Guyana with the regional integration movement still not only relatively in decent shape, but with a less-than-blurred vision of the way forward, it will be due in no small measure to the actions and interventions of two Jamaicans: the current prime minister, Bruce Golding, and one of his predecessors, P.J. Patterson.

Mr Patterson, of course, is an old and instinctive regionalist, long clear on the logical merits of Caribbean conglomeration and the benefits to be derived therefrom, if the process is allowed to work.

Mr Golding, on the other hand, is a new convert to regionalism, dragged along by the enforced pragmatism of leadership - especially at a time of enormous global challenges that have placed great strain on Jamaica, with little room within which it can manoeuvre. Indeed, even as Prime Minister Golding recently allowed his commerce minister, Karl Samuda, to fulfil his role of angry watchdog in protection of Jamaica's rights in intra-regional trade, the prime minister himself was controlled and measured. No CARICOM country, he warned the Jamaica Exporters' Association, could easily survive the choppiness in the seas in which they now find themselves.

Mr Golding, it seems, has gone further, apparently placing on the table in Georgetown a mechanism for breaking the logjam in CARICOM which, in the past, in the days before his leadership, would be anathema to his Jamaica Labour Party. A step towards Federation through the back door, they would have called it.

PM proposed

According to the information seeping from the leaders' caucus, the PM proposed a 15-member, permanent, high-level body, which would work in consultation with CARICOM's leaders and the community's secretariat to push through decisions. Mr Golding's Permanent Commission of CARICOM Representatives (PCCR) sounds suspiciously similar to what was contemplated by the Ramphal Commission more than a decade-and-half ago for the management of CARICOM - an executive body roughly analogous to the Europe Commission.

Admittedly, in this case, the PCCR would not have direct executive authority, at least not immediately. What is important from Jamaica's perspective, though, is a drift across political lines not only of the logic of CARICOM but to the growing acceptance of the need for a supranational body to give effect to its decisions - a ceding of some sovereignty to the centre.

Mr Patterson fully grasped this need, as he made clear when he accepted the Order of CARICOM, the community's highest honour, last week.

He said: "Mature regionalism will remain a pipe dream unless authority is vested in an executive mechanism with full-time responsibility to ensure the implementation, within a specified time frame, critical decisions taken by the heads or other designated organs of the community."

We do not expect that Mr Golding's proposal will be fully embraced by the leaders today, although that would be our preferred option, along with a clear process for the PCCR to transition to a full executive body. But even if the leaders hedge Mr Golding inside the forum, Mr Patterson's public intervention would have added great weight to the momentum for urgent action to move the integration process forward.

In that regard, even the single Special Facilitator, with Cabinet rank across CARICOM, to work with leaders on the implementation of undertakings, would be a step in the right direction.

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