The People's National Party (PNP) holds its annual conference and celebrates its 71st anniversary this weekend. It has much to consider. To its credit it has been using its years in Opposition to rethink the fundamentals. It held an economic forum on July 18 and a foreign economic policy forum on September 12 to do this, both as part of its ongoing conversation towards a Progressive Agenda.

International affairs, as Delano Franklyn put it from the chair, goes a far way in setting the national agenda. We hardly need to be convinced with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about to set Jamaica's agenda. The party president understands the importance of this conversation. She reminded the audience that the forum coincided with the first anniversary of the fall of Lehman Brothers, an event many take as the official start of the world financial crisis.

Simpson Miller wants a conversation towards a People's Progressive Agenda for National Development. She wants a consensus on how we grow and develop our country and region. She feels that the way we do business will change forever. She wants a Progressive Agenda that learns lessons from the changes taking place in the international system, one that would remove systemic impediments to progress for Jamaicans, and she wants policy outcomes that would demonstrate this.

direct platform

CARICOM, its former Secretary General Roderick Rainford sensibly offered, is the most immediate and direct platform for launching any diplomatic strategy. Norman Girvan, the former secretary general of the Association of Caribbean States, believes in his convincing way, that it is much better for CARICOM to act as one unit to negotiate with other countries, including the Venezuela-led group ALBA (The Bolivarian Alliance for the People of our America) regarding the changing PetroCaribe and the new ALBA Bank, especially vital in these times.

Professor Girvan has me wondering, why remain aloof to ALBA, which he said has contributed US$8.8 billion to development aid in Latin America and the Caribbean compared to US aid of US$1.6 billion over roughly the same period?

Former president of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce, Jimmy Moss Solomon was forceful in his opinion that CARICOM could offer much through freedom of movement so that Jamaica could get the best of the skills in the region; and that one regional stock exchange would provide badly needed equity with equally needed transparency.

LACKING leadership

There is a feeling that CARICOM lacks leadership and that it is just not the same if Jamaica does not provide that leadership. The PNP feels a special responsibility for giving this leadership. But the party must find new ways and a new will to remove the systemic impediments that frustrate us all as a result of CARICOM'S well-known implementation crisis.

P.J. Patterson, this year's recipient of the Order of CARICOM has 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, of critical decisions taken by the heads or other designated organs of the community". Some formula must be found and agreement reached for what Dr Rainford calls 'collective sovereignty' and "enhanced governance arrangements".

Why shouldn't the party boldly commit to a CARICOM executive? Thousands of Jamaicans have lost their jobs in the past two years. With an average family size of 3, this means many more Jamaicans have been directly affected. So too have been the shops, taxis, and personal services around them. The PNP must step up the pace to the single Jamaican and regional market within which these people can find jobs and do business. It must remove all the systemic impediments against this. That is the Jamaican leadership that CARICOM needs.

The PNP's spokesman on foreign affairs and foreign trade, Ambassador Anthony Hylton, said progressive internationalism, which will drive the party's foreign policy next time, would make new alliances possible with rising stars in African, Latin America, and Asia. Norman Girvan pointed out that by 2020, three of the world's four largest economies will be in Asia, including the largest. That was sobering.

systemic impediments

But everyone agreed that we have not exhausted the opportunities right in our own neighbourhood. Jamaica, we were reminded, has a market of 25 million people within a fisherman's boat ride away in Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic in the western Caribbean. What are the systemic impediments against taking advantage of this market? We must remove them.

Brian Meeks pointed out that the Tainos (Arawaks) had established a western Caribbean network via canoes hundreds of years ago. Illegal guns-for-drugs traders and human traffickers thrive in this market despite systemic impediments. Jimmy Moss Solomon amused the audience with examples of how Jamaican companies fight for marginal market shares in small localities in Jamaica rather than fight to enter larger national, regional and global markets.

The PNP's progressive internationalism must find ways to put the transportation, communications and cultural infrastructure in place to make our policies 'international'. It must cultivate the new entrepreneurial spirit needed to make it 'progressive'. As Ambassador Hylton made clear, the international policies must bring benefits back to our local communities. The global must work for the local. That is internationalism that is progressive.

Why for instance, shouldn't we make the most of the ALBA market, which Norman Girvan told us is made up of 73 million people with a combined GDP of US$669 billion. This is also a solidarity market in which enormously generous social, medical and educational programmes would be available from our conscientious friend and neighbour, Cuba. Whatever the prejudices and ignorance might be, we must remove them. They too are systemic impediments.

NATIONAL PROGRESS

If the PNP is to bring national progress it must jump start a new order giving emphasis to 'new' and 'order'. Brian Meeks' point was that it is not just the neo-liberal international order that is in crisis. He had the foresight to have anticipated this in his 2007 book, Envisioning Caribbean Futures: The Jamaican Perspective. There, he also argued that the national order is in dissolution.

He is not pessimistic. Jamaica's talent, demonstrated globally over and over, only needs the free space to reinvent in politics and economy what it has done in sports and music. Jamaicans can do this if the systemic impediments in politics and economy are removed and if state policy is developmental and democratic at the same time.

impediments

This is really what the Progressive Agenda is about, at least in sentiment. The party must now put bold policy flesh on these sentiments. It must smash bureaucratic impediments, business impediments and social and cultural ones as well. The PNP must operate a state that implements what it says it will do.

There are national impediments to progress in international affairs and the state is one of the greatest impediments. We must change the way the state does business forever. For example, agreements by the Joint Jamaica-Ghana Commission of 10 years ago have not been implemented. We could use the potential benefits of mining, alumina refining, tourism, sports and culture, agreed to, now. We have the basis for a global sports industry. If progressive internationalism means getting rid of all the impediments that have been holding us back, then let's have it.

Rainford and Girvan

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona campus. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu. jm or columns@gleanerjm.com