Bring free movement home

WE welcome the news that Caricom leaders have stuck to the time line set out last year in relation to their historic promise to introduce freedom of movement throughout the region.

When officials last July announced a plan to promulgate this right by March 30, 2024, that deadline, while not implausible, seemed ambitious. It can take years, even decades, for a single piece of legislation to be passed in a domestic parliament.

Factor in the need to amend the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, as well as to coordinate ratification by individual member states in domestic legislatures, and the challenge was clear.

Heads of government meeting in Georgetown, Guyana, this week for their 46th conference could have used such complexities as a convenient off ramp to, if not abandon, delay the fulfilment of their promise. They did not.

“This month of March, all attorneys general are required to put their country in a position for the parliament to act,” the Prime Minister disclosed on Wednesday as he returned from Georgetown. Not only does the time line set out last year hold, but there appears to be a zeal to get this done.

If Caricom keeps its promise, it will set itself apart as a global leader. Countries around the world are closing their doors, not opening them.

The centrepiece issue of US politics right now appears to be the need to clamp down on its border. The UK, with Brexit, has turned its back on the aspirations of the Maastricht Treaty, with not only rights to free movement but also domicile heartbreakingly taken away from families and foreigners alike.

Because we stand to gain economically, culturally and socially from free movement, ratification should be done in Parliament unanimously.

That is easier said than done. The use of Caricom integration as a political bogeyman, with the usual spurious claims of opening the door to voter padding or criminality, should be rejected outright by MPs.

Not only do we have enough measures in place to test and police residency and eligibility at elections, but free movement does not mean the removal of security regulation. On the contrary.

Because the Opposition is entitled to vote based on provisions before it and based on the will of constituents, it should, ideally but not necessarily, be included as early as possible in the legal process, which, beyond a certain point, will be set in stone at the treaty level.

Caricom has been on a roll recently. It has stuck to its word after last year’s promises. It has helped diffuse tensions between Venezuela and Guyana.

If it brings this measure home, it will spell out, whether before or after the Ides of March, the bloc’s destiny.