President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) Hyginus “Gene” Leon is proposing a new strategy to advance regional integration. Leon said the strategy of relying on politicians to implement changes at the national level has not been working and must now be revised.

“You have to first start from an acceptance that individually you just cannot survive, in the same way that you would survive if you were operating as a group. I think that first statement has been accepted by most but I think what is missing is the translation of that acceptance into a policy space that is national and at the same time it is regional. So, you have that disconnect between the people that make the decisions at the regional level and when those decisions get to be implemented within national spaces they just don’t add up.”

To achieve a more desirable outcome, Leon is proposing a reversal of that strategy.

“I think that the way you start that process is to reverse the flow, not rely on the elected political officials to drive integration but to have the masses drive integration through that same acceptance of the fact that we are all better off together. If the masses are aligned at the regional level, chances are you have a much higher probability that you will have that alignment of national and regional.”

But he admits that regional integration is not something that can be achieved by chance. He said there must be deliberate efforts to transform the current situation.

https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business-report/reshaping-regional-integration_240208?profile=1056