LET me declare my interest: I’ve long supported Caricom and West Indies cricket. But anyone can see the writing on the wall unless they’re wilfully blind.

First, Caricom.

Caricom has exhausted itself. Caribbean regionalism is not so much in retreat as it is irrelevant. Caricom leaders have absolutely no interest in regional integration other than what petty benefits each can gouge out of it. Most of them, except for the cheapskates and freeloaders, are slowly realising that they get out less than they put in. Caricom is no longer a win-win situation,but a zero-sum game.

In a globalised world economy, we’re all better off fending for ourselves. Caricom has become a drag on the progress of its member states. Part of the problem is that Caricom functions at the level of the lowest common denominator. Examples are legion. When it comes to defending the offshore sector or free trade in the Caribbean, we all rally around the worst regulated jurisdiction in the region. Ditto for human rights.

Everybody knows the Secretariat should not be in Georgetown, but nobody will bell the cat. The Regional Negotiating Machinery has been emasculated for purely political reasons. Some member states don’t pay their bills and nobody says prunes.

It’s sensible to help the least developed; it’s irresponsible to give them a free ride in perpetuity.

When we get to sit at the table with the Americans or the Europeans, we end up presenting a laundry list of petty complaints and begging for pittances. How humiliating.

But the tide is turning.

The Caribbean people are far ahead of their political leadership. They have become globalised while the politicians can’t even get regionalised. Investors and skilled workers no longer need the CSME. It’s totally irrelevant. World events have simply overtaken Caricom. It’s dead. The question is whether anyone will have the decency to bury the corpse.

Regional institutions like the University of the West Indies will soon be able to decide their fate purely on educational and financial grounds without being encumbered by irrelevant objectives. Progress will accelerate in those islands that no longer have to move at the pace of the slowest. The others will shape up or perish.

Which brings us to cricket.

Watching the (foreign sponsored) Trinidad and Tobago team perform at the Twenty20 championships in India made me realise two things:

One, Test cricket is defunct; there won’t be a Test played anywhere in the world in five years’ time. Twenty20 is the future. The Indian Premier League is the way to go.

Two, no West Indian team could have performed as well as did the T&T team. Few WI teams are ever picked purely on merit. Insular politics (WICB and WIPA) always intrudes. Not the same with island teams. Moreover, island teams will play with genuine nationalism, not the cheap public sentiment of ’all o’ we is one’. Let’s hope Trinidad and Tobago now has the guts and wisdom to break away from West Indies cricket and inspire us all to do the same.

My generation tends to remember the West Indies Federation with nostalgia. Truth is, it was a severely dysfunctional arrangement that was holding back the progress of its constituent units and deserved to be broken up.

The same goes today for Caricom. In fact, from the time that Haiti became a member of Caricom, anyone with an ounce of intelligence would have realised that this could never work. We were simply allowing sentiment or some less worthy consideration to rule our better judgment. Don’t even talk about The Bahamas, which has long been given a free ride by being allowed to be a member of the community without being a member of the common market.

The fact is that the people of the Caribbean have outgrown Caricom.

Let’s move on.

-Peter Laurie is a retired diplomat and social commentator. - Courtesy Barbados Nation