As the CARICOM leaders meet once again in one of their many Heads of Government summits, one wonders whether any of the truly fundamental issues facing the Caribbean will be meaningfully addressed.

There are many serious threats to the sovereignty of Barbados and its CARICOM neighbours, such as our massive national debts, globalisation, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the recently concluded Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and the international financial crisis.

The People's Empowerment Party has identified the reduction of national debt as a priority that must be tackled by CARICOM governments through expanding and diversifying our economies, placing a moratorium on borrowing for non-essential, non-productive projects, and by the creative use of such constructive international programmes as the Petro Caribe Energy Co-operation Agreement offered to us by Venezuela.

The CARICOM governments should also join with governments and activist organisations in demanding a halt to any further WTO expansion and insist upon a review of the its abysmal ten-year record and the rolling back of the existing WTO agreements and structures.

The FTAA negotiations have been "ailing" for some years now. Our governments should therefore grasp the opportunity to pronounce the death of the FTAA and to signal our wish not to be involved in any further meaningless FTAA negotiations.

We must advocate for the reform of the United Nations Security Council in order to break the monopoly on power of the major European nations, and to open up the council to a democratic sharing of power with Third World countries. CARICOM should also press for the General Assembly of the United Nations to assume its rightful role as the primary democratic institution of international governance.

Our collective policy must be to advocate for a phasing out of the Bretton Woods organisations – the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank – with their functions being taken over by more democratic United Nations-based institutions. And we should also pursue the quest for reparations for the people of Africa and the African Diaspora through the United Nations system.

The PEP is guided by the "vision" of a new international political and economic order based on the notion of the nations of the world constituting a community of equal, sovereign nation states, collaborating with each other and fostering a mutual, reciprocal and collective development. It is our judgement that this type of vision underpins the Bolivarian Alternative For Latin America And the Caribbean (ALBA) that is being pursued by Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba and several other Latin American countries.

ALBA is based on the idea of the countries of our region sharing our resources in such a way that we help each other to develop, and combining together to collectively do things that we cannot accomplish alone. ALBA is not about the wicked and hypocritical pretence that "giant" developed countries and "midget" underdeveloped countries can compete against each other fairly on the basis of so-called free trade. We therefore propose that the CARICOM states participate fully in ALBA.

As a people predominantly of African descent, we should recognise that we are bound by a duty to play an active role in the regeneration of African Civilisation. We must therefore pursue a close relationship with the African Union and construct a nexus of Pan-Africanist relationships.