Caribbean history and culture are different from the 'home countries' of democracy in important ways. There is an emancipatory agenda and a cultural heterogeneity out of which a Caribbean understanding of democracy must be created. Caribbean people are a people 'becoming' and trying to forge their own identity in this era of new political values. Ways of living, forms of expression and means of doing, all suggest that Caribbean people have their own ways of understanding and applying their rights and freedoms. Is there a tension between this and the adapted political institutions of western origins that explain dissonance in Caribbean democratic life? We intend to explore this question and to investigate the basis for a unique perspective of what ought to constitute democracy in the Caribbean. This is part of the exercise of the creative Caribbean imagination, which is necessary to make institutions relevant to Caribbean realities and the 'lived experience'..