(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) The Hon. Fruendel Stuart, Prime Minister of Barbados has said that amid the challenges encountered in the journey of integration, an objective evaluation of the last 40 years would reveal a more closely knit Community, today, than at any other time in the region’s history.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the 34th CARICOM Summit, Prime Minister Stuart invoked the spirit of the late Dr. Eric Eustace Williams who had declared forty years ago at the signing of the Treaty of Chaguaramas: “There can be no new dispensation which does not mean the integration of the fragmented economies of the people of the Caribbean, by the people of the Caribbean, for the people of the Caribbean.”
Forty years later, Mr. Stuart said, another generation of Caribbean leaders gathered in Trinidad and Tobago to celebrate 40 years of CARICOM’s existence, to reflect on battles fought and won, and to plan the way forward.
“The founding fathers of our regional integration movement all understood that politics, whether local or regional, is ultimately about using power to make the lives of people better socially, politically and economically. They believed that their best chance of making the lives of our people better was by bringing our countries much closer together in a relationship of shared aspirations, shared effort and shared resources.
Their initiative sprang from a deeper and even more important belief – that of the uniqueness and the special importance of our Caribbean region,” he stated.
Applauding the work of the current leadership of CARICOM, Prime Minister Stuart had special commendation for the President of Haiti, His Excellency Michel Martelly, who presided over the affairs of the Community for the past six months as Chairman.
“Haiti, our newest and largest member of the community, having signed the Treaty on July 4, 2003, has led this region with distinction over the last six months, taking on that responsibility three years after suffering a most destructive earthquake and amidst the inevitable difficulties and challenges that followed.
From those depths of devastation and dislocation, our first independent republic has brought us to this 40th anniversary, and home to the country that gave us Chaguaramas,” Prime Minister Stuart stated.
Against the daunting economic challenges the Region has faced, spawning the first oil crisis of 1973 -1974 to the economic downturn which has been haunting the world since the last quarter of 2007, he said that the leaders should be reminded that the people “do not live by bread alone, but also by the continued affirmation of faith in the values and the virtues of the civilization which the regional integration movement is intended to reinforce.”
“Our people must be reminded that it is only in the context of a properly functioning integration movement that we can find that crucible in which our social and economic arrangements can be melted and recast,” Prime Minister Stuart said.
He stated that the present generation of leaders had to assume an “awesome responsibility of remaining faithful to the dreams and aspirations” of the people, particularly, the youth.
