Chairman,
Colleague Heads of Government
Secretary General
Ministers of Government
Honourees and other Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen.
I would have wished to be welcoming you to Dominica at this time as I assume the mantle of chairmanship of the Caribbean Community and at this my first meeting as Chairman. Unfortunately circumstances did not permit the hosting in Dominica of this 14th meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community. Let me express my sincerest appreciation to the Government and people of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago for readily agreeing to host this meeting and for doing so with all the traditional hospitality and efficiency for which this country is known. I am confident that this will prove to be a most useful meeting of Heads of the Caribbean Community, but also one that will be memorable for the customary hospitality of our hosts, a hospitality that will be the more manifest given that it is taking place with the Carnival season fully in gear.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community are gathered here to do the people’s business. We are here about serious business. There is an unfinished agenda of issues on which action needs to be taken or on which implementation needs to be speeded up. Perhaps the most transcendently important of these is the unfinished work on the CARICOM Single Market and Economy. In his capacity as Chairman of the CSME, Prime Minister Owen Arthur of Barbados has worked tirelessly, with commendable energy and sense of purpose on this project. Surely if it were up to Prime Minister Arthur alone, the CSME would today have been a reality. But it is up to all of us – all members of the Community to play our part in ensuring that this commitment that we have given, this promise that we made to the people of our Region, is raised to the level of manifest implementation in the interest of, and to the benefit of the people of our Region.
One matter that I will touch on at this time in my brief remarks is that outstanding matter of the Caribbean Court of Justice. Progress on this matter requires that all member states take the important first step of signing and ratifying the agreement establishing the Court. Member States also have to put in place the necessary legislative and regulatory arrangements that will enable the court to be operative; to exercise its jurisdiction. Let us urge on ourselves, on our countries, colleague Heads of Government, to do all that we can to ensure that these necessary steps are taken. These steps are necessary for their own sake, but not unrelated, they will also send the right messages to the international community from whom we expect financial and other support to ensure that the Court operates with maximum possible efficiency and integrity.
Mr. Chairman, I would have done well as Chairman, if during my tenure, our Community can bring the CCJ to fruition. It is about time that we do this. We owe it to ourselves; we owe it to our people whose faith in the CARICOM project can do with the added sustenance that such an accomplishment will provide.
Mr. Chairman, Colleague Heads, there are many other aspects of the CSME project on which decisions need to be implemented, but this is not the place in this opening ceremony to deal with them all. Indeed the documentation identifies 10 action areas, (other than the CCJ), in respect of which implementation is sadly lacking. I shall briefly touch on one of these, perhaps appropriately as the CARICOM Head of Government with responsibility for Labour. Ladies and gentlemen, the timetable for giving effect to ‘free movement’ of graduates, media workers, musicians, artistes and sports persons’, has proven to be a moving deadline; a shifting timeline. Some countries are still to implement the necessary legislation for ‘free movement’ of graduates; many others have not put the necessary regulatory and administrative arrangements in place.
Chairman, it is in these action areas: free movement of persons, right of establishment, provision of services and capital, that the people of our region can feel the effects of our community, and can have the opportunity to place or renew faith in Project CARICOM. It is in these areas that Project CARICOM touches the lives of people, other than the government representatives and other persons who know each other so well, from regular participation in the many regional meetings, which itself places a burden on the limited resources of our countries. It is my fervent hope that the next six months will see clear and manifest progress in this area as well.
Chairman, my country Dominica has felt the spirit of our Caribbean Community. Our brothers and sisters of our Community have rallied to support of my country during this time of critical need. It is well known that the Government of my country has decided to take the bull by the horns and take serious and in some cases painful action to stop the rut, stem the hemorrhage, and do what it takes to bring a measure of stabilization to our public finances – because therein lay a very serious problem; indeed a serious crisis. Having entered a financing and adjustment relationship with the international financial community, CARICOM countries have followed in tow, and made the resources available to give us the time, to grant us some of the slack that we needed to help stabilize and lay a platform for a return to economic growth.
For this support the Government and people of Dominica are truly grateful. We thank especially the Governments of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada and the Bahamas for the financial support they have pledged and provided. All of this is in addition to the technical support that our CARICOM brothers and sisters have pledged and will pledge. Just yesterday, we received the good news that in addition to its promise to provide technical support, the Government of Belize will provide US$1 million towards Dominica’s fiscal stabilization and economic recovery effort. As I already said, Dominica has felt the spirit, and perhaps in a more fundamental and transcending way, the true meaning of community, of CARICOM Community.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is a lot going for Project CARICOM. Let us do those things, those additional things; let us take those actions, those additional actions that we need to do to entrench even more deeply in the minds and mind sets of our people, that they have a stake in CARICOM; indeed that the whole, purpose of CARICOM is them — their welfare, their livelihoods, their convenience.
Ladies and gentlemen, as we approach the 30th anniversary of the Caribbean Community, we have an opportunity, indeed a responsibility, to attempt to deal definitively with our unfinished business and bring home the bacon – bring it home in time to make for a celebration in July, which will be joyous and well deserved. Just yesterday we witnessed what I hope constitutes an important new beginning. At the instance of the Hon. Patrick Manning, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Heads of Government received proposals from two of the campuses of our University of the West Indies – proposals for moving on with the pace, substance and structure of our integration movement. As the rest of the world, as Europe in particular moves on towards ever closer union of its peoples, integration of its economies and enhanced structures of governance, we in the Caribbean have sometimes behaved like reluctant brides crawling towards a consummation that we perceive to be desired, even inevitable, but much to be feared; towards an integration that something, somewhere in our consciousness tells us is a good thing, but for which state we perceive ourselves unready or insufficiently prepared.
Yesterday’s discussion served us well. We must build on it. We must let the work continue and breathe new life into the work towards achievement of an important aspect of our Caribbean destiny. As I so urge, I urge further that an aspect of the technical work that needs to be done, is the analysis that will better inform politicians and public alike, of the substantive meaning or benefit that will derive from the closer integration that we seek — what one of the presenters described yesterday as the ‘meat’ of the integration process. Perhaps we can look to the University for this necessary extension to the work that was presented to Heads of Government yesterday.
I will play my part in working to ensure implementation of the important outstanding matters that make up our agenda. I ask my colleague Heads and the people of the Region, by the end of my few months as Chairman, to give me cause to celebrate my own chairmanship of this body, in the terms that I have described.
Chairman, in closing, let me join others in extending congratulations to those three very distinguished persons being honoured here today – three distinguished sons and daughters of our Caribbean soil; or as the Hon. Ralph Gonsalves would put it, three distinguished sons and daughters of our proud Caribbean civilization, Mr. Lloyd Best of Trinidad and Tobago, the Rt. Hon. John Compton, former Prime Minister of St Lucia, and Dame Eugenia Charles, former Prime Minister of the nature island of Dominica. May I take this opportunity to wish them all long and productive lives, and continued labours in the vineyards of national and regional development, in ways that they themselves can best define.
Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you all, and offer my own very best wishes for a successful meeting.
