My presence here today as Prime Minister is the consequence of an electoral choice that is without precedent in the post-independence history of my country.
It focuses my mind on the fact that we live in unprecedented times – in a world caught up with difficult and dangerous new tensions, and confronted with blistering and bewildering change that makes it often very difficult for our people to see the future.
We assemble at this place, Montego Bay, where, more than half a century ago, there was the first great stirring of a regional consciousness, and the expression of the optimism that the future of the Caribbean could be one of full development within the context of regional unity.
We have come here again to reassert our right and yearning for full development, and our conviction that such a goal is best pursued, and, as a practical matter, will only be achieved through the medium of regional unity.
We do so however in a region that is increasingly being convulsed in doubt, is impatient for progress, derisive of what it has achieved, and hence, is dismissive of what can be accomplished.
In no other sphere is this unhappy syndrome more constantly or graphically expressed than in relation to matters concerning the creation of a Caribbean Single Market and Economy.
C.L.R James in “ The Birth of a Nation” got it right in the opinion:
“Nobody knows what the Caribbean population is capable of…….Nobody has even attempted to find out.”
The creation of a CSME is ultimately a test to find out what we are truly capable of.
It sets out to correct three centuries of a fragmented regional existence in which 14 of our societies evolved, maintaining 14 separate markets, each divided from the other by the most formidable barriers, and 14 separate economies, each governed by its own economic rules, laws, policies and institutions.
We dare now to act on the belief that such a fragmented region can be reconstituted to become one single market, free of economic and financial barriers, and one single economy governed by a common set of policies, rule and institutions.
As a form of economic integration, our CSME is exceeded in its scope, among regional groupings, only by the European Union.
Having been conceived in 1989, it has taken the region just over ten years to give it legal standing and identity. It took Europe over 30 years to carry out a similar exercise.
Having established it as a legal entity in the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, the task now before us is to make it function in operational terms in the fields, factories, business places and households across the Caribbean.
And as we set out on this endeavour, it is important that we understand that the economic problems which the Caribbean has to date experienced have not been caused by the operations of the CSME. Rather they have been caused by its absence.
The CSME belongs to the future, not to the past.
It belongs to the young Caribbean entrepreneur who will in the future live in a region that, after centuries of denial, will now confer on him a right to establish his enterprise anywhere he wishes in the region.
It belongs to the ordinary working man and woman of the agricultural, industrial and tourism sectors who have long yearned for us to cooperate in how we use our resources and develop our industry to afford them the prospect of sustainable livelihoods, rather than have their employment trapped in a state of permanent contingency as has been the case throughout so much of our history.
It belongs to the Barbadian fisherman who believes that he has an entitlement to catch what he regards as wayward Barbadian flying fish that have ventured into Trinidad and Tobago waters.
It belongs to every Caribbean patriot who believes that we should extend equal economic terms to each other, and should accord each other economic terms and conditions that are no less favourable than those we grant to others from outside the region.
It belongs to the Guyanese artisan who looks to showcase his tremendous talents to the entire Caribbean people, and in so doing to be treated with respect and treated as being the same legitimate producer as any transnational corporation.
It belongs to the Jamaican higgler who looks to make a living through hassle free travel; and our sports people and artists, and our media people and to all others whose very existence depends upon their having at their disposal a common economic space within which to ply their trade.
It belongs to all those who have the confidence to believe that we can create our own Caribbean Companies and our own brands, and our own transnational enterprises; and that we should operate in a regional market environment that is for the first time made fair for all .
It belongs to all those who accept that by granting ourselves faster, deeper and broader liberalization than we grant to others, we can integrate ourselves into the new global economy, as free men, living in a free state, on terms of our own making, and for our own choosing.
It belongs to all those who believe that in the same way we have been judged by others, we can, and must now, have the confidence to judge ourselves.
It would be inappropriate for me to leave the impression that we can achieve excellence without difficulty. Quite to the contrary.
To create a single market in the Caribbean will require amendments to over 400 pieces of legislation across the region in the next two years. Our CSME will also not work until we put in place arrangements for the independent financing of our regional institutions.
We also need a new intellectual ferment about the course of Caribbean development; ferment of a kind that was so rich between the 1940s and 1970s and which inspired the movement to gain our first independence. For the creation of a single market and economy will be akin to the assertion of a second independence by Caribbean people.
To achieve the CSME, there must in addition be a new spirit of constructive engagement between the State and all the stakeholders of our civil society. It is also clear that the creation of the CSME imposes on us a duty to devise new forms of regional governance for these new times.
But above all, we must trust and engage our people.
Again, I find the words of C.L.R.James in the “Birth of a Nation” haunting and instructive as to how we should go forward :
“ A genuine sense of economic production, of creative expansion in economic life does not exist in the Caribbean to this day. For one thing is certain: any new and genuine economic development of the Caribbean has to begin first of all with the involvement of the mass of the population. Those responsible for plans and production are not even aware that this is missing. For them, the business of workers and peasants is not to concern themselves about industries, bringing to bear their accumulated experience, their practical knowledge, and their creative handling of the materials that they use every hour of the day. Their business is to work.”
It is these fundamental things in these unprecedented times that we, the leaders of the Caribbean, must set out to change.
I thank the people of Barbados for their electoral generosity, and the people of the Caribbean for this great privelege to be a part of this extraordinary project called Caribbean development. And I pledge, on behalf of the Government and people of Barbados, to work in harmony with my colleagues and our neighbours to give our region an even chance of becoming all that it can be.
