The Chairman of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community, Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas
Heads of State and Heads of Government
The Secretary-General of CARICOM, His Excellency Edwin Carrington
Ministers of Government
Members of the CARICOM Secretariat
Representatives of Regional and International Institutions
Specially Invited Guests
Members of the Media
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen
Trinidad and Tobago has been honoured to hold the Chairmanship of the Caribbean Community over the past six months. The period produced one of the most significant steps forward in the integration movement. This was the establishment of the CARICOM Single Market. It was the culmination of many years of great effort along the long road from Grand Anse in 1989.
But even with that achievement, our joy was incomplete. Only six members were able to board the new boat on January 1st. Now that the rest of the family will take that critical step forward, we can sail on with greater momentum.
But we are not yet at full steam. The CARICOM engine will not be firing on all pistons for some time yet. Not until we get to the Single Economy. It is this destination which will provide us with the full throttle to ensure that our nations can succeed in the ongoing and increasingly competitive global race for development.
By itself, the Single Market is inadequate to stir the development that we need. Were it the full answer, we would have already been far ahead. The fact is, significant aspects of the Market were in place before January 1, 2006. We already had free trade in goods, and some measure of liberalized capital flows as a result of our decisions based on global consensus and demands. The bugbear is and continues to be the free movement of labour.
We, in CARICOM, must shed our mental shackles on this important matter. It is most essential for the way forward. Notwithstanding technological progress, human capital continues to be the most important factor of the productive process. No progress is possible without the human mind.
And it is in our mind where the change must take place. We must change our attitudes to one another in fundamental ways in the Caribbean. Support of the cricket team doth not a West Indian civilization make. We cannot continue to merely come to the game, applaud the potential glory of the West Indies and retire to pavilions limited by our narrow shorelines; taking comfort and seeking raison d’etre in our separate flags and anthems, and in our small sovereignties.
CARICOM must wake up and see itself from head to toe, and must open its heart to its full reality. This is the way to truly explore the possibilities beyond the boundary. As mundane as it sounds, and in human affairs, the grand almost always begins with the ordinary, it is the Single Economy that will take us there.
The Single Market still leaves us in our little cocoons. It is the one economy which will unleash the energies and potentials of the people and make their unity unstoppable. When nations trade with one another, there is understanding and harmony based on mutual interest. But it remains harmony from a distance. But when people with a common history live and work together, in a common geographical or psychological space, community and family develop their fuller meaning.
The Europeans are aware of it. They know that in the full face of various needs made single, all obstacles must eventually give way, including failed or dangerous ideology, crippling cultural beliefs, insularity, and limited social and political consciousness in people and leaders. It is not surprising therefore, that in spite of a floundered first attempt, their proposed constitution is still very much on the agenda. It will remain there, I can assure you, until the European Project, a United States of Europe, in some form or fashion, is satisfactorily realized.
But we are still so hesitant about the free movement of a small category of workers; when what is required is full freedom of movement in a managed borderlessness. Our people must be able to move, work and live freely in the Region. Without that freedom, our integration process will stagnate and decline.
We must look at the world which is indeed instructive. Today, as a result of many decades of migration in the last century, and now pushed further by globalisation, demographic realities in the developed world, and desperation in the poorer countries, cosmopolitanism has been incrementally breaking down barriers in the most stratified and xenophobic of societies. Societies are changing, inevitably, and with an increasing willingness. People are on the move.
History is also most instructive. No barrier, natural or artificial has ever been strong enough to stop the march of human feet. Not since homo-sapiens stood erect and surveyed the landscape before him. Who were the people whom wayward Columbus met when he stumbled here? Were they originally from these parts or did they, in a process of hundreds of years, cross the ice from places thousands of miles away? Where are they now, and who are we who have inherited this place from them? The point is, no country is the product of anyone place or time. Neither is the individual. We each carry in our genes the sum total of the entire evolutionary experience of humankind.
Therefore, culture should illuminate and liberate rather than blind us to the ever beckoning oneness. This applies to all of humanity. The world has always been wracked by the conflict of differences based, inter alia, on place, name, religion and complexion. How absolutely silly and tremendously dangerous it has all been. Sadly, and most tragically, it continues. Today, with all the trappings of civilization, the bloody mayhem persists. Babes in arms, pregnant mothers, children at play, the old and infirm, continue to be decimated and splintered by bombs and guns produced by differences; that amazing failure of humanity to recognize the oneness. Sadly, so much of culture produces myopia rather than enlightenment.
It has to be stopped. It is everybody’s responsibility. We must all contribute to the cessation of our destruction. Can the Caribbean, in a state of fragmentation, or of only potential togetherness, exercise any influence on this eternal global malaise? We must certainly put our house in order. But now, more than ever, we need to get our hearts together.
Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the philosophical basis on which I think we must proceed in this new century. Mere functionality could never have sufficed to weld our nations together. It is only soul that could do it. And we shouldn’t hesitate to seriously consider the charge that our integration movement has so far lacked soul.
But there are encouraging signs. We have established the Single Market and the plan is for the one economy by 2008. Also, facing our unique situation where some of our Lesser Developed Countries enjoy a higher per capita income than some of our MDCs, we are now moving towards the operationalisation of the regional Development Fund based on a formula put forward, in part, by the Caribbean Development Bank, and endorsed by CARICOM Ministers of Finance. Additionally, we are committed to helping the people of Haiti by providing a pool of technical expertise, and most importantly continuing to vigorously lobby the international community to keep its promise to assist this country in the process of rebuilding and recovery.
And it is to the international community that I now turn. Clearly we must think again on our Foreign policy. For sometime, we have known that the traditional approach will no longer suffice. The world has changed. We are no longer of strategic importance. And this is becoming clearer in very stark ways. We see promises made being nonchalantly disregarded, like, for example, the offer to assist in our regional security system, especially for the World Cup Cricket in 2007. The idea was that we would use this opportunity to not only put in place the security infrastructure for the international event, but also for the enduring need to protect our small nations from the ravages of multinational criminal networks and their illicit trade, particularly in drugs and arms. Now the hope has almost completely faded that promises will be kept to assist in this US$100M project. It is surprising to say the least, since the security and stability of the Caribbean should be of concern to all of us in the hemisphere.
What are we then to do? Nowadays, benevolence is being increasingly replaced by reciprocity, with the extra quarter-mile being walked for the sake of window dressing, or from dying pangs of conscience. This is the reality of present international life. We shouldn’t complain. Not after almost half a century of Independence.
Should we really expect a full hand from across the Atlantic for example, when bombs explode in Madrid and London, and immigrant rage erupts in Paris? It seems vulnerability now applies to everybody. Besides, there are hundreds of millions starving and diseased throughout the Third World through endemic poverty, constant conflict, natural disasters or grave political mismanagement. Global warming and the spread of disease threaten the very existence of humanity; whilst the Middle East and one half of the Korean peninsula daily increase fears of Armageddon. The attention is focused elsewhere.
The question we must ask ourselves is: Where does the small, peaceful Caribbean fit into this growing global network of existing and impending disaster? We seem to be the victims of both our smallness and our stability. As long as we do not threaten anyone or anything, we could stew and be dismissed as not being on the priority list of global concerns, political or humanitarian. We are no longer of strategic importance. I could, therefore, hear some whisperings across the Caribbean Sea, “Oh for the days of the Cold War.”
It is a whisper from the past. It comes from the mindset when we were, in a paradox of comfort and suffocation, sandwiched between global blocs competing for dominance. In that era, all that was required in foreign policy was to sniff the breeze to guess the way the wind was blowing. Well, mighty winds of change have indeed blown, fuelled, inter alia, by the information revolution, and they have dismantled barriers and exposed ideological failures as well as our own bareness.
Globalisation has consequently been upon us for some time as well as the concept, some say pernicious, of the level playing field. How level it really is continues to be the subject of voluminous discourse, oral and otherwise.
But amidst the chatter, what is clear is that we must seek to diversify our foreign relations as much as we try with our economies. To this end, we need to ask some important questions. What, honestly, is the status of our relations with Latin America, beyond the diplomatic and paper agreements on trade and technical co-operation? Are we thinking of Asia, where two emerging giants bring the realistic promise of a shift, or better still, a diffusion in the balance of world power; and could we be thankfully heading for a world of multi-polarity? And what about Africa? Have we recognized that this continent, in spite of its multifarious problems, now promises economic growth, market dynamism and emergence from its historical problems?
Clearly, we must start thinking again. We need to deepen friendships in our own neighbourhood and beyond, so that when one door is closed, either through arrogance, indifference or domestic preoccupation, we could make a call across the Atlantic or the Pacific. We must still go north, but we should also be able to head south, east or west of our borders. We should, in fact, be able to go anywhere. That is the essence of the independence in our international relationships. At the same time, let me sound this very serious warning. In the anxiety generated by our vulnerability, we should be very wary of tying our fortunes to any hegemonic intent or anachronistic ideologies.
In the final analysis, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, as we have always known, it is to our very selves we must turn. But this need for significant self-reliance must no longer remain just an idea, verbalized at appropriate fora. It must permeate our Capitals and Cabinets and become a deeply internal objective and reality. Make no mistake, it deals with the very basics of food shelter and clothing for the people whom we serve. Some may say that after so many years, nothing much has changed.
But very important developments have taken place. Made possible by years of great industry, we now have the Single Market and with it the unprecedented opportunity to move further than we have ever gone before. And so I return to where I started, which is the need to move with commitment and expedition to the establishment of the regional Single Economy.
The target is 2008. It is this endeavour which will take us nearest to our full strength. It is through this effort that our Region could become more stable and secure, with its own inner dynamism, propelled from within; an attractive partner in foreign relations; influential enough at the global level for our own sake, and to make a stronger contribution to a better world.
We started well on January 1st, 2006. Let us complete the year, and those ahead, with an unchanging priority. This is the inner strength of CARICOM, which will certainly come, for the great benefit of all, from the establishment of the regional Single Economy.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Trinidad and Tobago has been privileged to hold the Chairmanship of CARICOM for the past six months. I thank my Colleague Heads, the Secretary-General, Ministers and the entire CARICOM Secretariat for their excellent co-operation during this time.
God Bless you all. God Bless all our nations. Thank you very much.
