Distinguished Heads of Regional Institutions and Organisations
Ambassador Charles Maynard, Plenipotentiary Representative of the Commonwealth of Dominica to the Caribbean Community
Other Distinguished Delegates
Deputy Secretary-General and other Staff of the Secretariat
Representatives of the Media
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen
It is a great pleasure for me, as Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community, to welcome you all once again to the Headquarters of the Community – your Community.
I say once again to the familiar faces who were with us last year, while extending a special welcome to those of you who are here for the first time. I trust that all the arrangements made for this meeting are in keeping with your expectations and that a suitable environment has been provided for the work to be undertaken while, of course, allowing for the social interaction that is so necessary for developing relationships.
Ladies and Gentlemen, as members of the CARICOM family of Institutions, we have an onerous responsibility to carry out the mandates of our Leaders in such a way as to ensure an improvement in the quality of life of the people of the Caribbean Community whom we serve. This forum provides us with the opportunity to bring a quality of synergy to what we do in our daily tasks and importantly, to strengthen the bonds of co-operation and unity of purpose that will allow us to efficiently and effectively discharge our responsibility to our people.
When I stated last year, at the Inaugural Meeting of this group that the meeting had come “at a time when more than ever, our Caribbean Community is in urgent need of deeper co-operation and collaboration“, I could not have envisaged at that time the enormity of that reality. From then until now our Community, and I stress our Community, has been beset and buffeted by words and deeds from outside and from within its borders.
In that regard, in addition to certain foreign commentators, some prominent regional voices and members of the media corps seem to be losing heart and are on the verge of, if not already, predicting collapse of the integration process. Some of this is due to the Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union (EU), to which we are about to subscribe. Some is also due to the fact that we have not adopted suitable governance structures and point to the European model of governance despite the differences in geography, history and culture, and notwithstanding the fact that the experience of some who have copied the European model has been somewhat unflattering. While acknowledging the benefits of pointing to the dangers ahead,
one must distinguish between that and the harm which widespread negative speculation can cause in the public mind, especially when suggestions for better alternatives are not forthcoming.
The deeper co-operation and collaboration, to which I referred last year, is obviously sorely needed if we are to withstand the onslaught of negativism which turns a blind eye to 35 years of achievement gained by the toil.
All of this is against a background where, since 4 July 1973, when the Treaty of Chaguaramas establishing the Caribbean Community and Common Market was signed, many of the institutions and organisations represented here today have been put in place by our Heads of Government with a view to streamlining the integration arrangements and strengthening the process to ensure a more effective delivery of its benefits to the people of the Region. Who can say
honestly that the Caribbean Examinations Council, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency, the Caribbean Meteorological Organisation, for example, have not provided the required services and benefits to the people of the Caribbean?
Moreover, in 2001 the Treaty itself was revised as the Community sought to position itself to face the challenges of the globalised world through the establishment of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy. The institutional structures to support this and other initiatives are currently being put in place, in part to ensure an equitable distribution of the benefits of the CSME. The Caribbean Court of Justice, the CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality, the CARICOM Competition Commission, and the CARICOM Development Fund, among others, have all been established. In the field of Health, efforts are well underway for the establishment of the Caribbean Public Health Agency in 2010 – an Agency that will build on the priority functions for health, which are currently performed by a multiplicity of Agencies.
Yes, there are stresses, strains and perhaps even disagreements but no living family is without them. Divergence of opinion can be a sign of a healthy democratic environment. What we must guard against is, that divergence becoming a cacophony and thereby leading to a diversion from achieving our common goals. Indeed it would do us all good never to forget the vision and courage of the Founding Fathers who gave birth to our integration process in the wake – and wake it was indeed – of our failed Federal experience.
No one, including myself as Chief Executive Officer of the Community, is satisfied at the pace of progress towards the achievement of certain of our key objectives. Earlier this year, in Nassau, The Bahamas at the Opening Session of the 19th Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government, I was moved to say quite clearly that, “Time is not on our side if we are to achieve the goal of a Single Market and Economy in the timeframe that, you our Heads of Government have set. And time is not on our side if we are to achieve the ‘Community for All’ as you our Heads have so hopefully scripted in your Declaration of Needham Point that you adopted last July in Barbados. All of this requires our experienced Leaders, our new Leaders and all of us to put our shoulders to the wheel and redouble our efforts and to take our integration arrangements to a higher level. And time is not on our side.”
In this regard, it was encouraging, therefore, to hear the statements of many of our Heads of Government at the recently concluded Twenty-Ninth Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government in Antigua and Barbuda.
Ladies and Gentlemen, integration is not for the faint of heart! Who would have imagined for example that a recent survey of the EU would have shown that only 52 percent of the population consider the European integration process as being beneficial to their country or, for that matter, that the Irish, one of the major beneficiaries of European integration, would have joined with the French and Dutch in rejecting the EU Constitution?
I have said all this to bring us to today, when many of those charged with the implementation of Community policy are gathered here, for the second time in less than a year, to continue the process of doing just that – strengthening our integration arrangement and taking it to a higher level.
Meetings such as these are a recognition that more needs to be done in the struggle to deliver on the promise of integration; to deliver on the promise of a Community For All; to deliver on the goal of a just, viable, prosperous and secure society for all our people.
It is against this background that, over the next two days, we will put our heads and hands together to continue the task we began last year to seek to further strengthen the Caribbean Community and deliver the benefits of integration to its people. There is no more viable course of action open to us if we are to fulfil the vision of our Founding Fathers and take our place as a respected people in the world community. In this quest, we need all – not just some on board.
With these few remarks, it is my pleasure to formally declare open this Second Meeting of our Community Institutions and Organisations.
I thank you.
