Salutations
We are today convened for the fourth time in seven months; the frequency of our meetings a clear indication of the ever increasing intensity and complexity of the challenges facing our region today.
We all welcomed the opportunity yesterday, in the serenity of Caye Chapel, to sit back and deliberate at length on one of the key issues affecting every Member State in the Community – that of crime and security. The timeliness of our decision in Nassau last July, two months prior to the life-changing events of September 11th, to make those issues the principal focus and centrepiece of this Inter-Sessional Meeting is now self-evident.
The horrific attacks of last September required our meeting in emergency session in October to consider their impact on our region and to plan our strategy to meet the most serious threat to our economies. That tourism, around the world, had contracted by as much as 30% was especially daunting for us in small Caribbean economies in which tourism generates the majority of our foreign exchange and provides the most jobs. Our predicament was clearly serious. We gathered again in The Bahamas in December to plan, together, a way forward for Caribbean tourism in a changed travel and tourism environment.
Mr. Chairman, today as we meet in your home country, it will not be lost on our colleagues that these last four critically important meetings of Conference have taken place in two Member States, Belize and The Bahamas, which only a short while ago were considered remote in the Community. Recent events have contrived to turn that notion on its head and to place our countries very much at the centre of Community activities.
Colleagues,
The Caribbean Community today is a very different one than that which I met in 1992. We are, less than 10 years later, a less agrarian Community, economically, an increasingly services-based Community, forced to come to terms with the demands of globalization, nowhere more poignantly than in the challenges poised for many of us by the evolving standards for the delivery of international financial services. We are also, a more recognized community in a world where our commentary and support is regularly sought on matters of large international import whether concerning global warming, undocumented movement of migrants, the international campaign against drug trafficking and related financial and gun crime, and in which our citizens are increasingly assuming roles of leadership.
We are also becoming a more self-reliant community, one whose members we seek to help each other through the aegis of agencies such as CDERA, the friend to all following natural disasters.
Permit me this opportunity to recognize and to thank the Secretary-General, Mr. Edwin Carrington for his untiring professional support throughout my Chairmanship. I believe Secretary-General, that we have set a record for the convocation of critical meetings and achieved much in so short a period of time. The success of these meetings are testimony to you and to the work of the staff of the Secretariat who may be aptly described as the rabbit in the “Every Ready” battery commercial – they just keep going and going and going. The entire community thanks and appreciates your dedication and commitment to the progress of our region.
I want to take this opportunity also, to thank my Colleague Heads of Government for their support and assistance during my tenure as Chairman of our Caribbean Community. Indeed, were it not for that support and assistance, my task would have been made more daunting, as our Region went through one of its most trying periods.
This willingness to lend a hand came to the fore most recently, when Dr. the Hon Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, answered the call to join me on a Mission to Trinidad and Tobago to determine how the Community could be of assistance to that Member State as it sought to grapple with the difficulties emanating from the results of the elections of December 10.
Mr Chairman, in the brief period of your tenure, you have already demonstrated your willingness to take up the challenge and chart new courses for the Community. Last month, in a statement in Belmopan, you indicated that your priorities as Chairman would include accelerating the implementation of the Single Market and Economy and closer ties with the Central American sub-region of which your country is a part. Tomorrow, we will sit down as a group, in an historic first meeting, with our Central American colleagues. You have quickly made history and we all look forward to the next four months of your Chairmanship.
Mr. Chairman, Colleague Heads of Government, Ladies and Gentlemen, We have much work ahead of us today and tomorrow and so it is important that we begin. Permit me first to extend special thanks to the Government and people of Belize for the warmth of their greeting to all of us, and very especially to me and my delegation, to thank them also for the excellent arrangements they have been made for this Conference and for the marvellous Retreat of yesterday. We look forward to more of the genuine warmth and hospitality that is so outstanding a feature in this beautiful country.
Finally, this is the place and the time that I take my leave. I thoroughly enjoyed my stint as representative Head of Government of my country, The Bahamas. As I leave, another will take my place. I leave committed to and believing firmly in the advancement of the Caribbean Community.
I thank you.
