Ladies and Gentlemen of the Media
Distinguished Guests
Members of Staff of the Secretariat
It is indeed a very great pleasure for me to welcome you to this the Second Meeting of the Regional Collaborative Network in Support for the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSM&E) Public Education Programme. The task is particularly pleasing because today I address you Members of the Media as the principal participants.
Moreover, the role you are required to play is without doubt one of the most vital in ensuring that the CSM&E is established. And, if as most analysts and visionaries see the SM&E as the only real hope for a viable future for the countries of the Region, then you are literally being asked to play a decisive role in determining the future of the Region. Your exercise can therefore be the defining moment for the future of the Community. You can no doubt now appreciate why I so much relish the task of welcoming you here this morning.
All of you have sometime or other been part of the media corps covering the progress of the Regional Integration movement. What makes this exercise even more critical is that to a large degree “the medium is the message”. The public education programme in the propagation of which your work is central figure, is intended to educate the man and woman in the street as to what is the Single Market and Economy; why the SM&E, when the SM&E and who is the SM&E. For unless they understand, embrace and become involved, neither you nor the entire regional, political and technocratic directorate would be able to bring it about. But to get the message to them, I repeat you are the medium. It is an awesome responsibility, but it is an inescapable one. It is also most noble and a laudable one.
Last week, the Honourable Prime Minister of Barbados spearheaded a highly successful and valuable consultation on the SM&E. Some of you were there and can not only attest to this, but help to convey to the others the ambience in which that Consultation took place. We would be making available to you copies of the conclusions of that event as soon as they are available. I am glad that I was fortunate enough to be able to take part in that exercise and that some of you were there to contribute to its success. I think we could all share in the congratulations which I believe most especially belong to the Chairman.
Today represents another stage in that effort and I am delighted that the Secretariat can host this stage, and that the Deputy Secretary-General, Dr. Carla Barnett, under whose direction the Information and Communications Division functions, will be giving the feature address on this most vital area of the Community’s development. Once again, it is with great pleasure that I extend a special welcome to you to the CARICOM Secretariat and to this the Second Meeting of the Regional Collaborative Network in Support for the CARICOM Single Market and Economy. I end by invoking the spirit of our great Guyanese poet Martin Carter, “Like a web is spun the pattern, all are involved” and I will say in that process, as he says “… all are consumed.”
I thank you.
