IT IS indeed a great pity that tomorrow’s celebration of a day commemorating the life and times of Errol Dipper Barrow – a most outstanding statesman of the Caribbean region – will take place amid growing disillusion over the future of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) of which he was a primary architect.
In this country, as it is in quite a few other member states, it is disappointing to note that there is little official enthusiasm to even preach the gospel in favour of the Community’s flagship project – the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) – and encourage a work ethic to drive implementation of programmes.
I can imagine hearing the Dipper’s lamenting from his watery grave the failures of changing political directorates in CARICOM to systematically move the pace towards realisation of an envisaged seamless regional economy.
There is, instead, a prevailing sense of betrayal of a vision that Barrow had so passionately sustained, from the inauguration of the Community back in July I973, right up to the time of his sudden passing as Prime Minister on June 1, 1987.
This political titan of the English-speaking Caribbean, who just a year before his death had eloquently stirred the imagination of Barbadians with his famous May I3, I986 address at Independence Square on the theme What kind of mirror image do you have of yourself? – was to offer a definitive presentation on Caribbean Integration – The Reality and the Goal, a few weeks later at the CARIC0M Heads of Government Conference in Guyana on July 3, I986.
It was my good fortune to have been in attendance for both his Independence Square “mirror image” address and his challenge on Caribbean integration in Georgetown.
“If we have sometimes failed,” he told his colleagues, “to comprehend the essence of the regional integration movement, the truth is that thousands of ordinary Caribbean people do – in fact – live that reality every day.”
“We are a family of islands,” he reminded, adding “nestling closely under the shelter of the great Cooperative Republic of Guyana. And this fact of regional togetherness is lived every day by ordinary West Indian men and women in their comings and goings.”
What a contrast to today’s sad political whinings, and worse, with policies that mock intra-regional freedom of movement of CARICOM nationals and continued slowing down of the implementation of diligently crafted programmes.
It is also relevant to observe that Barrow, like his then counterparts – Guyana’s Forbes Burnham, Jamaica’s Michael Manley and Trinidad and Tobago’s Eric Williams – had been quite stoic back in 1972, in helping to bring Cuba out of the diplomatic isolation imposed by the United States of America.
He was to depart from us deeply troubled by America’s brutal arrogance in maintaining its very punishing economic blockade against that small Caribbean nation whose revolution it has simply failed to destroy – after 52 years this month.
• Rickey Singh is a noted Caribbean journalist.
