First, let me say that Sir Shridath Ramphal is just the most riveting and natural storyteller.
Here is the scene: He is reading (at least partly) a speech on his experiences in leading the West Indian Commission two decades ago. This is at the Hilton last Wednesday morning in the first session of the “colloquium” put on by the Caribbean Export and Development Agency, which is mostly funded by the European Union.
Present are a combination of politicians, entrepreneurs, business executives, technocrats and more technocrats (you know, all those brainy policy people who head up regional organisations).
But here’s the thing: What began as a standard presentation about how the commission came about and its experiences up and down the region, its findings and recommendations, and why it was put then put on a shelf to gather dust, gradually became an obituary for an ideal that never came to full fruition.
You would have expected it to have become morbid, over-sentimental, a cry from the heart, full of drama. But not from the pen and lilting voice of Sir Shridath, whose dignity and humility about the role he played and how it transformed him, providing him with two of the most fulfilling yet emotional years of his entire career in politics and diplomacy, caught the audience off-guard.
They listened – I listened – in awe, hoping he would not be in any rush to finish his memoriam. I hope the newspapers publish it.
Without taking anything away from Sir Shridath’s perspective, I felt the people who spoke afterwards missed the point.
They are all a lot brighter than me and I did not take any notes, so that is just a very general perspective, but I’ll tell you why I thought so. Taking Sir Shridath’s ideal on board does not mean we have to bemoan the fact that it did not come to pass as envisaged.
But the other presenters, it seemed to me, spent too much time going on about how great it would have been if the recommendations of the commission – whose goals included bringing the region together in a full economic union and then gradually removing travel and residency restrictions of CARICOM citizens moving about the region – had been implemented.
Listen, my friends, I love The Beatles. When the mood hits, there is nobody delving into their music, their outtakes, their song histories – thanks mainly to YouTube and Wikipedia – than me. No early, warbling cassette-recorded demo of a song is too much for my Beatle-loving ears.
But you know what? My nostalgia for the Fab Four does not extend to playing their music all the time, or expecting the new generation to cover every song over and over again. I even hate Beatles’ night on Idol.
Times are different. There are superb artistes out there right now. Yes, they owe a debt to all that was great that went before them, but I want to hear how they interpret their lives and loves now in their own words and music, not by re-arranging the Beatles’ stuff.
It’s the same with the dream, the idyll, of Caribbean unity. Why are we still supposed to pretend that this is what we all want when the reality is that our island nations fight and claw at each other over everything they can? Why bother to cry about it? It is just the way it is.
And what, may I ask you, has all this common market and free trade brought to us here in Bimshire? Just the virtually complete takeover of Bajan big business by Trinidad and Tobago. I hate it when people (up to last week) go around saying there is nothing to stop us Bajans from investing in Trinidad.
Even if there were no invisible barriers – and that is not what I have heard – you have to have money before you go around buying up companies. Trinidad and Tobago is the richest nation in the Caribbean and its economy is fuelled not only by the wealth its oil and gas “monetising” creates, but the subsidies its government gives to manufacturing and the economies of scale it has in a market four or five times our size.
Over the past two decades since Time for Action its manufacturing has decimated ours, mainly on price, although our products were often of better quality – to put it mildly.
Trinidadian business has moved into Barbados and gobbled up our companies because it has the power to offer good money for the shares. Now it more or less controls the business scene here. I am not saying this is good or bad (although, as you might guess, I do have a strong opinion on the subject), I am just saying that is the case.
Don’t believe me? Stay tuned for news about Banks Holdings sometime in the not-too-distant future. Trinidad interests already have close to control there, don’t they?
After Bizzy, Sir Charles and Bjorn finally leave the scene, what will happen to the ownership of their businesses? Just asking?
On the regional policy front, the publication of the West Indian Commission’s findings in Time For Action was followed by an era of inaction. At the same time, the corporate forces in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago rolled out their long-term plans, which did not include Barbados as equals, but as the spoils of victory, and we are living with the results.
Trinidad in the ascendancy, rich and looking on with glee as their financial storm troopers invade Barbados and many of the other islands.
That is the legacy of the common market, even in its partial implementation phase.
So while I enjoyed the reminiscences of Sir Shridath, I am not losing any sleep over the non-implementation of a full CARICOM Single Market and Economy.
All it would have done is speed up the inexorable, ongoing metamorphosis of once financially-independent Barbados into an economic province of Trinidad and Tobago.
