PM: Let’s control our information

Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has cautioned the region to move towards controlling its own information and generating its own content, lest it falls victim to a new type of control.

Briefly holding her mobile phone aloft as she made the point during the Opening Ceremony of the 49th CARICOM Heads of Government Meeting in Montego Bay, Jamaica, last night, she said the notion that other countries might want to conquer these nation states again was neither beyond their imagination, nor “our” reality. This time, it would be done via control of and access to information, she added.

“The price of sovereignty now extends to our ability to control our information and to generate our content. We have to be able to own our own satellites and not be the victim of somebody pulling them on us because they do not like the position we took on a war across the world somewhere or someplace,” Mottley said.

“We have to generate our own content because it is only us who know our reality and we cannot simply be the victims of other people’s judgement as to who we are and what we stand for.

“And if we don’t do these things, then we will fail to recognise that the new armada and the new flotilla are not the ships that came and brought our forefathers here under protest. But, in fact, the new armada and the new flotilla is that which will control our mind. We know what Marcus Mosiah Garvey told us about emancipating our minds from mental slavery. If ever there was a time for us to listen to these entreaties, it is now.”

The Prime Minister said in the absence of an international rules-based order, countries like those comprising the Caribbean Community would find it difficult to survive.

Regional transportation, which always comes up during these meetings, was again on the agenda, this time the potential for sea bridges. Mottley said she was anticipating the presentation on the inter-island regional ferry from the private sector, but they had to determine if they had the political will to “democratise travel through ships yet again in this region”.

Citing the former Federal Maple and Federal Palm which carried both passengers and cargo in the 1960s, she said: “We have allowed ourselves to become purely at the mercy of air travel without recognising that as islands in the Caribbean Sea, we have the ability to reach each other in good time and at cheaper fares than if we only use air to connect our region.”

Mottley also touched on several familiar topics during her 31-minute address. These included the growing need for debt for climate and debt for nature swaps as shown by the deadly flooding in Texas, the dire situation in Haiti which needed to be addressed beyond Kenya sending troops, the border dispute between Guyana and Venezuela, the role of fake news, education transformation, citizen security and food security, as well as other issues confronting the CARICOM Single Market and Economy.

She said two CARICOM countries were “now in the process of looking to acquire cargo planes to help us overcome the very difficult prospect of the movement of goods within this region”. (SAT)