IF THE BATTERED SPIRIT OF CARIBBEAN NATIONHOOD stalked The Errol Barrow Centre For Creative Imagination on Wednesday night, it would have received a much needed morale boost.
For there, a glimmer of hope shone through as Dr Ralph Gonsalves analyzed the book Caribbean Challenges: Sir Shridath Ramphal’s Collected Counsel.
The three-time St Vincent and the Grenadines prime minister in noting the factors that have frustrated the elusive quest for an effective Caribbean community, showed that through the body of work collated by Sir Shridath lies a road map that charts a realistic course for success.
Addressing a distinguished audience that included two Government ministers, three knights, Chief Justice Marston Gibson, senators, diplomats, business leaders, academics and students, Gonsalves delivered a rich offering of political and historical insights with the oratorical depth and wit of one committed to the cause of regionalism.
Validating the conscience and scholarship of the author in his presentation Labouring In The Vineyard, Gonsalves said Sir Shridath did not merely have a ringside seat as an observer, but was an active participant in seminal global and regional events of the past 50 years labouring “tirelessly in the vineyard of regional integration. [He] not only put in a long day shift in the vineyard, year in, year out, but he returned continuously for night duty, joyously. He is still at toil in his beloved vineyard even beyond his four score years.”
Noting that the essays and speeches in Caribbean Challenges cover Sir Shridath’s activism from 1973 to 2012, he said they represented a treasure trove of history, policy insights, and prognosis for “programmatic action”.
A former lecturer in the faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, where he was speaking, Gonsalves stated that Sir Shridath’s book provided counsel in 13 essays and speeches covering a range of subjects, including leadership, jurisprudence, knowledge and ideology, international development and global politics, vision for the Caribbean, diplomacy, the environment and climate change, international trade, Caribbean history and political economy, but with one central focus: “The impact of it all on the deepening of the process of regional integration in the interest of the Caribbean, especially those we know as West Indians.”
Gonsalves said Sir Shridath’s vision could best be seen in a July 1975 speech which, he said, was as relevant today as it was then, and recommended every Caribbean national from every walk of life to read.
That address says in part: “There have been many times in the past, and in the not too distant past, when faith in West Indian regionalism and commitment to a continuing programme in fulfilment of it could only have been attained by an overview of history – lifting our sights above the seeming disarray of the prevailing regional scene. It is not so different today; for our times are compounded of the conflicting elements that drive from what is contemporary and what is ultimate, from what is transient and what must be lasting, from the perspective of history and the reality of change.”
He said Sir Shridath further instructs that “the faith in West Indian regionalism” must be matched by “a commitment to a continuing programme in fulfilment” of that faith.
Gonsalves explained that underlying much of Sir Shridath’s narrative on the necessity and desirability of regional integration are the issues of small size, resource limitations, common history, sociocultural integration, an enduring West Indian identity, the quest for better governance, and the external challenges arising from the international political economy.
Correctly, Gonsalves asserted, Sir Shridath, a former Guyana attorney general and foreign minister, pointed to factors that predisposed and induced the region towards functional, economic, and even political integration – the push and pull factors.
“But he is not starry-eyed. He cautions that we must not assume that “unity” is our natural state – one which will subsist despite ourselves. This assumption he labels as “a dangerous falsehood” given our “history of colonialism and the geography of a scattered archipelago”,” said Gonsalves.
Indeed, added Gonsalves, Sir Shridath considered that “the natural state of our Caribbean is fragmentation”.
Accordingly, he said, Sir Shridath urged that “without constant effort, without unrelenting perseverance and discipline in suppressing instincts born of tradition and environment, it is to our natural state of disunity that we shall return”.
Gonsalves, however, concluded that though “this is the enduring dialectic of our condition, setbacks will be turned into advances; weaknesses and limitations will metamorphose into strengths and possibilities”.