Dennis Pantin, whose death on July 13, 2010, at the relatively young age of 61, was reported in this paper, has been deeply mourned across the Caribbean region.
Professor Pantin was the founder and Coordinator of the Sustainable Economic Development Unit at the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine and he was a founding member of the Trinidad and Tobago Economics Association, the Association of Caribbean Economists and the Constitution Reform Forum of Trinidad and Tobago. A highly respected economist and teacher, he was also a prolific writer, who, in addition to his many academic papers, wrote newspaper columns noteworthy for their accessibility to the average citizen. In this respect, he took his role as a public intellectual seriously, but without any hint of self-importance or any attempt at self-aggrandizement.
Many Guyanese economists and sustainable development practitioners will be familiar with Professor Pantin’s work and writings, but it would be fair to say that his life and premature death transcend academia and a dry recital of his accomplishments. Suffice it to say that the Trinidadian economist was one of those committed Caribbean citizens – a fact readily recognised by CARICOM Secretary General Edwin Carrington in his message of condolence – who dreamt of, believed in and worked towards a stronger, more united and self-sustaining Caribbean.
According to his close colleague, Professor Norman Girvan, Dennis Pantin was “profoundly convinced that only through regional integration could the Caribbean experience true economic development” and he also advocated that “if better economic policies were to be adopted, politics and governance had to be made more democratic, participatory, transparent and accountable”.
These two tenets were central to Professor Pantin’s thinking. His friends, colleagues and students would also no doubt agree that his vision of economic development in his native land and in the region which he wholeheartedly embraced was grounded in reality, shaped by personal experience and framed by a deep sense of humanity and love of Caribbean culture and a good time. In this respect, Dennis Pantin was representative of a certain type of Caribbean man.
In his lament for Dennis Pantin (“Passing on the dream”, Trinidad Express, July 19, 2010), the Trinidadian political analyst, Michael Harris writes of the optimism and excitement of the generation born to taste the first fruits of political freedom: “We were the generation born in the decade after the close of the Second World War. We came to self-consciousness even as the long, slow, enduring struggle of our parents and of their foreparents to emancipate themselves from the bitter legacies of slavery and the harsh realities of colonialism came to fruition. We saw first hand the excitement and fervour of our parents as the ferment and agitation for political independence and freedom came to a boil. In the sparkle of our parents’ eyes we saw the dream of the ages and the very air we breathed in those days was infected.” For them the future reckoned “with a glorious hope”.
Mr Harris was writing of Trinidad and Tobago but he could equally have been writing of the dreams of any generation touched by Independence in any Commonwealth Caribbean nation. Sadly, for Mr Harris and his generation, as for others across the region, “[d]isillusionment came hard and it came fast”, as the promise of Independence yielded to the corruption and cynicism of those who sought power for their own ends. Indeed, we might add, vision and leadership appear to have given way to a paucity of ideas and the pettiest of politics.
In a recent editorial (“Circumlocution and CARICOM”, SN, July 23, 2010), we bemoaned our collective failure to fulfil the promise of Independence and our continuing inability or unwillingness to accelerate along the road to deeper Caribbean integration. Perhaps we need to seek inspiration in men like Dennis Pantin, in the words of Mr Harris, “who refused to give up, who refused to run, who refused to let the dream die”; men and women who “came to accept that the dream had to be built by toil and effort and hard work” and who “accepted that theirs was the responsibility to shape the dream in whatever way they could and to pass it on to the next generation to continue the work… if ever the dream was to become reality”.
In this light, Dennis Pantin, the quintessential Caribbean man, was also representative of a generation. Perhaps the greatest tribute that can be paid to him is along the lines of that of Guyanese Claremont Kirton, Professor of Economics at Mona, who cannot bring himself to speak of his colleague and friend in the past tense: “Dennis lives and his work on Caribbean regional integration and development must be carried forward”.