(Trinidad Express) Former secretary general of the Commonwealth, Sir Shridath Ramphal QC, says the region should have been celebrating the 50th anniversary of the West Indian nation on May 31. Instead, he lamented, the date will mark the anniversary of the collapse of the West Indies Federation.
Ramphal was speaking on Saturday at the 26th Annual Eric Williams Memorial Lecture Series at the Central Bank Auditorium in Port of Spain.
Among those in attendance were President George Maxwell Richards and his wife Dr Jean Ramjohn-Richards, Chief Justice Ivor Archie, Speaker of the House Wade Mark, Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley, Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) president Sir Dennis Byron and Chief Justice of Barbados Marston Gibson.
The lecture was titled “Labouring in the Vineyards”.
“Fifty years ago in 1962, I lived among you here in my West Indian capital of Port of Spain in Maraval,” Ramphal said.
“I was a younger labourer then and the vineyard was, of course, Federation for which West Indian leaders had struggled politically and intellectually for 40 years, none more so than Trinidadians like Captain Arthur Andrew Cipriani and Uriah “Buzz” Butler and for which its peoples had yearned.
“The Federation was about to become independent on the 31st of May 1962…50 years ago next Thursday. We should have been celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Independence of the West Indian nation next week. That is how close we came to reaching the holy grail. Instead, on that same day, the Federation was dissolved.”
Ramphal said the failure of the Federation had many fathers.
He said it was the hope of this country’s first Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams that the efforts to have a unitary state would result in bringing to an end “the present disgraceful state of fragmentation of the Caribbean Commonwealth countries”.
Ramphal, a native of Guyana, asked his audience to consider whether we would have been better off had the Federation lasted.
“On the international stage, the West Indies, though still small in world terms, would have become a sizeable player not least because of the quality and spread of our human resources.
“Today on the eve of its 50th anniversary, our national Federal state with Guyana, and perhaps Suriname in it, would have comprised more than six million people, it would have had vast resources of oil and gas and gold and diamonds, bauxite, forestry, uranium, manganese and financial services. Importantly, it would have had an educated and talented people who have shown by their global accomplishments and demand for their expertise, that they could compete with any in the world community.”
“Had there been a Federation with a region-wide regulatory agency, could it have done better in preventing the debacle of CLICO and the terrible consequences for ordinary people now being felt throughout the region including here in Trinidad and Tobago ?”
Outlining several economic and social benefits which could have resulted in a better standard of living for those in the region under the Federation, Ramphal said separatism has its beneficiaries in political establishments and commercial sectors which prosper in environments of weakness.
“That has always been the allurement of local control,” said Ramphal.
