(Following is the full text of Address by His Excellency Brigadier (rt’d) David Granger, President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, at the launch of the University of the West Indies South Campus of St. Augustine, Penal-Debe, Trinidad and Tobago on Friday July 31, 2015)
Hon. Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Mrs. Kamla Persad-Bissessar;
Hon. Fazal Karim, Minister of Tertiary Education and Training;
Hon. Roodal Moonilal, Minister of Housing and Urban Development;
Sir George Alleyne, Chancellor of the University of the West Indies;
Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies;
Professor Clement Sankat, Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Campus Principal, University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus;
Members of the Cabinet of Trinidad and Tobago;
Members of the Diplomatic Corps;
Members of the media;
Distinguished invitees;
Ladies and gentlemen;
I AM here because I am a Caribbean man. I am here because I am a proud alumnus of the University of the West Indies (UWI). I am here because I am the latest of the 18 Caribbean Heads of Government to have graduated from this great regional institution.
It is a happy honour for me to be part of this ceremonial topping-off and deed handover of the South Campus of St. Augustine, University of the West Indies. This will be a magnificent campus when completed. The students who will eventually graduate from here will have experienced 21st century conditions that are suited to academic excellence and cultural enjoyment.
The vision for this campus is admirable. I congratulate the University of the West Indies for moving forward with this initiative. I commend the government of Trinidad and Tobago for the gift of the land.
I would like to thank the Vice-Chancellor who invited me to address today’s ceremony. We met during the recent 36th Meeting of the Heads of Government Conference of the Caribbean Community in Barbados. He was there to deliver a passionate and persuasive plea to the Heads of Government to re-engineer education to enable the Region to be more competitive in the modern world. He was particularly forceful in advocating increased investment in science and technology in order to foster greater innovativeness.
Professor Hilary Beckles was justly concerned that the Caribbean could be left behind unless greater emphasis was placed on the teaching of science and technology. I applaud his foresight and insightfulness. I agree with his assessment that we need to embrace a new paradigm in higher education.
Higher education in the Caribbean, to my mind, is at the centre of regional integration and human development. As a start, however, Caribbean states and peoples must cooperate with each other, not compete with each other, in order to achieve our common goals. The Caribbean is a unique community. Our language, our location, our political culture and our diversity should be seen as assets, not liabilities.
Higher education, in this context, must help the Caribbean people not merely to survive but to thrive in this place our fore-parents made their home. We must be able to look beyond our painful past, our differences, the distances across the sea and even our current condition. We must develop the capacity to conceptualise a collective future made possible by a transformative education system.
Higher education, in general, and UWI specifically has three tasks:
* First, to help to build an economy that is more resilient than the one we inherited from the planters and landlords of the old mercantile system. We have to build one that can compete with the eagles of the West and the tigers of the East.
* Second, to build more cohesive societies in which the people are educated to suppress their outdated social and class differences and pretences. Our societies must eliminate inequalities and eradicate extreme poverty.
* Third, to build a more inclusive political system where, by and large, people can be empowered to participate fully in local and national democratic organs and can feel confident in their elected representatives.
Higher education in the Caribbean, therefore, no longer can be treated as the preserve of a tiny privileged class or of the ruling elite. It functions best when inequality is removed, when access is improved and when an increasing number of persons can be better prepared to be citizens of the 21st century society.
Change is essential and inevitable. We must reform our higher educational system to produce graduates who have the knowledge and skills to allow the Region’s industries and businesses to compete globally. We must also be innovative and focus on long-term value-creation, not short-term profit-making.
The Anglophone Caribbean is a Region of small states. This highly Balkanised area, with a population of just around five million, however, has astonished the world by producing three Nobel Laureates. Some larger states with populations measured in millions are yet to produce a single Nobel Laureate.
Caribbean men and women have distinguished themselves on the global stage. We have produced sons and daughters of eminence and excellence who are to be found in almost all professions in almost every country of the world. These persons are products of a culture of struggle, which has traditionally attached great value to education.
Our fore-parents saw education as the vehicle for self-emancipation, enhanced self-esteem, social equality, economic well-being and political representation. They made untold sacrifices to ensure that they secured a better education for their children than they themselves had. The parents of my generation could never dream of attending university which, today, their great grandchildren must be able to take for granted.
The vast majority of the Caribbean people were poor, powerless, illiterate and woefully subordinate at the time of Emancipation and the start of immigration over a century and three quarters ago. Formal education was discouraged for most of our people — largely labourers — for much of our colonised history. Dr. Slinger Franciso ORTT, taught us of the dumbing effects of the colonial education system in his “Dan is the Man in the Van.”
Higher education then was the preserve of the elite. No longer. Education was and still is the vehicle to achieve the good life. Our people want a good life. They deserve a good life. We are blessed with sufficient talent and resources to ensure a good life for all. We need not be poor; we need not be ignorant; we need not suffer from debilitating lifestyle diseases; we should not be victims of violent crime.
My Administration in Guyana, a six-party coalition, is committed to the objective of securing a good life for all. This, I believe, can be achieved by removing what I refer to as the “four horsemen of the Guyana apocalypse: crime, disease, ignorance and poverty.”
Higher education has a pivotal role in unshackling us from these four horsemen and in opening opportunities to access the good life. Investments in education therefore are investments in the good life.
Higher education in the Caribbean must be reconfigured to support greater innovativeness in architecture, agriculture, culture, manufacturing, medicine, engineering, the sciences and business. Higher education should contribute to the competitiveness of our enterprises and make the Caribbean a zone of prosperity.
The University of the West Indies is now leading the way in expanding and extending higher educational access. U.W.I., through this campus and through its “Open Campus,” is enlarging its footprint, expanding opportunities and extending its influence throughout the Region.
We share the Vice Chancellor’s ambition and vision. We can bring all these elements together under a regional project to develop a world-class institution in the provision of higher educational services.
This campus is a good augury for social and scientific education in the Caribbean. This campus, in my eyes, will provide greater access for a greater number of our people. UWI is leading the charge to change our economy and society. UWI is moving us closer towards the goal of a good life for everyone.
May God bless this university.
I thank you.
Speaking to circumstances at home in Guyana, the President outlined what he called the “four horsemen of the Guyana apocalypse.” Those horsemen, according to Mr Granger, are crime, disease, ignorance, and poverty, which could all be tamed and eradicated by encouraging higher education.
