– as he calls for greater political will & purpose to sustain regional integration
HIS Excellency President Donald Ramotar yesterday sounded the call for greater political will and purpose to sustain regional integration, since, without it, individual national survival could not be assured. In his address to the Thirty-Third Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), which opened yesterday in Castries, Saint Lucia, President Ramotar pledged Guyana’s full support towards attaining “a more integrated, more resilient and more prosperous Caribbean”.
The President told the large gathering that advancing integration in all its dimensions did not collide with individual national interests.
“In fact, without regional integration, our individual national survival can by no means be assured. Indeed, it is this recognition that inspired the birth of this movement almost forty years ago. This conviction must once again permeate thinking at all levels of society –political leadership, private sector, organized labour and the population at large. With greater political will and purpose we can make this happen. If we are to survive and prosper, we must make this happen,” President Ramotar said.
He added that if the Heads of Government Meeting focused on the Community’s successes over the last 39 years, “we can find the right degree of optimism to look forward to the sustainability of this regional integration movement”.
Highlighting areas where the Community could concentrate its efforts, President Ramotar zeroed in on climate change, the international economic environment, food security, and the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).
A statement from the Georgetown-based CARICOM Secretariat said that, with regard to climate change, President Ramotar bemoaned the slow pace of international negotiations while emissions were at an unacceptably high trajectory, and finance for adaptation and mitigation was woefully inadequate. He said it was imperative for the Region to continue to leverage its extreme exposure to climate change in forging and advocating a common position.
He characterized the international economic environment as “unpredictable and unhelpful to the circumstances of small states such as ours” and where the Region was impacted by the grave economic and financial difficulties being experienced by its main trading partners. The Region, he said, should not have to react to situations, but rather must ensure that preventative measures were in place.
“We must as a Region, be more earnest in our efforts to define a development agenda that is responsive to the evolving global circumstances we face and the domestic realities of our smallness and our vulnerabilities,” Mr. Ramotar said.
The situation prompted him to call for a broadening of relations and conscious development of stronger relations with countries in the South including those that are geographically close such as Brazil, and those with which the Region has had historically strong relations such as China. In this context, the President revisited a proposal for the sharing of diplomatic missions and other services so that the “Region’s outreach could be wider, more diverse and more beneficial”.
In the area of food security, President Ramotar charged that the Community had to become more self-sufficient and that it was an indictment on the entire Region that “we are still to make a significant dent” in the food import bill. Self-sufficiency could be achieved, he said, if more impetus was given to the regional transformation programme on agriculture. As lead Head of Government for Agriculture, he said he would initiate discussions with key stakeholders on the priority actions in the agriculture sector.
Turning his focus to the CCJ, the President called for the mustering of political will to ensure that the “intended jurisdictional boundaries” of the Court were realized.
“To do otherwise would be consciously or unconsciously fostering doubt in our abilities. This is not the time for that; it is a time to take these steps confidently,” President Ramotar said.