GUYANA and Saint Lucia share many dates in common and succession, from general elections that saw results altered after the count in 1964, to Saint Lucia’s 44th Independence Day being February 22 and Guyana’s 53rd Republic Day on February 23, each today and tomorrow able to look back and forward at the roads from Colonialism to Independence to Republicanism.

Neither country fought a war for liberation, each getting independence on a silver platter from Buckingham Palace as part of London’s process of relinquishing its responsibilities to colonies it plundered for centuries in Africa, Asia, America, the Caribbean, Europe and the Pacific continental regions, including Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

In both cases too, constitutional independence was more of a political football than a national goal, used for partisan political advantage in young and divided two-party states in ways that forever affected how citizens viewed and related to these important political advancements in nations entering the developing world.

Guyana’s independence came at a time when the then ruling party was considered by the UK and the USA as a lesser of two evils, in a case where both were determined that British Guiana would not be granted independence under Dr. Cheddi Jagan, a declared communist, despite the fact that his People’s Progressive Party (PPP) enjoyed overwhelming political support and had won every election since 1953 when Guianese first got the right to vote.

In Saint Lucia’s case, Independence was tied to an election campaign and it came with premature birth pains on February 22, 1979, but the then ruling United Workers Party (UWP) would lose the next General Elections badly just five months later in July, as the opposition was able to galvanize more opposition to independence than the ruling party was able to explain why it so wanted to rush it before elections.

The phases leading to and after independence across the Caribbean were basically the same, with parties that led former colonies into the realm of governance acted within the constraints of legal limits and political roadblocks enshrined in constitutions bequeathed by a Mother Country that doesn’t have one itself, that kept the newly-independent nations within the colonial realm through connections like the British Privy Council remaining as their Final Appellate Court and constitutional changes having to be approved only by a difficult two-thirds majority in a referendum.

Likewise, those Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nations that have progressed from Independence to one form of Republicanism or another (Barbados, Dominica, Guyana, St. Kitts and Nevis and Trinidad & Tobago) have all done so and remained in The Commonwealth, the umbrella grouping of former British colonies on five continents that’s still a realm of the United Kingdom.

But in all cases of transitions between colonialism, independence and republicanism, Caribbean nations have been taken from one stage to another without the necessary levels of continuous public education and sensitisation as to what each change represents to each citizen and what’s expected from them.

Citizens have been left to define concepts like National Pride on their own, resulting in different relationships to and with national symbols, from not standing at attention when national anthems are playing to not caring about ensuring use of correct colors for national flags – like in saint Lucia where the Cerulean Blue was invented for the national flag, but because it’s necessarily rare, the regular (but wrong) blue is largely used, including on government buildings at independence, every year since 1979.

The lack of appropriate appreciation for the differences and similarities in and between independence and republicanism in the Caribbean also often results in lack of understanding of the difference between a national and a citizen, between nationals with acquired citizenship and nationals of expatriate parenthood – and worse, unfortunate negative expressions of ultra-nationalism that amount to nothing less than Caribbean xenophobia, with CARICOM nationals often being reminded by born-and-bred citizens of other countries they adopt that “You weren’t born here…”

At a time when CARICOM is leading the world in calls for reparations from Europe for slavery and native genocide, when the Caribbean’s vote is being increasingly sought after at international fora and the region is starting to talk about energy and food security while selling an global carbon credits sale mechanism to the world, it’s necessary for CARICOM governments to again step up to the plate and provide the necessary levels of accelerated leadership commensurate with the region’s advancements already sealed in areas such as world sports and literature, economics and medicine, science and technology – and now food and energy.

With its record in the Non-Aligned Movement and support for the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa that eventually saw the release of Nelson Mandela and the election of the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa in free and fair elections is now seeking the support of Africa and India to seek reparations for the descendants of enslaved and indentured laborers who came to the Caribbean on the same ships.

But it’s also important for the current generation of CARICOM leaders to take the baton and run with it, charged with the extra strength of the added wisdom of the veterans in their midst and their cabinets, who will in many ways and cases avoid or prevent wasteful attempts at rediscovery of the gubernatorial wheel.

No society is pure and no people are united in their understanding of everything, so there will always be those domestic factors that will delay progress, from those who stubbornly refuse to see beyond their boundaries and borders, skies and horizons, to those whose only definition of progress seems to be to delay any progress is not led or guided, even dictated, by them, whether on political, academic or other reasons having to do with partisan political divisions and/or historical factors deliberately frozen in time.

But, as Guyana and Saint Lucia today and tomorrow observe their Republic and Independence anniversaries, it is necessary that all CARICOM nations redouble their efforts to ensure that Caribbean citizens better understand the transitions from colonialism to independence and republicanism so they can better fit into the societies being planned and shaped for them and in their name by the political directorates they voted for to govern and guard.