Leaders of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) are meeting here on Monday amid calls for greater collaboration and basking in the success of St. Vincent and the Grenadines as the smallest country in the world to be elected to a non-permanent position on the United Nations Security Council.
Outgoing OECS chairman, St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, in a message read out his Finance Minister and son, Camillo Gonsalves, said the 67th meeting of the OECS Authority was taking place at a time of various developments within the global community “and drawing us closer together in the interest of our collective enablement.
“Nonetheless, Antigua and Barbuda assumes the chair of the OECS Authority at a time of particular peril and possibility for our integration movement.”
He said the excesses of an “inequity form of globalisation have generated populace push back across the globe while re-energising a virulent strain of demagogic jingoism that ominously champions non-cooperation with neighbouring states, non-compliance with international law and nonsense in the place of diplomatic dialogue”.
Gonsalves said within the wider-region, the forces of statist and impractical island egotism “wage an increasingly effective war of attrition against the loftiest of Caribbean unity, leaving CARICOM to at best to incrementally inch away from a moribund status quo.
“In short the logic of integration has gone from necessary and self-evident to something that must be …justified and defended in an era of exists, trade wars and isolationism. By word, deed and example, the OECS is obliged to defy all efforts to thwart the deeper and closer integration of our peoples,” Gonsalves said.
The summit here will discuss a wide range of issues, including climate change, joint diplomatic representation, regional approaches to universal health care and coverage and the development startgy for the sub-regional grouping.
In his address, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister, Gaston Browne, said that the election of St. Vincent and the Grenadines to the UN Security Council underscores the view that small size is not a deterrent to big accomplishments.
He said the election has “imbued us with a sense of pride and hope and restored belief in our capacity and renewed determination to carve a place for ourselves under the sun equal of all, and fearful of none”.
He reminded the opening ceremony that Kingstown’s election took place in an environment of hostility “even at the end those who dislike St. Vincent and the Grenadine’s independence of spirit, objectivity of analysis and commitment to the principles of international law, sought to overturn its election.
“ But justice and fairness prevail because in the United Nations General Assembly it is not the might of the powerful that prevails, but the right of the powerless acting together as a defining and ferocious force”.
The Antigua and Barbuda prime minister, who will chair the sub-regional grouping, said the lesson from all that seems to be twofold.
“First, smallest must be no restraint on our ambitions and second victory can be achieved when small and vulnerable states unite, setting their own course and serving their own interest in unshakable solidarity,” he said, adding “we falter not when we cat in unity, but when others cajole us into disunity.
“None should be allowed to entice us from our joint path or to induce us from our collective ambition,” Browne said, noting that in the last 38 years, the OECS has taught the sub-region “one powerful or compelling lesson is that our salvation lies in our solidarity.
“It is a lesson we should not forget, a lesson we should not discount,” he said, pointing to the efforts by the islands to survive various natural and man-made disasters.
Prime Minister Browne said if he had to list the number of issues the international community has put forward against the socio-economic development of the sub-region, they would include the labelling of the region as tax havens, the opposition to the Citizenship by Investment Programme, the matter of corresponding banking and cutting of the region from participating in the global financial and trading system.
“Those are some of the realities of the hostile international environment in which our countries exist. None of us will confront those challenges and overcome them alone. Only unshakeable collective resolve and unstinting joint action will give us the slightest chance of success”.\
The OECS groups the islands of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts-Nevis, Anguilla, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands along with the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe.
Browne told the opening ceremony that the sub-region should always stand in solidarity and urged full support for the fourth OECS Assembly bringing together government and opposition legislators to discuss issues affecting the grouping.
“The assembly should not be undervalued or underestimated. It is a vital forum that brings government and opposition parties from all our member states under one parliamentary umbrella, widening the understanding of regional issues and contributing to their resolution.
“The OECS is showing the way in the integration even of our political life,” Browne said the audience attending the opening ceremony of the summit that ends on Tuesday.
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Is Gaston the only PM to attend the OECS meeting? From the two photos in this article, it looks like all of the other PMs have sent substitutes.
Allan Chastanet PM of St. Lucia is also in attendance.
Is that perhaps an indication as to their interest and commitment to the causes of the OECS
Country first OECS second.. ..
The other PMs must be going about their country’s business….
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