CARICOM a success, says PM Stuart

TO date, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has been a huge success.

This is according to the Prime Minister of Barbados, the Honourable Freundel Stuart, who spoke at the Inter-Faith Service in Commemoration of the 40th Anniversary of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on Sunday at the St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral.

Prime Minister, Freundel Stuart (centre) speaking with Canon Noel
Burke of the Anglican Church (left) and Monsignor Vincent Blackett
of the Catholic Church (right) at the Inter-Faith Service in Commemoration
of the 40th Anniversary of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM)
on Sunday at the St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Cathedral.

“By an objective standard, on the basis of an objective evaluation, the regional integration movement over the last 40 years has been a resounding success. The people of this region are closer today than at any other time in this region’s history and they are voluntarily closer – because I imagine that there were times when they would have been close, but not because they wanted to be, but because the arrangements of the 17th and 18th and 19th centuries put it beyond their capacity to determine what was good for them. But today, our people meet freely and move freely.”

He said that he felt this even when he was a young man growing up in a small village in St. Philip where there were families from other islands in the region, living in harmony, going to church together and socialising with each other in peace without their being “suspicious of one another”, and he felt that this had to be representative of what was happening in other parts of Barbados and the region.

Stuart said that this same unity still exists today and in fact, it has grown, and this is something that he has observed on many occasions.

“I am happy to be here this morning and to witness the colour and the variety of which this service is composed and which it so accurately reflects. In our variety, in our diversity, there is an undercurrent of strong unity,” he remarked.

Joking that he would be around to speak at the 80th anniversary of CARICOM, he stated that until then we must be grateful for the last 40 years and all that we as a region were able to achieve during this period in health, education, culture, sports and other areas as it augurs well for the future of the regional integration movement. (PJT)