DR HAMID GHANY

The de­ci­sion by Cari­com to award the Or­der of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty to Mr Ka­malud­din Mo­hammed (wide­ly known as Ka­mal), for­mer Cab­i­net min­is­ter and for­mer am­bas­sador from Trinidad and To­ba­go, is in­deed a rich­ly de­served ac­co­lade.

In April 1967, Dr Er­ic Williams made a Cab­i­net reshuf­fle in which he moved Ka­mal from the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties to the new­ly-cre­at­ed Min­istry of West In­di­an Af­fairs. What was fore­most in Dr Williams' mind was the need for greater at­ten­tion to be paid to the sta­tus of re­gion­al uni­ty as the emer­gence of in­de­pen­dent states in the for­mer British West In­dies was tak­ing this re­gion in­to a new phase of its de­vel­op­ment.

The col­lapse of the Fed­er­a­tion in 1962, the emer­gence of four new in­de­pen­dent states by 1966 (Ja­maica, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Guyana and Bar­ba­dos), and the cre­ation of As­so­ci­at­ed State­hood by Great Britain for six of the East­ern Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries un­der the West In­dies Act 1967, had col­lec­tive­ly cre­at­ed a new dy­nam­ic in the re­gion that Trinidad and To­ba­go had to ad­dress.

For some, the shift of Ka­mal from the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties to a new­ly-cre­at­ed min­istry with an agen­da which seemed rel­a­tive­ly vague, was viewed as a de­mo­tion. How­ev­er, he was giv­en a spe­cif­ic man­date by Dr Williams to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion with re­gard to re­gion­al uni­ty. In an ex­tract from a con­fi­den­tial mem­o­ran­dum from Ka­mal to Dr Williams that I cit­ed in the of­fi­cial bi­og­ra­phy of Ka­mal that I wrote in 1996, the fol­low­ing was said:

"Hon PM,

In your let­ter of as­sign­ment to me dat­ed April 5, you re­quest­ed me to pre­pare for you up­on your re­turn from Uruguay, a plan of cam­paign with re­spect to pro­mot­ing ur­gent­ly the idea of a Caribbean Eco­nom­ic Com­mu­ni­ty. "2. Since the morn­ing of April 6 in­stant, I have had two very fruit­ful dis­cus­sions with Frank Ram­per­sad who has brought me up to date on the weighty and com­pli­cat­ed is­sues in­volved in this new as­sign­ment.

"It be­came ob­vi­ous that ur­gent ac­tion must be tak­en by Trinidad and To­ba­go to se­cure our coun­try's in­ter­est vis-à-vis the Caribbean Eco­nom­ic Com­mu­ni­ty." The pri­ma­ry chal­lenge for Williams at the time was his fear that Bar­ba­dos, An­tigua and Guyana were plan­ning to form a free trade area be­tween them­selves to the ex­clu­sion of Trinidad and To­ba­go. This was ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the fact that there was a par­tic­u­lar­ly cold re­la­tion­ship be­tween Er­rol Bar­row of Bar­ba­dos and Er­ic Williams.

The agree­ment that had been signed at Dick­en­son Bay, An­tigua, on De­cem­ber 15, 1965, had fixed May 15, 1967, as the date on which the Caribbean Free Trade Area (Carif­ta) was to come in­to ex­is­tence. Williams asked Ka­mal to en­sure that Trinidad and To­ba­go could be in­clud­ed in this, as well as to broad­en the in­clu­sion of oth­er West In­di­an ter­ri­to­ries.

As a con­se­quence of this as­sign­ment, Ka­mal was re­quired to (i) get the ini­tial sig­na­to­ries to hold their hand on im­ple­men­ta­tion of their agree­ment, (ii) in­sert Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to the agree­ment, and (iii) broad­en the ac­cord to in­clude oth­er West In­di­an ter­ri­to­ries.

Ka­mal and Mr J O'Neil Lewis, eco­nom­ic ad­vis­er to the Gov­ern­ment, en­gaged in some shut­tle diplo­ma­cy be­tween Guyana, Bar­ba­dos and An­tigua which re­sult­ed in a post­pone­ment of the com­mence­ment of Carif­ta that spilled over in­to 1968. As a con­se­quence of these ef­forts, a sup­ple­men­tary agree­ment to the orig­i­nal Carif­ta Agree­ment was signed in George­town, Guyana on March 15, 1968, and in St John's, An­tigua on March 18, 1968. Carif­ta Day was set for May 1, 1968.

This was in­deed a per­son­al tri­umph for Ka­mal, but much more than that it was a tri­umph for Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. Er­ic Williams was clear­ly moved by the suc­cess of Ka­mal's diplo­ma­cy and ef­forts. On April 25, 1968, Williams wrote to Ka­mal and con­grat­u­lat­ed him as fol­lows:

"Dear Mr Mo­hammed,

As Head of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, I wish to con­grat­u­late you for the loy­al, ef­fec­tive and en­er­getic man­ner in which you have dis­charged your du­ties as Min­is­ter of West In­di­an Af­fairs since the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al, act­ing on my ad­vice, ap­point­ed you to that port­fo­lio just over one year ago.

"With the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the ne­go­ti­a­tions for the es­tab­lish­ment of Carif­ta, the task which you have ini­ti­at­ed in your min­istry is by no means com­plete. I am of this opin­ion for two rea­sons. "In the first place, the op­er­a­tion and fur­ther evo­lu­tion of Carif­ta will need your con­tin­u­ing at­ten­tion, since you will be this Gov­ern­ment's rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the Carif­ta Coun­cil.

"In the sec­ond place, the whole ques­tion of ex­ter­nal trad­ing align­ments be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and some or all of the Carif­ta coun­tries on the one hand and third coun­tries on the oth­er hand will have to be ac­tive­ly fol­lowed up." These ef­forts by Ka­mal in 1967 and 1968, in­spired by Er­ic Williams' own vi­sion of re­gion­al eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion, were of tremen­dous sig­nif­i­cance in the evo­lu­tion of re­gion­al uni­ty. It was Carif­ta that led to Cari­com. Cari­com has be­stowed an ho­n­our on a Caribbean Man whose ef­forts are right­ful­ly recog­nised with the Or­der of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty.