What a fine tribute this is.
By Jan Yves Remy
Dr Jan Yves Remy is the Director of the Shridath Ramphal Centre for International Trade Law, Policy and Services at the Cave Hill Campus, University of the West Indies.
News of the passing of Sir Shridath last week continues to reverberate through the highest echelons of diplomatic and political spheres across the Caribbean and world. For his impressive career, he was fittingly dubbed the ‘Statesman of the West Indies,’ a title reflecting his emergence during the rise of newly independent British West Indies nations and his esteemed international reputation.
While there is a tendency to exaggerate the accomplishments of the deceased, for those of us in the trade community, the opposite might well be true of Sir Shridath. I struggle to find any individual who has so profoundly defined the region’s internal and external trade agenda over the past 60 years as Sir Shridath did. He not only blazed a trail, but he also illuminated a path for future generations of trade experts, me included.
As the Director of The University of the West Indies’ Shridath Ramphal Centre (SRC) at Cave Hill, which has trained over 300 Caribbean trade professionals since the early 2000s, and inspired by the title of his autobiography, I am moved in this SRC Trading Thoughts to share a few “Glimpses of the Remarkable Trade Life” of Shridath “Sonny” Ramphal.
Charting the Region’s Trade Policy
Just as Schuman and Monnet are celebrated as the architects of the European Union, and Washington and Jefferson are revered as the Founding Fathers of the United States, Sir Shridath undoubtedly stands among the titans who laid the foundations of this region’s internal trade policy. For his seminal work in the early days of regional integration, Sir Eric Williams, the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, referred to Sir Shridath as a “labourer in the vineyard” of Caribbean integration.
In 1965, he was tasked by the political leaders of the day with drafting the first Caribbean Free Trade Area (CARIFTA) Agreement, the precursor to the Treaty of Chaguaramas in 1973 that created the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). When it was time to review the operation of that original Treaty, he was entrusted with chairing the West Indian Commission—a body of esteemed Caribbean men and women tasked with appraising the integration experiment up until then and making recommendations for its improvement.
His chairmanship of the West Indian Commission culminated in the Report entitled Time For Action, which should be core reading in the classrooms of all students of regional integration. Reflecting the excellent lawyer and scholar he was, Sir Shridath’s forensic approach to identifying problems involved exhaustive and tedious research on each topic, culminating in well-articulated and comprehensive solutions on how to fix the region’s “implementation deficit” and inadequate structures to achieve Caribbean integration. I will always be grateful to Sir Shridath for his spirited defense of the idea of a Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ)—the subject of my doctoral thesis – which is a significant milestone in our regional integration process, and one that remains close to my heart. As with his other works, like his autobiographical Glimpses of a Global Life, what I loved most about his scholarship were the moments when he deviated slightly from the technical details to infuse the subject matter with his uninhibited passion. In his preface to Time for Action, he declared:
I am Guyanese before I am Indian; I am West Indian before I am Guyanese … That oneness replaces separateness in four generations, and so it is for most of the people in our CARICOM region. That oneness is the basic reality of our West Indian condition.
…
Source: UWI News
There is so much more in this excellent personal tribute. Read the full story here.