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OECS backs political union with Trinidad |
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Written by Ernie Seon
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Sunday, 21 September 2008 |
CASTRIES – Leaders of the nine-member Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) have given their full commitment to a proposal to establish a political union with Trinidad and Tobago.
Grenada's Prime Minister Tillman Thomas, who is also the OECS chairman, said the leaders gave full agreement to the initiative at a one-day summit in Castries on Thursday.
The leaders will meet with Trinidad’s Prime Minister Patrick Manning in St. Kitts next month to further discuss the initiative to establish an economic and political union by 2011 and 2013 respectively. It was initially agreed to by Manning and the leaders of St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada.
The St. Vincent Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, speaking to reporters after the meeting, said the decision by the sub-regional leaders to embrace the concept was "excellent news for the region and for the peoples of the OECS”.
"We must now seize the time. We can't dance and pussyfoot and wait around hoping that something else would turn up," he said.
Gonsalves described the Trinidad leader as a deeply committed regionalist and said that the oil rich twin-island republic is a major economic force in the southern and eastern Caribbean.
"Indeed it helps us that they (Trinidad and Tobago) should want to come on board by 2011, after we would have put in place our own economic union by 2009. So that when they come to us to work out all the modalities we would have had our economic union in place, which is of great interest to us in the OECS," he added.
But the Vincentian leader said that the arrangement would also benefit Trinidad and Tobago.
"Anytime you have a strong economy and it is deepening its integration with its neighbors, it further strengthens it so this is a win-win situation for everybody," he added.
Making reference to a number of commonalities within the sub-region, such as a Central Bank, judicial system and shared currency, the St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas said he was extremely pleased to be part of the OECS at this time.
"This to me confirms that we are doing the right thing…and the initiative which has been derived from a meeting between Trinidad and Tobago and other OECS states can only lend to a momentum in the deepening and widening of the already existing OECS integration system," he said.
Host Prime Minister Stephenson King said that the decision of the summit was a further endorsement and a mandate to continue the efforts at deepening the integration process.
King said that he was establishing an integration unit to deal with all matters of integration at both the OECS and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) levels.
Former St. Lucia prime minister and academic Dr. Vaughan Lewis and Trinidadian diplomat Dr. Cuthbert Joseph are included in a committee mandated to prepare a study on the proposed political union.
The four countries that signed the initial declaration on the plan said that the move would not undermine the single market or economic cohesion established by the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas which governs the 15-member CARICOM grouping.
The OECS groups the islands of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis, Montserrat, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands.
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