THE EDITOR, Sir,
I WRITE in response to the report published in your paper of Friday, January 16 in which the Prime Minister of Grenada, Dr. Keith Mitchell is challenging the University of the West Indies to do more for regional integration. In your report, Dr. Mitchell called on the UWI to "take its role as a pillar of regional integration much more seriously than it has done in the past".
Sir, I know of no other regional institution, apart from West Indies cricket that has done more to foster, support and sustain the regional integration movement than the UWI. As a graduate, I remember so well the struggles in the 1970's and beyond, among the regional politicians to break up the institution, creating national universities to satisfy their narrow egos.
Happily, this was in large measure averted. Up to the late 1970's, the UWI Mona campus was a truly regional spectacle. Any student who passed through those hallowed halls at that time was bound to meet and develop lasting relationships with other students from the Caribbean. It was visibly a truly regional and vibrant institution. Indeed, it was a wonderful cultural melting pot.
What the splitting up of the various Schools has done, largely to satisfy these regional political leaders, is to keep students in their home territories. So it is now quite likely that one can attend the UWI at Mona and never come in contact with another student from the other Caribbean islands! To my mind this is a major loss to the quality of life and experience of attending UWI. That was one thing that set the institution apart from other universities in the world.
That the UWI is able to survive 50 plus years despite the political leadership we have had in the Caribbean, in the main, distinquished by narrow nationalism and pettiness and essentially led by little men with big egos, is a testament to its resilience as a regional force. That it has been able to accomplish so much, often with inadequate resources from our regional governments is a small miracle.
Dr Mitchell needs to direct his comments at his own colleagues when they meet in their periodic 'chat rooms' around the region. Indeed it is they who have systematically slowed the process of regional integration over these many decades. It has now become quite a sad joke that fewer and fewer citizens of the region take any of their post-conference (chat room) pronouncements seriously.
I am a firm believer that regional integration will only be deepened when citizens of the Caribbean are allowed to roam freely across the region. It is the people who will make it happen, not the politicians. It is time for Dr. Mitchell and his friends to get out of our way once and for all, and allow us to move freely among each other. Soon we will realise how interconnected our destinies are.
Time is not on our side. The world is moving ahead rapidly, and is very intolerant of indecision. We have wasted too much time in the Caribbean, talking. It is time to act. UWI and cricket alone cannot integrate us. We need to be empowered to integrate ourselves.
I am, etc.,
CARL BLISS
Cabliss@jol.com.jm
