Former Bahamian Prime Minister Perry Christie has described the late, former Barbadian Prime Minister Owen Arthur as an “extraordinary” man of CARICOM and a vibrant political source for the regional integration project.
In a tribute sent to Stabroek News, Christie hailed Arthur who died last week at the age of 70 as the “single most vibrant political source of our region’s integration project since Adams, Williams and Manley of our Federation era. He was special”.
Christie, who was Prime Minister of The Bahamas from 2002 to 2007 and from 2012 to 2017, said that Arthur, who served for three consecutive terms in office from 1994 to 2008 “possessed a received wisdom that enriched his work, his view of the world stage, and his engagement of everything political as a theatre of parts and acts that he naturally knew. This has always been the genius of people who come from no great material support or deliberate tutelage toward power or leadership but who arrive at the summit as though the summit were awaiting them. This was the blessing at the foundation of Owen’s prodigious public life”.
Arthur’s work, he said, embodied the advancement of the regional cause since structural independence to enfranchisement of the individual.
“And so, as is the stock and trade in the fraternity amongst prime ministers, permit me on Owen’s behalf to encourage our Governments and institutions to support our centres of learning and educators at all levels with ample teaching resources together with attractive salaries and other reasonably competitive emoluments. Here at home in The Bahamas and around our region, we are faced with the moral and cultural challenge to commit to greater investment in our educators as a commitment to generations not yet born. As he was in his latter life as Professor of Practice in Economics at The UWI, Owen would be pleased by my adding this concern to my tribute to him”, Christie said.
Among the threads of Arthur’s legacy, he said, is the challenge to live up to his work to enhance and give greater respect to CARICOM’s collective voice in the world. He referred the youth of Barbados and the region to Arthur’s work in public life which is to be advanced by them “for our collective betterment in view of the increasingly severe and disintegrating global environment around our vulnerable hemisphere”.
