BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — Noted Caribbean novelist and social commentator, George Lamming has urged Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders who will be meeting in Guyana this week, to recommend Professor Lloyd Best, one of the foremost intellectuals of the region, for Caricom’s highest honour — Order of the Caribbean Community (OCC).

Lamming said the 68 year-old Best, head of the Port-of-Spain-based Trinidad and Tobago Institute of the West Indies, has been “the most persistent and creative of activists on behalf of Caribbean integration, working among men and women with little or no interest in holding political office. William Demas, he told the Observer yesterday, was perhaps the most impressive example.

“His (Demas’) nearest rival would be Lloyd Best, the Caribbean intellectual whose contributions, for 30 years, through his editorial direction of New World Quarterly, Tapia and the Trinidad and Tobago Review, have fertilised more than a generation with the most challenging ideas for the discovery and defence of a genuine Caribbean mode of thought.”

Lamming’s suggestion for Caricom’s honouring of Best, coincides with arrangements for nominations by the advisory committee for the OCC award to the community’s heads of government whose 23rd regular annual conference gets underway in Georgetown on Wednesday, July 3.

Among other nominees being proposed for the OCC, the Observer was informed, are two former prime ministers of the Eastern Caribbean — Dame Eugenia Charles of Dominica and Sir John Compton of St Lucia.

Approved in 1991 as the Caricom’s highest and most prestigious award, the first three recipients in 1992 were:

The late William Demas and Sir Shridath Ramphal, both regarded as key players in the formation and growth of Caricom, and the internationally famous literary icon, Derek Walcott, a Nobel laureate. The Trinidad-born Demas was the first secretary-general of Caricom.

Caricom Secretary-General Edwin Carrington declined yesterday to comment on the nominees for the awards. But he said he shared the view that a Caribbean man of the outstanding stature and credibility of Lloyd Best “most certainly has what’s required for eligibility for the OCC…”.

Since its inauguration only one woman, the late Dame Nita Barrow, former governor-general of Barbados, was awarded with the OCC among some 11 other recipients.

They include former heads of government like the late prime minister of Antigua and

Barbuda, Vere Cornwall Bird and current president of Trinidad and Tobago, ANR Robinson.

The latest trio of recipients were the renowned calypsonian ‘Mighty Sparrow’; Belize’s former prime minister, George Price and the Barbados-born director of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), Sir George Alleyne.

But Lamming, who held the view that less political focus should be placed on awarding politicians, said that it would be a sad failure of judgement should a Caribbean icon like Best not be given the consideration he deserves to be awarded the OCC.

“He has done so much with little or no support from the established centres of learning. It is in recognition of his unique service to all territories of the region that we must recommend him for what is the Community’s highest and most prestigious honour, the OCC.”

One of the historical documents published by the Trinidad and Tobago Institute of the West Indies under the leadership of Best, is a literary project commissioned by Caricom, entitled: “On The Canvas of the World”.

The announcement of the nominees is to be made before the summit concludes on Friday, July 5.