‘Too little recording of Caribbean history’–Ramphal

ST JOHN’S–Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, Sir Shridath Ramphal, thinks that there is “too little recording, too little serious examination” of the history of the Caribbean.

Ramphal was speaking at the ceremonial launching yesterday of Prime Minister Lester Bird’s book Antigua Vision: Caribbean Reality, that coincided with the three-day meeting of Heads of Government of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS).

Commending Prime Minister Bird for his own “enlightening contribution,” as reflected in the printed text of his speeches over 25 years in public life, Sir Shridath noted:

“The Caribbean needs such compilations. With some notable exceptions there is still too little recording, too little serious examination of our history….

“Academia’s understandable absorption by our 18th and 19th century past must not mean”, he said, “that social and political chronicling and serious research and analysis of Caribbean 20th century events should remain a neglected pasture.”

As Ramphal, former head of the West Indian Commission sees it, “it is not too contemporary for scholarly grazing; particularly since it is already so rich a history and one that holds lessons of urgent relevance to shaping our present and the Caribbean’s future”

Bird’s book, released within a few months of Prime Minister PJ Patterson’s A Jamaican Voice in Caribbean and World Politics – Selected Speeches 1992-2000- ( by attorney-at-law, Delano Franklyn), was introduced and edited by the diplomat, Ronald Sanders, former broadcaster with the BBC and visiting fellow of Oxford University).

Over the last century, Ramphal said to the assembled gathering that included OECS leaders and a cross-section of the Antigua and Barbuda society, “our public figures have not developed a culture of political writing”.

He singled out as exceptions Inward Hunger by Trinidad and Tobago’s late historian Prime Minister, Eric Williams, and Jamaica’s late Prime Minister Michael Manley’s Struggles on the Periphery and The Politics of Change.

But, as Ramphal said, “recent Caribbean policy making has not had the benefit of in depth reflections of yesterday’s political players”.

It is in this “relative void”, publications like Bird’s Antigua Vision: Caribbean Reality and Patterson’s :A Jamaican Voice in Caribbean and World Politics, would be viewed as important contributions to “our storehouse of contemporary political thought”.

Ramphal described Bird as the “doyen” among current Caribbean Prime Ministers whose “vision” as reflected in his book, “is essentially a ‘regional’ vision of this longest continuously serving Caribbean leader”.

Boy, 13, shot to death

PORT-OF-SPAIN– A 13-year-old Trinidadian boy was shot to death near his Laventille home Wednesday evening with a bullet that witnesses claim could not have been meant for him.

The boy, Miguel McGrath, was fatally wounded while playing a card game outside his home with some friends. According to a report in yesterday’s Express, he was called outside by some friends and they were playing cards when they heard the gunshot.

They then realised that Miguel had received the bullet, which entered his lower back and exited from his chest. His heart was reportedly struck by the bullet.

He was rushed to the Port-of-Spain General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Witnesses said they have no idea where the shot came from. The police were yesterday continuing their investigation into the circumstances of the lad’s death.

Tragedy on field trip by UG students

GEORGETOWN–Tragedy marred a field trip by a group of students of the University of Guyana Wednesday, leaving one dead and seven others injured, two critically.

The party of some 35 UG students were travelling in one of a convoy of three minibuses on the Essequibo Coast public road around noon when one of the vehicles experienced difficulties and span out of control, according to eye-witnesses.

Dead is Patrick Henry Paul, 26, a final year technology student. Critical in hospital in Georgetown after being air dashed from Essequibo, are Dave Hicks and Marvin Dowe.

Paul’s relatives explained that he had left home early Wednesday morning to join other technology students on the field trip to examine a road project in the Pomeroon area.