Dame Mary Eugenia Charles A personal reflection on her legacy

03.OCT.08

By The Rt. Hon. Sir James Mitchell KCMG, PC
UWI Open Campus, Roseau, Dominica
25th September, 2008

I wish first of all to thank Dr. Francis Severin and the University of the West Indies Open Campus in Dominica for inviting me to reveal these recollections of Dame Eugenia Charles. I wish to thank our former high commissioner in Canada, Dr. Bernard Yankey, for introducing me to Dr. Severin at the Launch of my autobiography ‘Beyond the Islands’ in Dominica.

Recently, I discovered a new stone path that had been constructed between the overhanging trees on the southern end of Mustique, leading to a secluded beach which I had visited only once before. That beach had been accessible only with a long series of steps, almost vertically, from a private home on the hill, where we were once entertained at a sumptuous lunch by our Mustique host, a dear friend, Harding Lawrence.{{more}}

The occasion was a meeting to discuss the disastrous situation in Guyana. As I walked on that beach, I realized how life had changed. Our host had passed on. So, too, had others on that beach, Dame Eugenia Charles, Sir John Compton, Sir Harold St. John, and one other person who was unable to climb down the steps, Herbert Blaize. Sir Kennedy Simmonds and I are the only ones left to tell the tale.

That Mustique meeting bears the permanent imprimatur of Eugenia Charles. Desmond Hoyte had become the president of Guyana, succeeding Forbes Burnham in an election that sustained much of the Burnham manipulation. The democracy we had fought to bring back to Grenada with the help of President Reagan would become a contradiction in value should the election irregularities in Guyana remain unchallenged. Eugenia’s clarity of vision with her forthright denunciation reverberated turbulently through the airwaves of the region. Guyana should be booted out of the Caribbean Community. In her view, our secretariat should also be moved from Georgetown.

Beneath the turbulence induced by Eugenia’s call for action were the telephone responses by the leaders of the day to each other, and our own concerns. Her call could not be ignored even though the fashion of the day succumbed to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of another country, a principle, too, that had to recognise that a tarnished image of a wounded democracy should not be blessed with our silence.

A friend of Desmond Hoyte, Sat Maharaj, holidaying in Bequia for our famous New Year’s Eve party, put the suggestion to me that I should try to get the leaders together and discuss the Guyana issue. He was anxious to place a picture of me as the windsurfing prime minister on the front page of The Bomb newspaper, and pleaded that should I succeed in hosting such a meeting, his paper wanted the exclusive story. Looking back on it, I don’t think such a style of publicity endeared me to the intellectuals.

I was sympathetic to the cause of the Indo-Guyanese opposition in the face of the silence of Caribbean governments to any form of electoral abuse, as I had just come out of lonely opposition, where the constitution of St. Vincent had been amended in parliament to deprive me of the position of leader of the opposition and the right to appoint senators to assist me, all to the deafening silence of Caribbean leaders.

And so it was that the heads of government of Dominica, St. Kitts/Nevis, St. Lucia, Barbados, Grenada, Guyana and St. Vincent & the Grenadines met one Sunday morning in Mustique for the first time. Bri St. John flew directly from Barbados. The others overnighted in St. Vincent, and I had them flown over for breakfast in Mustique.

I chaired the meeting. Eugenia led the charge. We could not have our headquarters in the capital of a country with rigged elections, nor should we tolerate keeping Guyana in the Community and sully our democratic reputation with continued indifference to repeated flagrant irregularities in the electoral process. Others expressed similar sentiments, but without any threats.

Hovering in my consciousness was the historic reminder of the fate of our Federation, of which Guyana had never been a part. Then, too, my affection for the forests, wide rivers and vast landscape, so different from my string of islands, led me to realise how silly it was to say goodbye to a country because of the selfish rule by an individual who was no more on the scene. (Forbes Burnham, for all his sins, had arranged for me to visit the Kaieteur Falls when others wanted to stay in Georgetown to watch cricket!).

Desmond Hoyte explained himself with a plethora of statistics on the election, including references to the positive showing his party made with the Indo-Guyanese section of the population. After some two hours of discussion in the calm atmosphere of Plantation House, looking out over the scenic Caribbean Sea and the other Grenadines in the distance, we concluded that we should not isolate Guyana, nor should we contemplate the removal of the secretariat. What we got from the President of Guyana in response was that we would be entitled to monitor the electoral process in the future, culminating with having observers to determine the fairness of elections. We got assurances, too, that the opposition be given space and recognition, that certain restrictions on newsprint be waived, and the economy opened up, including the importation of flour. It all started with Eugenia’s strictures.

You the people of Dominica know how her political career began in Roseau, and the trials you had in the Patrick John days with your democracy. So you should be in a position to understand the passion she brought to the Guyana dilemma, and the pursuit of democratic ideals. You know how she became your prime minister. I got to know her when I became prime minister.

And now to the banana story, historic prospect and retrospect. I am not very comfortable knowing that of the triumvirate of Eugenia, Compton and Son, I am the only one alive to tell this story, and that if I don’t tell it now, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around and sane enough to deal with the subject! My departed colleagues unfortunately did not write their story.

In the early nineties of the last century, some sixteen years ago, I said to Eugenia and John that the period we were going through would be one day defined as the golden age of the OECS and that no country ever knew it was going through its golden age until that age was over.

I said so even with the knowledge of being a hotelier investing with confidence in the tourism industry, and as an agronomist recognising that the diversification of our economy and agriculture had to take place firstly in the mind, not in the soil. These sentiments were published in my book “Guiding Change in the Islands”.

As leaders in the Windward Islands, we had a close working relationship, strategizing on how we could extend the protection for our banana regime in Europe. First of all, we had a clear signal in 1990 that the protection of our banana regime would end in 1993 when the European Economic Community would become the European Union. Our banana market was in the United Kingdom, but from 1993 the status of bananas would be defined by the European continent. It meant that we had to lobby all the twelve European capitals. This meant frequent travel, since no matter how we developed an office in Brussels at the home of the European Commission, the prime ministers had to make their presence felt. Eugenia became president of the ACP Council. She lobbied in Germany and Northern Europe. John Compton took on some countries, and I concentrated on southern Europe, including Italy, Spain and Ireland. We had to make repeated visits, as governments and ministries within governments changed. At home, we were all criticized for too frequent travelling. What is the mission for frequent-travelling prime ministers now? I don’t know. It was the job of prime ministers to carry forward any position adopted by the technocrats we appointed in the regional negotiating machinery of Caricom, and to gather perceptions toward new strategies.

As we got the Europeans to move to extension of our regime to 1999, we pleaded for another ten years to allow us to diversify our economies. The farmers, and the political process in the islands, refused to contemplate that the banana protection regime would end. We succeeded in getting the protection sustained to the end of 2005, with the casting vote of the Danes. We came to terms with the new economic religion, satisfying conditions prior to disbursement. This is a fundamental principle of development. Remember, poverty generates only pity.

The collapse of the Berlin wall and the retreat of communism, while it was a great event for the economy of the world, it was a disaster for our banana regime in Europe. We had to fight the banana war on two fronts, the recalcitrant Europeans and the United States. Those of us who had dealt with the United States before the Berlin wall collapsed saw the new face of America. A friend in one cause became an enemy in another cause. Let me, therefore, state that America would never have fought us, with the help of Latin America, in the newly established World Trade Organisation, if our help against Russian communism had still been needed.

Eugenia’s stand in this transition was a triumph for Dominica. I have already described this and other aspects of that famous Banana War in my autobiography “Beyond the Islands”. Right in the hallowed precincts of the Washington office of Carla Hills, the US trade negotiator at the World Trade Organisation, she declared: “If you destroy my bananas, I’ll kill you!”. It was the beginning and end of the meeting. That was vintage Eugenia. You can imagine how tortured I was when I visited her in her last days, when she was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and told her I brought her a message from President Reagan, and she stared me meaninglessly in the face.

Another historic aspect of the banana regime was our joint creation of WIBDECO, to secure the entitlement as a European trader. When I first proposed the idea and had it accepted by my colleagues in the leadership of the Windward Islands, it was another struggle to get this framework agreed by the farmers and the political opposition. We had stretched the opportunities for bananas to the limit, but democracy at home imposed new demands, and to me it was laughable when, in retirement, I witnessed the new direction, seeking among other things a banana market in Libya. Now we can hardly satisfy the banana market in Barbados and Trinidad. I expect the way we are going, our hotels in the region will one day be importing the controversial Chiquita bananas.

I will now turn to the issue of political union and the attempts made to create new opportunities with our constitutional commission. We the leaders of the Windwards conceptualized that we should seek joint sovereignty in the Eastern Caribbean States. The Leeward Islands quickly distanced themselves from the idea, not even contemplating that they themselves should try to get together. We the leaders of the Windwards, including Blaize of Grenada, had no difficulty working with each other, and were not intimidated by the prospect of having democratic process determine the president or prime minister. We felt we could avoid the trauma of the location of the new country’s capital, which had haunted the old Federation, by the separation of ministries among the islands, and could bind the cabinet through the new information technology of conference calls and the revolution in telecommunications. But our arguments were sidetracked by the separation taking place in the creation of new countries in the Soviet Union and the Splintering of Yugoslavia, not recognizing either that any of these new countries were larger than all of us combined, or that historic enmity had long created identity for those new Balkan republics.

And so we failed. Some of the personalities that enjoyed sustaining our separation are now sneaking back to the subject of political union. Whatever form it takes, I support the principle, but I don’t know whether these islands will ever have the harmonious relationships among its leaders as we enjoyed in the closing years of the twentieth century. However long it takes, political union is inevitable. I sincerely hope that Dominica will not revert to the comments I heard in our deliberations in the past, that Dominica will not support political union until she has an international airport, or that Dominica is fed up with Eugenia. I’d like to know who you in Dominica are fed up with today, and who among the leaders of Dominica will chose to end their days so simply in the heart of this capital, Roseau.

There is new talk of an economic union between the Windward Islands and Trinidad, with the hope of political union somehow, sometime. For me, we are back where we were in 1972, when I secured funding from Dr. Eric Williams, the then prime minister of Trinidad & Tobago, for an economic analysis of the West Indies Associated States, hoping it would then lead to a single political unit capable of blending with Trinidad. Dr. Williams had put US$ 90,000.00 into an initial fund, and we had a commission under Sir. Hugh Wooding to guide us along.

So I support any call for economic union leading to political union, but the first thing I want the Trinidadians to understand – they must be ready for an American-type constitution with a president and vice president directly elected by all the people in the islands. I have assured the media in Trinidad a couple of years ago that they need not assume that such a union will create a racial hegemony. Moreover, I would want to see Barbados in any political union that includes Trinidad & Tobago, as I trust the common sense of the people of Barbados, and I would not want to see Barbados excluded. The other point I wish to make on this issue is that I urge all opposition political parties to support the creation of a central political union and not stand in the way for selfish personal reasons. We have had all the studies and studies of studies over the years dealing with economic union. What we need is the political will for the creation of a new state. Find a suitable constitution and let us move on. We still have some experience and wisdom around, enough to make another try.

There are many experiences I have had around the world that come back to me when I see how certain things are developing. One of them was in Zimbabwe, being taken with President Mugabe on a tour of the elephants in the jungle by a white environmentalist! I also remember my first meeting of Commonwealth trade ministers in London, where the British announced their intention to join the EEC, indicating the implications for sugar and bananas, and the grave expression by Australia on the fate of their sugar production. Today it looks as though the sugar fields have been changed to grape production and challenging the former dominance of the French and Italian wine industries.

Sometimes I wonder cynically if the British did not create the banana preferences solely to ease us away into independence. Whether so or not, we have to thank the British for the opportunities the banana industry gave us to lift the standard of living in these islands, and out of that banana revenue we got an education that seems not to have taught us how to keep the land productive beyond bananas.

But the real outstanding question that remains with me concerns our failure to bring the islands together. Is there anything we accomplished in the last two decades that we could not have done together? We who piloted the idea of unity certainly dreamt of better days and greater scope for our children in different islands. We thought we were ushering in a new era, an era of greater prosperity, justice and pride in nationhood. Eugenia and I had the same birthday. At a CDB meeting in Caracas, our hosts presented us with a single birthday cake. Eugenia’s greatest licence taken with me, however, was on the way to a meeting in Washington. She stopped the car, went into a store, bought a brush, came back and brushed my hair. My head of hair was a sumptuous presentation in those days. I repeat, I think political union for us in inevitable. I just wonder if we have to become failed states to make it possible, as it certainly seems distant when we perceive we are doing well. We wanted to create an institutional structure whereby the collective wisdom of succeeding generations could enhance our destiny. But the oppositions in the islands felt we needed a political union of the islands to consolidate our positions. Time proved them wrong, as we were able to continue to win elections until we each retired.

Way back in 1985, I received the first standing ovation in my political career when I addressed the opening ceremony of the OECS at Sir Rupert Briercliffe Hall in the British Virgin Islands. That speech entitled “To Be or Not To Be a Single Nation” is recorded in my book “Caribbean Crusade”. It anticipated that we still had two schools of thought about political union: the yes-butters and the not-yetters. Ironically, one critic of that theme now finds himself relaxing at the Caribbean Court of Justice while the confidence of our people in our courts is at an all-time low. In 1972, as premier, I expressed the view that mini states are for collectors and nothing has happened since to change that opinion.

What sort of union I wanted was set out in a response to my colleagues for a specific outline. That too is published and entitled “Formula for an East Caribbean Union”. That paper set out not only what we could do, but also what kind of constitutional structure we needed to claim for ourselves, an enhanced system of democracy beyond what in our inexperience became our independence constitutions.

Since I attended Eugenia’s funeral, I have continued to wonder why she did not want a state funeral with politicians giving a eulogy. Question: why such cynicism in the home stretch? Is this a reflection on Eugenia or on Dominica itself. And the state of politics she despaired about in her last days? Was it a case that, in spite of her formidable intellectual strength, she could not deal with ingratitude?

The abiding question about a departed leader remains: what is the legacy? Is there a legacy? For indeed, some of us leave the stage without any enduring imprint or unique sense of values that became part of the culture. Some simply leave nothing, for among other faults they had neither a clear vision nor a sense of history, and it shows. They were no more than pedestrian ploughers in the field, and their ovations perished with them, and we are lucky if the landscape does not suffer irreparably from their depredations.

For me, the test of legacy is whether or not, in the light of some new development, a question is raised – I wonder what so-and-so would have done in this context? When that question is asked of Eugenia you will surely get an answer in recollection of her unique style and direction, which stand out in the history of Dominica.

That Caribbean Iron Lady, Dame Eugenia Charles, left an enduring imprint on the Caribbean and international stage. Every ordinary Dominican discovers this when they travel, and that Eugenia’s legacy will be around for a long time. Her love was love of country. The fate of Dominica was her passion. Will Dominica or the Caribbean ever find another lady to lead like her?