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Our world has lost a statesman
– CARICOM Chair, Ralph Gonsalves on death of Owen Arthur
Following the sudden death of former Prime Minister of Barbados, Owen Seymour Arthur, tributes have poured in praising the man described as one of the pantheon of Caribbean statesmen.
From left, Prime Minister of St Vincent, Dr Ralph Gonsalves; Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda Gaston Browne; and former Prime Minister of Barbados Owen Arthur
Arthur, who served as PM for three consecutive terms from 1994 to 2008, passed away at the age of 70 on Monday at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Bridgetown. He was previously reported as having been admitted there last week for heart complications. He had most recently served as chief of the Commonwealth Observer Mission for Guyana’s General and Regional Elections.
Chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves was one of the first to sing praises of Arthur yesterday.
“Our Caribbean” Gonsalves said, “our hemisphere, and our world have lost a statesman and intellect of the highest quality. We shall miss him. I shall miss my dear friend, Owen, a progressive soul who applied his heart to wisdom. I am personally enveloped in profound sadness, grief, and pain at his death, yet full of fond and uplifting memories of him.”
Gonsalves reminded that Arthur was the chief architect, advocate, and intellectual guide of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).
Owen Arthur and his successor, PM Mia Mottley
He shared that Arthur was deeply committed to making the union in the Caribbean more perfect, the best practicable institutional political and economic expression of Caribbean civilisation. Against this, the CARICOM Chair expressed that the region owes him an immense debt of gratitude.
Prior to his brief hospitalisation, Gonsalves disclosed, Arthur was deeply agitated about the imminent threat to democracy in Guyana. He went on to state that Arthur had reserved some of his finest and most biting barbs against those in that CARICOM member-state who, without right reason or principle, verbally abused current Barbadian PM, Mia Mottley and Gonsalves because of their stance in defence of free and fair elections.
PM Mottley herself hailed him as a “man for the times”. She remembered how proud he was, to sign on to the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME), the regional flagship programme for which Barbados holds responsibility in the CARICOM Quasi-Cabinet.
In her statement, she shared that Arthur, from the early 1990s, molded a new class of politician in Barbados and changed in many ways how those representatives would serve their constituents for the better.
“My friends,” Mottley said, “our country, Barbados, is the poorer for his passing. His intellect was larger than life, believe you me. His love for his country as constant as a northern star. The last title bestowed on him was the most fitting – Professor of Practice. For Owen was first and foremost a teacher. Taking the most complex economic issues and stripping them down to be understood by the average man and average woman in the shop. His keen sense of history and of politics shared daily with an emerging class of politicians that he would claim responsibility for bringing to public life.”
She added that Arthur was a man of his time and for the times in which he served, who discharged his duty as Prime Minister of Barbados and as a Caribbean leader with distinction. “He shall remain in that pantheon of Caribbean leaders,” Mottley said.
President David Granger, in a brief statement yesterday, had also extended his sympathy to Arthur’s wife Julie, daughters Sabrina and Leah, friends and the people of Barbados.
Other Caribbean leaders such as T&T PM Keith Rowley; Jamaica’s PM Andrew Holness; St Lucia’s PM Allen Chastanet; PM of Antigua and Barbuda Gaston Browne; CARICOM Secretary-General, Irwin LaRocque; Former CARICOM Assistant Secretary-General, Dr. Edward Greene, Sir Ronald Sanders of the Organization of American States; Guyana’s Sir Shridath Ramphal and many others have offered condolences to the people of Barbados on the passing of Owen Arthur. In light of the passing of Arthur, the Barbados government has announced that there will be a period of national mourning for three days, which began yesterday, and all flags will be flown at half-mast as Arthur’s remains are interred.
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