Saint Lucia’s 46th Independence Anniversary holiday weekend will again feature citizens and guests observing the usual and traditional high points of the military parade, announcement of national awards, fish and food festivals and the dozens of related activities planned for the first annual celebration of nationhood following the various explosions of different manifestations of National Pride after the island became home to The Fastest Woman on Planet Earth.
Annual observances have been laden with symbolism that unfortunately outmatches general appreciation of the full meanings of the historical and actual concepts that belie Independence, Nationhood, Sovereignty, Constitutionality, Legal and Judicial Affairs, ‘Foreign’ and ‘Home’ Affairs, National Development, Responsibilities (of Citizens to the State and vice versa), even roles of Art and Culture.
For 46 years the nation has flowed with the ebbs and flows of the tide of adjusting to the end of centuries of slavery and colonialism and adapting to the challenges and opportunities of growing-up on its own in a world less interested in giving helping hands.
Neo-colonialism has taken hold deeper and faster than former colonies have been able to find their way in an increasingly hostile world.
The Caribbean region’s political response has also been less than required, resulting in stunted growth of the national capacity or willingness to see and treat Independence as it was meant to be.
Constitutional Review hasn’t resulted in much of a difference in how much people still highly misunderstand constitutional affairs; Parliaments continue to operate in the shadow of the Westminster system (and membership of the Commonwealth) that require the majority of nations to pledge ‘loyalty’ to the British Monarch; and Democracy continues to be mocked by those who violate its every tenet while treating it merely as a positive political password.
But, as Saint Lucia (and other former British West Indian colonies) contemplate proceeding to Republicanism, it will be necessary for the over-emphasis on Symbolism to be replaced with true national initiatives and objectives, towards better national appreciation of Independence and Republicanism — and how they both complement and differ, in the process of constitutional development.
Annual Independence Lectures address topics encouraging reflection and projection and aiming for excellence, but hardly about better understand why what happens elsewhere always affects everywhere in a world reduced to a village of shared humanity.
Independence has never been as much about going it alone as about proceeding together for the common benefit of the nations and people in an international community where not all of the common parts are equal, some always regarding themselves as more equal, extraordinary, even exceptional.
Independence for small island and developing nations of the Global South came in different ways, some through wars for national liberation, others by force of circumstances, but most in the Caribbean through a constitutional process keeping them tied to certain ways of the past
History and experience have shown the need for new national and regional literacy campaigns for everything from how parties choose candidates for elections to how independence and republicanism affect citizen and nation and responsibilities of citizens to the nation.
Governments need today to establish ‘ideas factories’ to plant, grown and nurture ideas from young and old on everything beneficial and worthy of national pursuit, particularly to address national and community problems, as with the winning subjects of annual school science and technology fairs that only win prizes and end-up in footnotes of school history.
But Caribbean people are waking-up quickly to the latest manifestation of Washington’s sense of Manifest Destiny in the mass deportations of immigrants already underway in a land built by immigrants and where everyone other than its native First People are descendants of immigrants from everywhere.
On occasions like these, victims of Washington’s current partial ethnic cleansing approach to immigration and foreign aid forcibly come to harsh realizations that their only home is where they were born – except in the USA, under today’s veritable King Donald II.
The gambler in The Donald is gambling on achieving everything he promised on the campaign trail as fast as possible and is not-at-all interested in the reverberations of his presidential decrees beyond US shores.
This is a period that will test the ability of Caribbean governments and people, in the First Quarter of Century 21, to adapt with as much shock as with the forced adjustment to arrival of AIDS and COVID-19, Regime Change and Climate Change, Supply Chain problems, imported inflation from backfiring global economic sanctions and the misplaced War on Terror.
Preparation for tomorrow will therefore require revisiting how we celebrate and observe Independence today, against the background of what it’s meant to be — and actually turned-out to be — in the past 46 years.
In that regard, it might be the right time for Saint Lucia and other Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nations contemplating Republicanism to consider appropriate timing for discussion and introduction of the following recommendations — and the many more that can and will evolve from any and all related national consultations (though not necessarily in this order):
• Stop illegal spelling Saint Lucia’s name with an abbreviation (St. Lucia)
• Respect laws governing public use of depictions of the national flag
• Outlaw use of wrong colours (other than Cerulean Blue) for Saint Lucia’s national flag
• Outlaw use of party colours in parliament
• Remove and outlaw political party symbols and colours on national symbols
• Cleanse Constitutions of necessary reverences to ‘Queen’ and ‘King’
• Adopt new National Anthem (where needed)
• Remove party colours and symbols from national flags
• Adopt new National Pledges (where necessary)
• Rename cities, towns, villages, streets, highways and national entities to cleanse permanent vestiges of colonialism
• Commission the formal rewriting of Caribbean and Nations’ History
• Honour Emancipation and other unsung national heroes
• Revisit and update national schools’ curricula
• Teach Kweyol (indigenous national languages) in schools
• Make History a mandatory Caribbean Exams and University curriculum subject
• Document and Teach History of French and Dutch Slavery in the Caribbean and implications for Reparations
• Demand Reparations for Slavery from France and The Netherlands
• Encourage and support acceleration of attention to Indigenous people and their rights today
• Encourage and support research and documentation of reasons for Reparations for Indentureship
• Ensure Equal Recognition for all Religions
• Enact and update new Laws addressing online issues, from IT literacy to criminal activity
• Initiate 21st Century Constitutional Reviews
• Establish Museums of History and Culture
• Establish Public Broadcasting Services easily accessible to all, online and offline
• Establish inter-island and regional Maritime Transport Services
• Establish better infrastructure for air and sea ports and internal road transportation
• Enable water companies to engage in real income-generating activities
• Introduce national bus services to overcome minibus chaos and ensure upgraded and punctual services for students and elderly, pensioners and retirees, disabled and other qualifying citizens
• Regulate parking services in crowded towns and cities
• Initiate a National Consultations and Essay Competitions on ‘My Dream for My Nation’ and ‘My Caribbean Dream’
• Establish National Youth Services
• Institutionalize approaches to Youth Economy
• Engage Retirees and Pensioners with needed skills for national service
• Develop an effective Witness Protection Program
• Observe National Black History Months
• Adopt Parliamentary sub-Committees for Reparations for Slavery and Native Genocide
• Revisit National Awards Systems to expand possibilities for active recognition of deserving cases
• Acquire, Preserve and appropriately utilize abandoned colonial structures
• Revisit and Upgrade Land Reform policies
The above three dozen-plus proposals on possible considerations about Independence and Republicanism, randomly chosen while writing this article, reflect just some views of only one Caribbean citizen with as many ideas as every other.
Just imagine if all CARICOM citizens offered even just a few…