By Akash Samaroo-Reporting from Jamaica
In a parting message as she demitted office as Caricom Chair, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley issued a cryptic warning about a looming threat, one that she cautioned could undermine the independence and sovereignty of member states and pose the greatest challenge to regional freedom since the era of independence.
Towards the end of her roughly 30-minute address, one she began by stressing the urgent need for greater unity within Caricom, Prime Minister Mottley said, “It is my view that in the absence of an international rules-based order, and we are seeing it being threatened day by day, in the absence of an international rules-based order, countries such as ours will find it difficult to survive.”
A rules-based order (RBO) is a system through which countries conduct their relations and resolve disputes based on established norms, treaties, and agreements, rather than solely on power politics or military might.
Prime Minister Mottley suggested that countries follow such guidelines, adding that the price of sovereignty had changed.
“The price of sovereignty now extends to our ability to control our information and to generate our content. We have to be able to own our satellites, and not be the victim of somebody pulling them on us because they do not like the position we took on a war across the world, somewhere or someplace.”
Mottley did not name any particular nation as an offender, but her words came in the context of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, as well as the recent high-intensity war between Israel and Iran. The United States is one of Israel’s major allies.
The Barbados prime minister went on to plead, “We have to generate our content, because it is only us who know our reality, and we cannot simply be the victims of other people’s judgment as to who we are and what we stand for.”
As she held up her mobile phone for the audience, the outgoing Caricom chair declared, “If we don’t do these things, then we will fail to recognise that the new armada and the new flotilla are not the ships that came and brought our forefathers here under protest. But in fact, the new armada and the new flotilla are what will control our minds. And we know what Marcus Mosiah Garvey told us about emancipating our minds from mental slavery.”
As the prime minister concluded, she said, “If ever there was a time for us to listen to these entreaties, it is now. And as we do these serious things, let us not remember that we as Caribbean people have a flair, that we know how to walk and talk, that we know how to talk and dance, that we know how to sing and move and reflect.”