When Edna Manley’s own cousin, Alexander Bustamante – Jamaica’s first prime minister after Independence – pulled out of the just two-year old Federation in 1962 and caused the collapse of self-government for the entire West Indies, Dr. Eric Williams resorted to a new political arithmetic captured in his now famous utterance “one from ten leaves nought” and went on to take Trinidad and Tobago on the road to independence.
Today, Caribbean leaders must consider a new Drumblair, a new house. The CARICOM integration model birthed in August 1973 by the leaders of the then four independent countries – Dr. Eric Williams, Michael Manley, Errol Barrow and Forbes Burnham – as a consolation prize to the Federation has survived for more than 40 years. This is a significant achievement.