Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley de­liv­ered an in­spir­ing speech that was aimed at en­cour­ag­ing the peo­ples of the Caribbean to see that this place we call home has the po­ten­tial for great things.

Mot­t­ley’s pre­sen­ta­tion was be­ing shared across the re­gion with an urg­ing that it was a speech that every­one in the Caribbean must see.

The speech was a call to ac­tion, a recog­ni­tion that in this time of COVID-19, which has dec­i­mat­ed re­gion­al economies and demon­strat­ed the frailty of our ex­is­tence, sound lead­er­ship and vi­sion can help take this place for­ward.

Since her elec­tion as Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos, Mot­t­ley has stood head and shoul­ders above her re­gion­al coun­ter­parts and while these are ear­ly days she has the po­ten­tial to be one of the great­est re­gion­al prime min­is­ters.

Her abil­i­ty to take chal­leng­ing con­cepts and ex­plain them in a way that the av­er­age per­son can un­der­stand is a feat that few can muster. For sure she is a woman of sub­stance and ca­pac­i­ty and a breath of fresh air for a Caribbean of­ten bad­ly served by prime min­is­ters whose man­dates ap­pear to be on­ly that of win­ning elec­tions at all cost.

Mot­t­ley does not have a plur­al so­ci­ety to deal with and in lead­ing Bar­ba­dos avoids the de­bil­i­tat­ing is­sue of race that acts as an al­ba­tross around the necks of T&T, Guyana and Suri­name.

She does not have the ex­tent of eco­nom­ic in­equal­i­ty of Ja­maica nor the slow de­vel­op­ment that is the hall­mark of most of the East­ern Caribbean coun­tries. But she has in­her­it­ed a sit­u­a­tion where Ba­jan pride was bat­tered, where they were forced to seek the in­ter­ven­tion of the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund to pro­vide bal­ance of pay­ment sup­port and from all re­ports while the bit­ter med­i­cine has been giv­en to Ba­jans, in­clud­ing the send­ing home of 3000 pub­lic ser­vants, her stature has not been di­min­ished at home and abroad she has con­fi­dent­ly stepped on­to the glob­al stage, show­ing once again that in this land con­quered by Colum­bus and built on the backs of bru­tal slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship we still pro­duce ex­cep­tion­al in­di­vid­u­als who are world class.

For Mot­t­ley, the fu­ture of the Caribbean is based on tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion and she called for a sum­mon­ing of the col­lec­tive will and ca­pac­i­ty of the re­gion to point a way for­ward and be lead­ers in the world.

She used the ex­am­ple of the abil­i­ty of Caribbean coun­tries to re­cov­er af­ter dev­as­tat­ing hur­ri­canes as an ex­am­ple of how we may show the world what cli­mate re­silience is about.

Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter ex­pressed con­fi­dence that we too can be in­no­va­tors in a world in­creas­ing­ly dom­i­nat­ed by tech­nol­o­gy and move away from the mono crop economies of oil, sug­ar, tourism, agri­cul­ture and the likes.

This col­umn has con­sis­tent­ly ad­vo­cat­ed an eco­nom­ic ap­proach that max­imis­es re­turns from the oil and gas sec­tor by fix­ing the chal­lenges through­out the val­ue chain, in­clud­ing en­sur­ing a com­pet­i­tive fis­cal regime.

We must de­ter­mine the sec­tor(s) that will bridge the gap in earn­ings over the next five to ten years while we build out the fu­ture. There­fore we must be laser fo­cused on en­abling man­u­fac­tur­ing, not just in food and bev­er­age, but heavy in­dus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing that us­es the oil and gas sec­tor as the build­ing blocks to­wards deep­er, high val­ue man­u­fac­tur­ing. This must be backed by in­no­va­tion, ef­fi­cien­cy and strength­ened reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work.

While this is hap­pen­ing a re­tool­ing of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem must oc­cur, prepar­ing stu­dents for fu­ture jobs and im­por­tant­ly for them own­ing and op­er­at­ing their own busi­ness.

There is a say­ing in the US, if you can­not find a job then cre­ate one, and that too must be our mind­set. A sense of en­tre­pre­neur­ship must be the hall­mark of the so­ci­ety. I am not ad­vo­cat­ing cre­at­ing a busi­ness for the sake of it, but cre­at­ing busi­ness­es that can then scale up in­to re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness­es. These are all with­in the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ties. What it needs is a change in the mind­set of the pop­u­la­tion. Cre­at­ing a busi­ness means you are less like­ly to make trans­fers to places like CEPEP. Re­tool­ing the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem means that few­er peo­ple are be­ing pre­pared to be work­ers, gov­ern­ment work­ers, and more peo­ple are see­ing them­selves as en­tre­pre­neurs, in­no­va­tors, tech­nol­o­gists, da­ta sci­en­tists etc.

Re­form of the pub­lic sec­tor in­to a more reg­u­la­to­ry role, one that en­ables busi­ness will al­low for a small­er civ­il ser­vice fo­cused on pro­vid­ing ser­vices to the pop­u­la­tion and free up mon­ey for in­fra­struc­ture and oth­er projects.

T&T is lucky, in that its in­fra­struc­ture re­mains well ahead of the re­gion and many oth­er mid­dle-in­come coun­tries. It still has some levers but the win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty is quick­ly clos­ing and it is this which makes Mia Mot­t­ley stand head and shoul­ders above many of her peers.

You see Mot­t­ley was able to com­mu­ni­cate in clear ways the chal­lenges fac­ing Ba­jans and work with the pri­vate sec­tor, in­clud­ing cred­i­tors in find­ing so­lu­tions. Piv­ot from that ap­proach to what we have seen in the last week.

It start­ed at the end of the bud­get de­bate when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley sought to use his time at­tack­ing the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress on is­sues that were al­ready set­tled in the last gen­er­al elec­tions.

Dr Row­ley in case you did not re­alise the elec­tions are over and your par­ty has been re­turned to pow­er. You pros­e­cut­ed your case and the vot­ers sup­port­ed your point of view, the time has come to gov­ern the coun­try and whether you like it or not the coun­try gave you and your par­ty a nar­row vic­to­ry and that means you need to work with the Op­po­si­tion on get­ting very im­por­tant things done.

You need the UNC to get the sta­tis­ti­cal in­sti­tute es­tab­lished, so the coun­try can have cur­rent da­ta and both gov­ern­ment and busi­ness­es will be in a po­si­tion to make de­ci­sions based on re­al in­for­ma­tion and not what hap­pened two years ago.

You need the UNC to get the rev­enue au­thor­i­ty passed and as mush as the Op­po­si­tion has for a long time adopt­ed an un­ten­able po­si­tion and al­lowed for bil­lions of leak­age, with­out sup­port it will not be passed.

It is true that this is a dif­fi­cult coun­try to gov­ern, with decades of deep seat­ed mis­trust and racial di­vide, but you are the Prime Min­is­ter and has to lead, even if in em­brac­ing the op­po­si­tion you open your­self to the risk of be­tray­al.

On the oth­er hand, we have Mrs Per­sad Bisses­sar, fight­ing for her po­lit­i­cal life and try­ing to act as if there was no elec­tion and she was not again de­feat­ed. She spends her time ques­tion­ing the men­tal health of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Com­pare the lead­er­ship we have in T&T with that dis­played by Ms Mot­t­ley and its a sim­ple case of chalk and cheese.

The coun­try will go no where when we are bent on de­stroy­ing each oth­er.

We have made big er­rors which we are pay­ing dear­ly for right now. Our re­fusal to have an alu­mini­um in­dus­try has left us a poor­er coun­try. Our fail­ure to have bid rounds on time cost us dear­ly.

There will be time to fight for your cause, time to or­gan­ise and ral­ly. This is a time to ral­ly yes, to ral­ly for T&T, to ral­ly for a bet­ter, more ef­fi­cient coun­try.

Dr Row­ley, Mrs Per­sad Bisses­sar as you are in the win­ter of your years and lead­er­ship the coun­try should ex­pect and de­mand greater wis­dom.

Ms Mot­t­ley is of a dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tion and maybe, just maybe, it’s a sign that what we have ex­pe­ri­enced as a re­gion re­cent­ly was an anom­aly and bet­ter will emerge. We can on­ly hope.