Responding to a question in Kingstown this week, Dr Gonsalves who is Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, told journalist that, as a social scientist, when events form a pattern, he assumes that “there is something underlining that pattern.”

He declined to identify these “forces” and events “in any specific way” but added: “If I were an academic I could write an interesting paper on the subject but I don’t want to do that.”

Dr Gonsalves said some institutions and countries, including Caribbean countries, sometime see the islands of the OECS “as not possessed of real flesh and blood people with a history, with legitimacy, with a trajectory for ennoblement and a permanent occupation, a permanent presence of a particular landscape and seascape.”

He added: “We are not here on these islands, in the OECS or indeed in the Caribbean, as mere passengers. We are not here only as a consequence of will. We are here permanently."

Dr Gonsalves said the smaller territories are often seen as “the backwaters of the region”.

“We have to begin to speak in emphatic terms,” he said, adding that this must not be done in a “chauvinistic” or a manner that “resides in the domain of petty nationalism.”

The OECS, according to Dr Gonsalves, must however affirm its presence, adding, “and in affirming our presence that affirmation does not make us better than anyone else but we are not worse than anyone else.”

He said it is his responsibility as a leader to provide confidence to the people and “point out forces which may seek to subvert that confidence.”

He said educating the citizens of the OECS and the Caribbean in general is important in this regard, “and to strengthen ourselves within ourselves within what I call the values and mores of our Caribbean civilisation.”

“We do things in many of these islands which are very successful. If they were done elsewhere, even in the Caribbean, books would be written about them.

“But there is a certain residual temper in some people outside of our countries which see us not as being real people; that these are artificial societies,” he said, adding that an American policy maker, at the time of the Grenada revolution, referred to that island as a nice piece of real estate.

He said: “Well, if that is the concept, it is just another step to move from that to have the people not having a significance…

“Now, we are very small countries and there are limits to our own strengths within the regional and certainly within the international system.

“But, we are real people and we cannot be simply wished away. And we have real concerns. And those concerns cannot be dismissed willy-nilly. They have to be taken account of at the table of decision-making even though as we go down to the wire.”

Dr Gonsalves was however confident that the OECS, with its high level of integration, could connect seamlessly with the rest of the region, including the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

“The Caribbean has always had concentric circles of integration – some tighter, some looser. The critical issue here is that none of the concentric circles of integration should undermine the efficacy of the other,” Dr Gonsalves said.

He added: “And there must be point of contact and relevance to each of them so that at the end of the day each contributes to enhancing our capacity to deal more efficaciously with our external environment in the interest of our people and that is how is see it conceptually and, of course, practically.”