Lawyer, politician and international statesman…Sir Shridath Ramphal is a ‘Special Person’

Sep 01, 2013 News

By Leonard Gildarie

While attending primary school at Grove, East Bank Demerara, in the late 1980s, my Common Entrance teacher, June Appiah, during the months leading up to the exams, was intent on ensuring we were well aware who the President and his ministers were. She was short in stature but was a giant with her “wild cane”.

Sir Shridath Ramphal

Being one of the smallest, too, in terms of size, in the class, I was in constant terror because of the cane… Not that I fell victim too often. I avoided it at all cost. But somehow I still managed to always mix up the names of the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). That was when I first heard the name of Shridath Ramphal.
Known as ‘Sonny’ to those close to him, Sir Shridath  is perhaps this country’s and region’s most remarkable and revered diplomat, rubbing shoulders over the years with powerful world leaders, including the likes of former US President Jimmy Carter, Germany’s Willy Brandt, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, India’s Indira Gandhi and Britain’s ‘Iron Lady’ Margaret Thatcher.
In his years as a Minister under former President Forbes Burnham and at the Commonwealth Secretariat as the chief executive, he has doggedly used diplomacy, political canny and outward thinking to blaze a path for the cause of developing countries.
He was a key figure in the fight to free Mandela from jail and to end apartheid in South Africa. A writer, a diplomat, a lawyer, statesman, international public servant and a go-to man for advice, his efforts to build integration in the Caribbean region and to smooth tensions around the globe have made him a legend.

MARITIME RULING
Best known for his stint as Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations between 1975 and 1990, Sir Shridath was also the lead lawyer for Guyana in the maritime dispute between this country and neighbouring Suriname, in which an historic ruling was handed down in 2007.

Sir Shridath played a critical role in pressing the South African government to free Nelson Mandela

In favour of Guyana, the award was delivered on the eve of Ramphal’s 79th birthday. He hailed it as victory for the rule of law. The ruling paved the way for CGX to restart drilling after being ejected from its exploration site in Guyana territorial waters near the Suriname border.
Now almost 85, Sir Shridath received the Commonwealth Life Time Achievement Award in London last June.  It is one of many such awards that he has received over the years.  I counted over 20 international awards, including two Knighthoods and the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development. He has also published over 25 works, receiving several honorary degrees along the way from prestigious Universities such as Oxford in Britain and Yale in the US, among others.
To mark his 80th Birthday, several international diplomats and scholars produced a 206-page book on his work, his achievements and his contribution to global peace and development.  Impressive and daunting, I thought. There is no other person I know of who has a book of their life’s work specially compiled for them on their 80th birthday. I was taken aback somewhat as well. How does one, in a few hundred words, describe the life of such an accomplished person? His extraordinary list of achievements and awards coupled with the admiration in which he is held, is almost impossible to capture in a few pages.

Statesman
‘Sonny’ was born on October 3, 1928, in New Amsterdam, Berbice. He was the eldest of James and Grace Ramphal’s five children. His father, and grandfather, Daniel, were both teachers, with the former running one of the most prestigious private secondary schools in Georgetown.
He attended that school which was founded by his father. He was also educated at the Modern Educational Institute, which also was run by his dad.
A Queen’s College boy, Shridath left Georgetown in 1947 to study law and was called to the bar from Gray’s Inn in 1951, earning his Master’s Degree at King’s College, London, in 1952.

During the course of his duties at the Commonwealth, Sir Shridath was comfortable rubbing shoulders with world leaders, including Queen Elizabeth II

He returned to Guyana later in 1953, and at the age of just 25, was appointed Crown Counsel and Assistant Attorney-General.  He was appointed as Solicitor General in 1959. Ramphal liked the idea of Caribbean integration. He was a proponent of the Federation of the West Indies, serving as its Assistant Attorney-General between 1961 and 1962. However, the Federation, designed to bring together Caribbean countries, crumbled after Jamaica rejected it in a referendum, and the government of Trinidad and Tobago decided to quit the grouping.
A disappointed ‘Sonny’, left the region for Harvard University on a coveted Guggenheim scholarship before moving to Jamaica to practice law. It was from there that Guyana’s then Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham, invited him to take up the post of Attorney General in 1965 and to draft the country’s independence Constitution.
In the years that followed, he took on the post of Minister of State in the Foreign Ministry and in that role he became an architect of, and advocate for, CARIFTA and then CARICOM.  He also headed a team of gifted diplomats in carving-out a respected place for Guyana in the international community.
Between 1972 and 1975, he held the dual post of Minister of Foreign Affairs and of Justice, helping to create the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group.  He was the Caribbean’s negotiator in the ACP group on trade matters with the European Community, fighting for long-term access on preferential terms for sugar, rum, bananas and other commodities, enshrined in the Lome Conventions that lasted for over 20 years.
Currently, he is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and Chancellor Emeritus of the University of the West Indies. He has served as Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, the University of Warwick and the University of Guyana.
Between 2000 and 2002, Sir Shridath was the facilitator of the Belize/Guatemala border dispute even as he served out his term as Chief Negotiator for the Caribbean on External Economic Relations. Other positions he held were Special Advisor to the UN Conference on Environment and Development and Chairman of the West Indian Commission, a body charged with charting the course for CARICOM into the new century.

A special man
In looking at his involvement in events around the world, from the Rhodesia/Zimbabwe independence fight to his role at the Commonwealth in helping to free Mandela to his stints as Chancellor of several top universities, one is almost dizzied by his range and capacity.

Posing with the Commonwealth Lifetime Achievement Award that he received in June.

Former Assistant Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Moni Malhoutra, writing in “Shridath Ramphal – The Commonwealth and the World” said that while in New York back in 1975, the statesman showed that he was human, preparing breakfast for his underling, a strange situation in which the boss could actually do such a menial task.
“He was that rare public figure from the developing world, a man without pomposity, stuffiness, or sense of self-importance.”
Malhoutra, like others, described Ramphal’s eloquence as being in a class of its own. “He was media savvy, even if on occasion a trifle wordy. He was a skilled negotiator, with a sharp legal mind.”
His views on the dangers of the environment were well ahead of their time. Ramphal was one of the first people to recognise – and to warn of –   the dangers of global warming. He told the IDB back in 2000 that global warming exposes the Caribbean to more frequent and more intensive storm surges and sea level rises.
Vincent Cable, now Britain’s Minister for International Business, was a Special Adviser on Economic Affairs at the Commonwealth Secretariat under Ramphal.  He said that, in a succession of books and speeches, and in his work for the Rockefeller Foundation, Ramphal has made a continuing contribution to understanding and promoting the concept of sustainable development.
Sir Shridath is described in tributes for his 80th birthday as a leading spokesman of the free, independent developing world in the last quarter of the 20th century.

British Guiana’s youngest “Silk” – Sir Shridath at age 37

Areas of his unique style are his capacity for leadership and his skill in negotiating behind the scenes. In international trade and development issues, he brought together experts, from different countries and backgrounds, to provide analysis and solutions to take the global community forward while addressing the needs of developing countries.
Between 1977 and 1987, the little man from Guyana with his suave voice, managed to convene 11 such Groups of Experts on critical issues confronting the world. The work of those groups, responding to his call, provided material that helped to advance and change the attitude of International Financial Institutions on matters such as third-world debt, fair trade, the vulnerability of small states, and the world economic order.
Professor Bishnodat Persaud, former Director of Economic Affairs at the Commonwealth Secretariat, who worked with Ramphal for 10 of the 15 years that the Guyanese spent at the helm of that body, noted even though his tenure  as Commonwealth Secretary-General has a central place in his career, his contributions outside of it to the world are equally important.
These include his activity in economic discussion and negotiations and membership of major international economically-oriented Commissions such as the Brandt, Palme, Brundtland and South commissions on disarmament, development, global governance and environment.
Married to Lois, Sir Shridath has two daughters and two sons.
While, it is impossible to capture the contributions of the Sir Shridath Ramphal to Guyana, the region and the rest of the world in these few words, Kaieteur News would like to put in its two cents to hail a treasured son of the soil who has answered his call in the most meaningful of ways.
He is indeed a special person to us.

Presiding over the UN Security Council in 1975, as Foreign Minister of Guyana