Region Mourning Loss Of Outstanding Citizen by Rickey Singh 

WILLIAM DEMAS, former Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and former president of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), has died at aged 69. 

His death on Saturday night was just hours apart from that of another former CARICOM Secretary-General, Dr. Kurleigh King, also a former governor of the Central Bank of Barbados. 

Demas’ death has left CARICOM mourning the loss of one of its most respected pioneers of the regional intergration movement. 

For the chairman of the 15-member community of some 13 million people, Prime Minister Kenny Anthony of St. Lucia, Demas was “a giant of a man, one with uequalled passion for the Caribbean region”. 

Speaking to CANA within hours of learning of the passing of Demas at his Maraval home in his native Trinidad and Tobago, Anthony said that the community as a whole would deeply feel this “irreparable loss”. 

Secretary-General of CARICOM, Edwin Carrington’s immediate response on learning of the sad news, was: “The Caribbean Community has lost probably its most illustrious son over the past three decades, and I have lost a personal friend and mentor”. 

President of the CDB, Sir Neville Nicholls, sharing the grief of colleagues around the region, said: “It is difficult to think of any other person of this region who was so integrally linked with the regional integration process. He literally lived for integration.” 

In his long years in the service of his country and the Caribbean region, Demas’ talents and commitment were reflected at the highest institutional level of CARICOM. 

He was Secretary-General of CARICOM, serving for almost five years, second president of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) for almost three five-year terms before returning to Trinidad and Tobago at the request of then prime minister and now president, A.N.R. Robinson, to assume the post of governor of the Central Bank. 

In Trinidad, he was awarded his country’s highest honour, the Trinity Cross. 

Hailed by regional economists at the launching of the Association of Caribbean Economists (ACE) as the “elder statesman among Caribbean economists”, Demas later served with the Mona-based Institute of Social and Economic Research of the University of the West Indies (UWI) as Director of the Andrew Mellon Foundation Project. 

During his years at the CDB he continued to play a most vital role in steering the course of regional economic integration. 

Demas is survived by his Jamaica-born wife Norma and their daughter, Allison who are making arrangements for the cremation of the body, in accordance with his request.