Lamming feels that the 68-year-old Best, head of the Port-of-Spain-based Trinidad and Tobago Institute of the West Indies, has been "the most persistent and creative of activists on behalf of Caribbean integration, working among men and women with little or no interest in holding political office”

The late integrationist William Demas, Lamming told this correspondent yesterday, was perhaps the most impressive example of this.

"His (Demas') nearest rival would be Lloyd Best, the Caribbean intellectual whose contributions, for 30 years, through his editorial direction of 'New World Quarterly', 'Tapia' and the 'Trinidad and Tobago Review', have fertilised more than a generation with the most challenging ideas for the discovery and defence of a genuine Caribbean mode of thought."

Lamming's suggestion that CARICOM should honour Best coincides with arrangements for nominations by the advisory committee for the OCC award to the Community's heads of government whose 23rd regular annual conference gets underway in Georgetown on Wednesday, July 3.

Among other possible nominees being proposed for the OCC, are two former long serving Prime Ministers of the Eastern Caribbean---Dame Eugenia Charles of Dominica and Sir John Compton of St. Lucia.

The Order of the Caribbean Community was approved in 1991 as the Community's highest and most prestigious award. Its first three recipients in 1992 were:

Sir Shridath Ramphal and the late William Demas, both regarded as key players in the formation and growth of CARICOM, and the internationally famous literary icon, Derek Walcott, a Nobel Laureate. The Trinidad-born Demas was the first Secretary General of CARICOM.

Contacted yesterday for his comment on possible nominees for the OCC award at this week's CARICOM Summit, Secretary General Edwin Carrington -- now in his third term as the region's chief public servant -- said:

"It is not a matter in which the Secretary General of the Community has a say. But knowing that it is a decision for the Heads of Government, and speaking personally, I share the view that a Caribbean man of the outstanding stature and credibility of Lloyd Best most certainly has what's required for eligibility for the OCC..."

Carrington said he would prefer not to comment any further on the issue at this stage or on the eligibility of others.

He simply laughed and said "no comment", when told that some decision-makers, familiar with his own years of contributions to the Caribbean both as Secretary General of the ACP Secretariat in Brussels and now as head of the CARICOM Secretariat, feel he too should be considered as a nominee for the OCC.

Since its inauguration only one woman, the late Dame Nita Barrow, former Governor General of Barbados, was awarded with the OCC among some 11 other recipients.

They include former heads of government like the late Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda Vere Cornwall Bird and current President of Trinidad and Tobago, ANR Robinson. The latest trio of recipients was the renowned calypsonian 'Mighty Sparrow'; Belize's former Prime Minister George Price and the Barbados-born Director of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), Sir George Alleyne.

But Lamming, who holds the view that less political focus should be placed on awarding politicians, said that it would be a sad failure of judgement if a Caribbean icon like Best is not given the consideration he deserves to be awarded the OCC.

"He has done so much with little or no support from the established centres of learning. It is in recognition of his unique service to all territories of the region that we must recommend him for what is the Community's highest and most prestigious honour, the OCC.”

One of the historical documents published by the Trinidad and Tobago Institute of the West Indies under the leadership of Best is a literary project commissioned by CARICOM, and entitled "On The Canvas of the World".