By Sandra Chouthi

Express

Section 2

November 24, 1997

Page 1

The first thing that Eugenia Mary Charles, the grande dame of Caribbean politics, did the day after the 1995 general elections in Dominica was to take a ten-day cruise to Alaska.

"I felt I should give some space to the [new] government," Charles says. It was her first vacation in 15 years. She had traveled a lot while in office, but hardly rested. "I'd planned it two years before. Alaska was very different from Dominica. No one could phone or fax me to ask me any questions about anything."

Except for her stiff knees, Charles has not slowed down much since she retired from the daily political grind two and a half years ago.

Shortly after her departure from prime ministerial duties, Charles became a student at the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies in Washington where she studied the integration process in the European Union, the United States and Canada. She spent a ear studying their models, trying to understand why the Caribbean had not achieved integration.

"How did the Americans get together and why didn't we?" Charles asks. "Although we're similar, there are too many differences to achieve integration."

Last year she became part of a 30-member Council of Women Leaders. Its members include Iceland's past president Vigdis. The council had a "big meeting" with the women leaders in the private and government sectors in Stockholm in 1996 to test the need for their existence.

"Interest was great," Charles says, predicting that the council will eventually become a powerful lobby. "We'll have the power to influence people."

The council will be officially launched on April 1, 1998. In the meantime, the Kennedy School of Business at Harvard has given the council an office. The top-of-the-line university plans to call on council members to lecture to students on leadership issues, Charles says.

The invitation for Charles to join the council came from Laura Liswood, author of 14 World Leaders. She was interviewed for the book while in office and joined upon her retirement.

Charles is also a member of International Federation of Electoral Systems, which polices elections in such countries as parts of Mexico and Africa. She was in Mexico for that country's last elections.

The federation visits countries prior to elections and assists its officials to prepare proper voting lists and puts up posters encouraging people to vote. "It's very useful to have good elections."

You would think that at 78, when other Caribbean leaders of Charles' era - Grenada's Sir Eric Gairy, Jamaica's Tom Adams, Guyana's Cheddi Jagan and Trinidad and Tobago's George Chambers - have died, Charles would slow down.

That's not likely, given her own admission that she's in Roseau, Dominica, for half the month. Okay, so she's winding down her legal practice by visiting her office on the ground floor of the four-storey building in which she lives two days a week: Mondays and Fridays.

But where her practice is dwindling down to a couple of days for the week, her public engagements are not. Women's groups in particular constantly ask for her to speak. One such engagement was to a women's group in St Croix/St Thomas which looked at health issues and the topic "Saving Our Sons."

Asked what makes a good leader, Charles replies: "Leaders must look after the things that need looking after without looking after themselves. Some of us have followed that."

Chambers and Charles did not agree on the decision to request US military intervention in the Grenada coup to overthrow the Maurice Bishop regime, but they certainly share the same approach on death.

A month ago Charles paid a funeral home for her own funeral. Her instructions? Keep it simple. If she dies abroad, she doesn't want her body returned to Dominica, but prefers it to be cremated wherever she dies and her ashes brought home for burial. She can't bear the government squabbling over whether she should get a state funeral or not.

"I agree with Chambers: a quiet funeral. I want no one to interfere with me," Charles says. "I want to be sent off as an ordinary citizen."

Addressing the subject of quality leaders and leaders passing on brings the subject around to which politician in the region will replace the Caribbean's only Iron Lady. The answer lies with Barbados: Billie Miller and Mia Mottley.

"You don't have too many good female ministers in Trinidad," says Charles, known for her bluntness.

Her sharp tongue may very well have endeared her to the leaders of larger nations, not the least of whom was former US president Ronald Reagan.

"While I was prime minister, at no time when I met leaders of bigger countries did they treat me like small fry," she says, looking out at the Gulf of Paria from her tenth-floor room at the Holiday Inn. In a tray on the table is a sliced grapefruit.

"I suppose it was because I was frank and open. I wasn't trying to cuddle up to them. I had to ask favours of them but that didn’t mean I had to be afraid of them".

She's been approached by "people in the States" to write her autobiography which could be used as the basis for a film on her life and political career, but Charles, in her usual sharp tone, has told them there'll never be a film because she's not going to sit down and write.

A mutual friend has arranged for Chicago Tribune political analyst Georgiana Geyer, author of the Castro, to write her life story. Charles wouldn't mind talking to Geyer. They had met in Washington and, strangely enough, the politician considers the journalist easy to talk to. If only they cold meet and really talk.

In 45 minutes, an official car would pick her up to take her to visit her friend President Arthur N. R. Robinson. She'll return on November 30^th to attend a dinner in honour of outgoing Neal and Massy chairman Sidney Knox on December 1^st.

"It might not get done," she says, of the autobiography.

Pity.

Dame Eugenia was in Trinidad last week to attend the Lifeline-organized conference, "Violence, Self and the Young Male III". She was the moderator for the final session on Friday, "Politics & Political Decision-Makers".

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