As a na­tion on the road to pro­gres­sive na­tion sta­tus, we must pause and re­flect on what we ex­pend time, ef­fort and en­er­gy. Aren't we sup­posed to be con­cerned with in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues and what af­fects many coun­tries in­clud­ing the cur­rent su­per­pow­er?

A very crit­i­cal as­sem­bly took place re­cent­ly. What un­fold­ed was im­por­tant for all coun­tries es­pe­cial­ly the US since the death of its Am­bas­sador Stevens and oth­er diplo­mats in the Mid­dle East. Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ah­madine­jad ad­dressed the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly twice.

Due to his na­tion's his­to­ry and pub­lic ut­ter­ances, there were sev­er­al in­ter­ests groups that voiced their ob­jec­tions to him ad­dress­ing the as­sem­bly. It was a moot point and some say it in­ten­si­fied the at­mos­phere in NYC on Sep­tem­ber 26, as it was Yom Kip­pur (The Day of Atone­ment and con­sid­ered the holi­est of all days for Jews).

New York City's De­part­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion pub­lic schools were closed as well as many promi­nent busi­ness­es and places of re­pute. The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca had its hands tied as it is oblig­ed to is­sue visas to all rep­re­sen­ta­tives of mem­ber states re­gard­less of how sur­re­al and out­landish their views are and how re­pres­sive their regimes may be as they are bound by the USA-Unit­ed Na­tions "Head­quar­ters Agree­ment" of 1947.

There have been prece­dents though of where the USA re­fused to grant visas to of­fi­cials like Yass­er Arafat in 1988 be­cause he or­dered the killing of a US diplo­mat and for­mer Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, Kurt Wald­heim due to the fact that he con­cealed his role in the mass killings of Jews dur­ing World War II when he was then a Nazi of­fi­cer.

Many coun­tries in­clud­ing ours should have been con­cerned about the Iran­ian Pres­i­dent's re­cent state­ments on Is­rael. He pub­licly stat­ed that Is­rael is "an in­sult to hu­man­i­ty...a can­cer­ous tu­mour" and called for "its dis­ap­pear­ance." Un­der Pres­i­dent Ah­madine­jad's rule, Iran added pres­sure in its per­se­cu­tion of re­li­gious mi­nor­i­ty groups es­pe­cial­ly those of the Ba­hai faith.

Ac­counts from jour­nal­ists and cor­re­spon­dents liv­ing there in­di­cate that many mem­bers of that faith face fre­quent ha­rass­ment, tor­ture, op­pres­sive treat­ment and un­fair im­pris­on­ment. Those dis­si­dents against the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment who sup­port the mem­bers of the Ba­hai faith al­so get as­sault­ed.

All coun­tries in the as­sem­bly that are al­lies with the Unit­ed States against such op­pres­sive acts against west­ern regimes, must put their heads to­geth­er and of­fer so­lu­tions and ac­tive­ly take part in ac­tion-ori­ent­ed, pro­gres­sive bi-lat­er­al and mul­ti-lat­er­al talks to help with del­e­ga­tions to bring a res­o­lu­tion to this cri­sis.

Iran al­so con­tin­ues with its nu­clear weapons pro­gramme to­tal­ly dis­re­gard­ing the poli­cies and reg­u­la­tions of the In­ter­na­tion­al Atom­ic En­er­gy Agency and the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. Do we re­call what Trinidad and To­ba­go was do­ing on Sep­tem­ber 11, (on the 11th An­niver­sary of the 9/11 at­tacks) when over 3,500 de­ceased names were be­ing read out by the vic­tims fam­i­lies and when the US Am­bas­sador and oth­er diplo­mats were killed si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in the East?

These in­ter­na­tion­al events were be­ing viewed by mil­lions-even the US pres­i­den­tial elec­tions can­di­dates, the cur­rent Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date/Re­pub­li­can nom­i­nee, Gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney put aside all pol­i­tick­ing on that day. Even, all the ma­jor net­works re­spect­ed that and fol­lowed same.

What did our lo­cal lead­ers in wait­ing such as Dr Row­ley do? What Dr Row­ley should have done was hold talks with the rel­e­vant par­ties in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter of for­eign Af­fairs, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and oth­er per­sons qual­i­fied in the field of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions and those with ex­pe­ri­ence in in­ter­na­tion­al peace-mak­ing re­la­tions so that the Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs would have some­thing sol­id to dis­cuss with the many rep­re­sen­ta­tives from oth­er na­tions who as­sem­bled in New York City.

They could have dis­cussed the so­cio-eco­nom­ic, po­lit­i­cal re­la­tions and a way for­ward in deal­ing with the con­tin­u­ous un­rest in the Mid­dle East, es­pe­cial­ly since many au­to­crat­ic/to­tal­i­tar­i­an states like Libya move to­wards es­tab­lish­ing true democ­ra­cy which is prov­ing to be quite an ar­du­ous tasks as there are so many is­sues to deal with.

Even bet­ter, the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion should have sought an au­di­ence with the Prime Min­is­ter to dis­cuss in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues that im­pact up­on Trinidad's econ­o­my. Af­ter all, what is the role of a true op­po­si­tion in any re­al democ­ra­cy? Is Dr Row­ley ready to be Prime Min­is­ter if it hap­pened in the morn­ing?

The role of the Op­po­si­tion is not to just crit­i­cise but to of­fer so­lu­tions-vi­able and plau­si­ble so­lu­tions. Have we heard any­thing from him since as­sum­ing of­fice on ways to com­bat crime and stim­u­late the econ­o­my and pro­pos­als for so­cial pro­grammes? Has he done re­search to see what ob­tains in ju­ris­dic­tions like USA and Cana­da to see what would work here?

All this en­er­gy over two weeks now on con­demn­ing and ill-speak­ing is ridicu­lous and to­tal­ly un­be­com­ing. I im­plore all to view CNN or BBC to be en­light­ened, ed­u­cat­ed on in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues.

Mor­ley Braith­waite

Trinci­ty