To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

It is un­for­tu­nate that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar seems to have locked her­self and the Gov­ern­ment in­to an un­called-for bind by tak­ing the po­si­tion that no min­is­ter will trav­el abroad on state busi­ness un­til the Par­lia­ment is con­vened next week Fri­day.

As a re­sult of the Prime Min­is­ter's rul­ing, T&T will not have rep­re­sen­ta­tion at the high­est po­lit­i­cal lev­el at the meet­ing be­tween Cari­com for­eign min­is­ters and US Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton which takes place in Bar­ba­dos to­day. In­stead, this coun­try will be rep­re­sent­ed by "tech­nocrats" who would not have the abil­i­ty to make in­ter­ven­tions or put for­ward T&T's po­si­tion in dis­cus­sions in­volv­ing for­eign min­is­ters.

While Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar's rea­son for pre­vent­ing of­fi­cial over­seas trav­el un­til Par­lia­ment meets is prin­ci­pled, it is not a strong and com­pelling rea­son for an ad­min­is­tra­tion that has hit the ground run­ning in every oth­er re­spect. Next to the US Pres­i­dent, the US Sec­re­tary of State is the most im­por­tant of­fi­cial who could be vis­it­ing the re­gion.

The vis­it as­sumes even greater im­por­tance for T&T as a new gov­ern­ment has tak­en of­fice, and giv­en this coun­try's ac­knowl­edged lead­er­ship role with­in Cari­com. Re­la­tions with Wash­ing­ton are vi­tal mat­ters which al­ways have to be mas­saged and im­proved up­on, more­so giv­en the im­por­tance of this coun­try's crit­i­cal ex­port trade in LNG to the US mar­ket.

And if there is any fur­ther rea­son for this coun­try's new For­eign Min­is­ter, Su­ruj Ram­bachan, to be at the meet­ing and to in­ter­act with Mrs Clin­ton, it is the fact that it comes af­ter last year's Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as held here. Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma talked at that meet­ing about fol­low­ing up by as­sist­ing with se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures to re­strict the drug trade com­ing through the re­gion. These are cen­tral mat­ters to the na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions of this coun­try and every oth­er state in the Caribbean Sea. So­lu­tions are not go­ing to be ar­rived at by Cari­com lead­ers stay­ing home to keep their pop­u­la­tions warm and in the process miss­ing out on meet­ing, dis­cussing and ne­go­ti­at­ing mat­ters with a US Sec­re­tary of State.

For a few years now, since a meet­ing in Wash­ing­ton with then Pres­i­dent George Bush, Cari­com lead­ers have been seek­ing an­oth­er meet­ing with a US Pres­i­dent to up­date and en­gage a new free trade agree­ment with the US. The op­por­tu­ni­ty in Bar­ba­dos, with the leader in Cari­com trade seek­ing to ad­vance such a pos­si­bil­i­ty with the Sec­re­tary of State, would have been a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­vance such a re­quest.

At the bi­lat­er­al lev­el, it would have been ap­pro­pri­ate for pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics if the new ad­min­is­tra­tion had tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to say di­rect­ly to Mrs Clin­ton that T&T, notwith­stand­ing the change in gov­ern­ment, is very much com­mit­ted to deep­en­ing and ex­pand­ing the long-stand­ing re­la­tion­ship with Wash­ing­ton.

Con­verse­ly, a non-ap­pear­ance by T&T's For­eign Min­is­ter might be in­ter­pret­ed as send­ing a sig­nal of dis­in­ter­est. At the re­gion­al lev­el, while it is ex­pect­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar will at­tend the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing in ear­ly Ju­ly, it would have been good for Mr Ram­bachan, this coun­try's top diplo­mat, to es­tab­lish ear­ly link­ages with his col­leagues in the re­gion. Per­haps even en­gage in a few pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions with them about the Cari­com agen­da.

While the re­cent elec­tion cam­paign dealt ex­ten­sive­ly with do­mes­tic is­sues, no coun­try can ne­glect re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues. In fact the rea­son why the eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary su­per-pow­er of the age is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed here in the re­gion at the con­fer­ence is ex­act­ly be­cause the Amer­i­cans un­der­stand the im­por­tance of act­ing in a world that has no bound­aries.

We in T&T, a tiny coun­try, se­vere­ly re­strict­ed in the pow­er it can com­mand, can­not do oth­er­wise but seek to en­gage with our lead­ing trad­ing part­ner–at every pos­si­ble op­por­tu­ni­ty.