To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

What­ev­er Cari­com's lead­ers might have been ex­pect­ing from the styl­ish Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go with her sun­ny smile and nim­ble dance moves, they had to ad­just their think­ing quick­ly to ac­com­mo­date a tough talk­ing politi­cian keen to forge a dif­fer­ent agen­da for Trinidad and To­ba­go in the re­gion. That was the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar who quick­ly be­came the dar­ling of the re­gion's car­toon­ists, the line ren­di­tions of her on the com­men­tary pages of the re­gion's press por­tray­ing a straight talk­ing leader who in one Ob­serv­er il­lus­tra­tion was seen wav­ing away Ja­maican politi­cos with a stern warn­ing to "Move from mi stall, un­oo think is a ATM ma­chine dis!" The Ja­maican trans­la­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Bisses­sar's metaphor­i­cal warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go would be seek­ing re­la­tion­ships with its Caribbean peers that de­liv­ered mu­tu­al val­ue rather than sim­ply hand­ing out aid sup­port was, in its own way, ac­cu­rate.

Af­ter de­clar­ing con­straints on the econ­o­my at home and warn­ing that new fis­cal regimes and re­al­lo­ca­tions might be nec­es­sary to de­liv­er on the Peo­ple Part­ner­ship's promis­es, the Prime Min­is­ter could not very well ap­pear at the 31st Cari­com Sum­mit with a con­tin­u­ance of the good­ie bags of­fered by her pre­de­ces­sor to the re­gion. Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar will now have to find bal­ances be­tween con­straint and co-op­er­a­tion in chang­ing the ba­sis of this coun­try's re­la­tion­ships with re­gion­al lead­ers who were sent in­to a tail­spin by the re­ver­sal of sev­er­al of Trinidad and To­ba­go's pre­vi­ous­ly de­clared ini­tia­tives in the re­gion. Chair­ing the re­gion's Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee, the Prime Min­is­ter with­drew Trinidad and To­ba­go's fund­ing for sev­er­al re­gion­al pro­grammes.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, the PM may have to re­vis­it at least some of those ini­tia­tives, par­tic­u­lar­ly those which pool pa­trol and sur­veil­lance re­sources with our clos­est re­gion­al neigh­bours to de­vel­op stronger and more ef­fec­tive coun­ter­mea­sures to the in­cur­sions of the drug trade. The Prime Min­is­ter's po­si­tions at the sum­mit will play well lo­cal­ly with those who feel that Trinidad and To­ba­go must set­tle its crime sit­u­a­tion de­ci­sive­ly be­fore look­ing to the re­gion, but the re­al­i­ty is that the arch­i­pel­ago as a whole is vul­ner­a­ble to de­ter­mined drug run­ners, and each is­land's se­cu­ri­ty fail­ings will ul­ti­mate­ly di­min­ish the sus­tain­able economies of its trade part­ners. Ja­maica in par­tic­u­lar, is Trinidad and To­ba­go's strongest trade part­ner and the largest re­cip­i­ent of this coun­try's man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts and that busi­ness re­la­tion­ship needs to be man­aged to the ben­e­fit of both coun­tries.

This must have been fore­most on the Prime Min­is­ter's mind when she at­tend­ed a lun­cheon with mem­bers of the Ja­maican busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and promised those in at­ten­dance that she would "find am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tions" to the is­sues be­tween busi­ness op­er­at­ing in both coun­tries. Per­sad-Bisses­sar urged Ja­maican and Trinidad and To­ba­go's busi­ness lead­ers to par­tic­i­pate in a three-pronged ef­fort to dri­ve in­no­v­a­tive im­prove­ments, deep­en al­liances be­tween each na­tion's busi­ness com­mu­ni­ties and to ex­plore more mean­ing­ful busi­ness part­ner­ships. "Rather des­per­ate­ly, we need to join forces to im­pact in a sus­tain­able way on the in­ter­na­tion­al sce­nario, so let us not in some ways con­cen­trate on our dif­fer­ences and en­gage in war­fare in the re­gion."

It is in­cum­bent on the Prime Min­is­ter and her Trade Min­is­ter to en­sure that there is ad­e­quate fol­low through on her promis­es to defuse the source of those dif­fer­ences and re­view the com­plaints of Ja­maican man­u­fac­tur­ers and ex­porters in the best in­ter­ests of de­vel­op­ing strong re­gion­al trade part­ners. If noth­ing else, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar made it clear at the Sum­mit that Trinidad and To­ba­go would be re­tir­ing from its role as Caribbean fi­nan­cial god­fa­ther in favour of regimes that en­gaged more co-op­er­a­tive re­gion­al ef­forts at dri­ving the many ini­tia­tives of Cari­com that have lan­guished over the years. If her tough talk re­sults in greater com­mit­ment from oth­er strong na­tions in Cari­com to the ini­tia­tives they have promised to sup­port and a more ro­bust mon­i­tor­ing and ad­min­is­tra­tion of the tar­gets that the re­gion­al body has set it­self, then the Prime Min­is­ter's shake up of Caribbean lead­ers will on­ly re­dound to the ben­e­fit of the re­gion as a whole.