DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts are split over Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim that Cari­com is an “un­re­li­able part­ner,” af­ter she ac­cused the re­gion­al bloc of sid­ing with Venezuela over Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing a tele­vised in­ter­view on Crime Watch on Mon­day evening. The Op­po­si­tion has, in turn, ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of iso­lat­ing the coun­try from its Caribbean neigh­bours and stok­ing ten­sions with Venezuela.

Po­lit­i­cal con­sul­tant and prin­ci­pal di­rec­tor of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Re­search Ser­vices (CADRES), Pe­ter Wick­ham, re­ject­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s claim, say­ing there is no ev­i­dence that Cari­com has tak­en Venezuela’s side.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via Zoom yes­ter­day, Wick­ham said Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dou­bled down on her po­si­tion in­stead of cor­rect­ing it, af­ter dis­tanc­ing her ad­min­is­tra­tion from Cari­com’s re­cent state­ment reaf­firm­ing the Caribbean as a “zone of peace.”

“It rep­re­sents yet an­oth­er step along a path to say, I need to jus­ti­fy a po­si­tion that I took, which the vast ma­jor­i­ty of us think was er­ro­neous, in that you’re con­flat­ing your do­mes­tic crime sit­u­a­tion with a glob­al and re­gion­al re­al­i­ty in which you are es­sen­tial­ly be­ing used to pur­sue ag­gres­sion against an­oth­er, a third par­ty.”

Wick­ham added that while Per­sad-Bisses­sar linked her sup­port for US op­er­a­tions against nar­co-traf­fick­ers to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s crime cri­sis, Ja­maica still has the re­gion’s high­est mur­der rate per capi­ta.

“I don’t hear Prime Min­is­ter (An­drew) Hol­ness, cer­tain­ly be­fore the hur­ri­cane, at­tempt­ing to sug­gest that nar­co-traf­fick­ing from wher­ev­er was the re­sult of his mur­der rate, and that’s the ba­sis of peo­ple dis­agree­ing with him. So again, I think she’s on an is­land,” he said.

The an­a­lyst urged Per­sad-Bisses­sar to present ev­i­dence for her claim that Cari­com has favoured Venezuela over T&T, as well as for her sug­ges­tion that the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment has long been fi­nanced by the drug trade.

“The idea of be­ing able to speak loose­ly with­out giv­ing ev­i­dence is not the type of thing that one would want to en­cour­age. Cer­tain­ly, it’s the type of thing that Don­ald Trump does, but again it’s not the type of thing that is con­sis­tent with our best prin­ci­ples of gov­er­nance and democ­ra­cy,” he said.

But po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed backed the Prime Min­is­ter’s po­si­tion, ar­gu­ing that Cari­com has failed to meet the needs of its mem­ber states and has be­come stag­nant in ad­dress­ing re­gion­al chal­lenges.

“She’s 100% right. We need a shake-up. The re­gion has not been suf­fer­ing like Trinidad and To­ba­go. I’m not hap­py by the fact that in the past peo­ple from the re­gion would say, ‘Well, boy, Tri­ni hot, boy.’ Yes, Tri­ni hot. But did any­body ever pro­vide a so­lu­tion or rec­om­men­da­tion about how we could cool down Trinidad and To­ba­go from the par­a­site that is transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime as a whole?”

Mo­hammed said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­ci­sion to deep­en na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion with the US should be seen as prag­mat­ic rather than con­fronta­tion­al.

How­ev­er, for­mer min­is­ter of for­eign and Cari­com af­fairs Dr Amery Browne dis­missed the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­fence, say­ing she is at­tempt­ing to shift blame for a cri­sis of her own mak­ing.

He ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of alien­at­ing re­gion­al al­lies by re­ject­ing Cari­com’s long-held prin­ci­ple of pre­serv­ing the Caribbean as a zone of peace.

“The Prime Min­is­ter can­not rea­son­ably have ex­pect­ed the sen­si­ble and ex­pe­ri­enced lead­ers of Cari­com to have joined her in such bel­liger­ence, and now she is seek­ing to mis­la­bel their wis­dom and good judge­ment as some­how be­ing against T&T. She nev­er sought or con­tributed to a Cari­com con­sen­sus on the is­sue of the ten­sion she cre­at­ed with Venezuela be­cause she did not see such as use­ful. In fact, the Prime Min­is­ter went even fur­ther and open­ly dis­par­aged the need for such con­sen­sus.”