Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

An ac­tivist says Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her min­is­ters should choose their words care­ful­ly when dis­cussing the coun­try’s re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­sponse to the re­sults of a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion in a sov­er­eign na­tion.

“While I’m sure the peo­ple of T&T ben­e­fit tremen­dous­ly from our re­la­tion­ship with the US, align­ing too close­ly with Don­ald Trump at a time when his vot­er base, and even mem­bers of his con­gres­sion­al cau­cus, ap­pear to be aban­don­ing him is a diplo­mat­ic mis­step. It could hurt T&T’s re­la­tions not on­ly with a fu­ture US ad­min­is­tra­tion, but al­so with our oth­er al­lies re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in the long run,” Ravi Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj said yes­ter­day.

He said he was not sug­gest­ing that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment re­verse any of its de­ci­sions re­gard­ing the US. How­ev­er, he be­lieves no for­eign al­ly of Trump is safe.

Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj was speak­ing af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter com­ment­ed on the out­come of the US midterm elec­tions. The De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty rout­ed the Re­pub­li­cans in what was de­scribed as a “blue tsuna­mi,” tak­ing con­trol of both the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate.

A for­mer UNC ac­tivist, Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj be­came an in­de­pen­dent ac­tivist af­ter T&T’s 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion. He is now a re­searcher and com­men­ta­tor who pro­motes the poli­cies of the cur­rent US gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing on transat­lantic af­fairs.

He said he had sup­port­ed the Re­pub­li­can Par­ty since 2003, when he be­came in­volved in Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger’s cam­paign in Cal­i­for­nia’s gu­ber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion, and had re­mained a Re­pub­li­can mem­ber.

Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj said he dis­agreed with those who be­lieve the UNC has no plan or does not know what it is do­ing.

How­ev­er, he added: “There are a hand­ful of min­istries and min­is­ters who give this im­pres­sion. None more so than the Prime Min­is­ter when­ev­er she ad­dress­es mat­ters in­volv­ing T&T’s for­eign pol­i­cy, es­pe­cial­ly per­tain­ing to our re­la­tion­ship with the US.”

He said dur­ing her first term, Per­sad-Bisses­sar aligned with the Barack Oba­ma ad­min­is­tra­tion to com­bat in­ter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism by co-spon­sor­ing a Unit­ed Na­tions res­o­lu­tion with­out con­sult­ing oth­er Cari­com lead­ers.

In her sec­ond term, he said, Per­sad-Bisses­sar aligned with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, “which isn’t how diplo­ma­cy is meant to work, es­pe­cial­ly among gov­ern­ments.”

“I say this un­der­stand­ing that, in his first term, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was heav­i­ly crit­i­cised for not want­i­ng to en­gage with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, which al­so ap­peared to be due to Row­ley’s po­lit­i­cal align­ment with the De­moc­rats,” he said.

Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj said this led the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment to hire the Group DC, LLC, lob­by­ists who en­gaged al­most en­tire­ly with De­moc­rats, who con­trolled Con­gress at the time.

“In my opin­ion, this too was bad diplo­ma­cy,” he said.

He added: “But the dif­fer­ence in what Kam­la’s do­ing now—es­pe­cial­ly in her re­marks re­gard­ing Tues­day’s elec­tion—demon­strates that her ad­min­is­tra­tion is align­ing with an in­di­vid­ual and a po­lit­i­cal par­ty rather than the in­sti­tu­tions of gov­ern­ment. As such, not on­ly does she come across as not re­spect­ing the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process and elec­tion re­sults—which just hand­ed Trump the sec­ond ma­jor ref­er­en­dum in his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer—but, more im­por­tant­ly, what that al­le­giance means for T&T.”

Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj said there was a dif­fer­ence be­tween sup­port­ing a par­ty as an in­di­vid­ual and re­quir­ing a coun­try to sup­port that par­ty based on in­di­vid­ual pref­er­ence.
He al­so said one of the key rea­sons for Trump’s un­pop­u­lar­i­ty was his han­dling of the mil­i­tary.

“The De­moc­rats al­so nev­er lost sight of the mil­i­tary strikes which oc­curred in the Caribbean for over a year, with hu­man ca­su­al­ties—two of whom are sus­pect­ed to be T&T cit­i­zens,” he said.

“As such, it’s ex­pect­ed that af­ter the De­moc­rats take con­trol of Con­gress and the Sen­ate, one of their first acts would be to launch an of­fi­cial hear­ing in­to the au­tho­ri­sa­tion and le­gal­i­ty of these strikes, which may lead to the im­peach­ment of ‘Sec­re­tary of War’ Pe­te Hegseth.”

He al­so not­ed that Trump an­nounced on Tues­day a US$4 bil­lion cut in aid to Is­rael at year-end.

“The rea­son he cit­ed was the is­sue be­ing an in­flu­en­tial talk­ing point among up-and-com­ing so­cial­ist De­moc­rats. There­fore, if I were Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, this is what I’d be most wor­ried about—be­cause it’s well known Don­ald Trump has a his­to­ry of dis­card­ing even his most ar­dent sup­port­ers if he feels their re­la­tion­ship no longer serves his best in­ter­ests,” he said.

“For him to do this with Is­rael, and es­pe­cial­ly Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu, who has con­sis­tent­ly been al­lied with his Mid­dle East poli­cies, shows that no for­eign al­ly is safe.”