The Ja­maica Glean­er has crit­i­cised Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for her gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to the US naval build-up in the south­ern Caribbean and its threat of mil­i­tary ac­tion against Venezuela.

In an ed­i­to­r­i­al pub­lished Mon­day, the news­pa­per de­scribed it as “not clear what the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to sig­nal by re­serv­ing its po­si­tion” on CARI­COM’s de­c­la­ra­tion that the re­gion should re­main a zone of peace. CARI­COM had reaf­firmed “the im­por­tance of di­a­logue and en­gage­ment to­wards the peace­ful res­o­lu­tion of dis­putes and con­flict” and ex­pressed sup­port for “the ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty of coun­tries in the re­gion” and the right of cit­i­zens “to pur­sue their liveli­hoods in safe­ty.”

The Glean­er high­light­ed that while CARI­COM’s po­si­tion ap­plied to dis­putes such as Venezuela’s claim over west­ern Guyana, it al­so pro­vid­ed lessons for the US–Venezuela ten­sions. The ed­i­to­r­i­al not­ed that CARI­COM’s state­ment did not ex­plic­it­ly ad­dress Wash­ing­ton’s re­quest for An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and Grena­da to host satel­lite lis­ten­ing posts to sup­port US op­er­a­tions. It warned that such a re­quest could “erode the CARI­COM ide­al of non-align­ment and of the Caribbean as a zone of peace,” po­ten­tial­ly mak­ing the coun­tries host­ing the fa­cil­i­ties com­plic­it in hos­til­i­ties.

The news­pa­per al­so crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ear­li­er com­ments, say­ing she had giv­en “full-throat­ed sup­port to the Amer­i­cans, urg­ing the Unit­ed States to kill the al­leged drug smug­glers ‘vi­o­lent­ly’” and called the Caribbean as a zone of peace a “false ide­al.” 

The ed­i­to­r­i­al added that fears have grown, even in Ja­maica, af­ter re­ports that two Trinida­di­an fish­er­men were among those killed in US op­er­a­tions.

By con­trast, Ja­maica’s Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness, the Glean­er not­ed, has pro­mot­ed a “glob­al war” on gangs but qual­i­fied that any ac­tion should fol­low in­ter­na­tion­al law and be con­duct­ed “in co­or­di­na­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion” with re­gion­al coun­tries, align­ing with CARI­COM’s po­si­tion. CARI­COM, the ed­i­to­r­i­al said, “un­der­scored that ef­forts to over­come these chal­lenges should be through on­go­ing in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion and with­in in­ter­na­tion­al law.”

"It is dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand what was so dif­fi­cult in these con­cepts for the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to un­der­stand that it re­served its po­si­tion on the CARI­COM de­c­la­ra­tion," the ed­i­to­r­i­al read.  "Per­haps clar­i­ty be­ing await­ed by Port of Spain is a few more Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens be­ing killed with­out due process. What Mrs. Per­sad-Bisses­sar should ap­pre­ci­ate, though, is that spir­it­ed talk doesn’t make her strong. Or even ap­pear so."