Out­go­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has called on Trinidad and To­ba­go to “com­plete its in­de­pen­dence” by sev­er­ing ties with the Unit­ed King­dom’s Privy Coun­cil and adopt­ing the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) as the na­tion’s fi­nal court of ap­peal.

“It is un­just, it is dis­grace­ful that they would dis­re­gard our wider na­tion­al in­ter­est, put a fee on us and tell us while you have to come to us to have our law lords tell you what is right and wrong, you have to pay for a visa to come and do that.”

Row­ley’s thoughts on the con­tro­ver­sial mat­ter were shared dur­ing his fi­nal ad­dress to Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sup­port­ers yes­ter­day dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal ral­ly at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, where the par­ty pre­sent­ed all 41 can­di­dates. It was the first time he spoke about the Unit­ed King­dom gov­ern­ment’s sud­den im­po­si­tion of visa re­quire­ments on Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens, a move that has sparked wide­spread de­bate and con­cern.

“What re­al­ly rots my gut is that I have to al­so swal­low that the high­est court of this land is in Lon­don at the Privy Coun­cil and if you have to go to the Privy Coun­cil, you have to go there by way of some arrange­ments they make for you. Do you re­al­ly feel in­de­pen­dent? Where your high­est court is in a for­eign coun­try and the for­eign coun­try lead­ers would put down the arrange­ments by which you could come to that coun­try.”

All na­tion­als of Trinidad and To­ba­go will now re­quire a visa to en­ter the UK, in­clud­ing for short vis­its. The de­ci­sion, made pub­lic on March 12, comes in re­sponse to what the UK Gov­ern­ment de­scribed as a “sig­nif­i­cant in­crease” in T&T na­tion­als ar­riv­ing as vis­i­tors and then claim­ing asy­lum.

Ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial re­lease from the UK Gov­ern­ment, the new visa re­quire­ment is in­tend­ed to ad­dress the mis­use of the Elec­tron­ic Trav­el Au­tho­ri­sa­tion (ETA) sys­tem and to pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of the UK’s im­mi­gra­tion process. “The UK’s re­la­tion­ship with Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains a strong and friend­ly one,” the state­ment said, but added that the de­ci­sion “has not been tak­en light­ly.”

Speak­ing on the is­sue, Row­ley did not hold back his frus­tra­tion.

“Well if you all did not know that we should get out of the Privy Coun­cil and get to the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, this treat­ment by the British gov­ern­ment should let all of you know how they view us.”

He al­so fur­ther de­fend­ed the coun­try’s sov­er­eign­ty fol­low­ing the trav­el ad­just­ment. 

“If you think they have come around to treat­ing us like equals, you have an­oth­er thought com­ing, many of them still be­lieve that we are sub­stan­dard. We are in­fe­ri­or and they should treat us how they want to treat us...Trinidad and To­ba­go must com­plete its in­de­pen­dence and get the hell out of the Privy Coun­cil.”

The out­go­ing Prime Min­is­ter al­so lament­ed the im­pli­ca­tions of the trav­el ad­just­ment and while he called for con­tin­ued di­a­logue he said the coun­try should not be pun­ished.

“Be­fore you know it, overnight they telling us we had 400 peo­ple ask­ing for refugee sta­tus. When they ask, it’s a re­quest, you can turn them down, you can tell them no, but their law al­lows this process to go on for years.

“What Britain has done there is not on­ly to dam­age us and our feel­ings but to dam­age our econ­o­my as well be­cause Lon­don is a gate­way to Eu­rope and every time you have to pass through Lon­don to go and do busi­ness and worse, the visa is very ex­pen­sive so it goes from be­ing free to be­ing a charge on you.”

He ac­knowl­edged the frus­tra­tion and anx­i­ety felt by cit­i­zens re­gard­ing the de­vel­op­ment and em­pha­sised that diplo­ma­cy and con­struc­tive en­gage­ment must guide the coun­try’s re­sponse.

“To­day I want to call on our friends in the Unit­ed King­dom to re­view that un­just ac­tion against the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We have been and we con­tin­ue to work close­ly with se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies with our Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs and our Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter to iden­ti­fy the ragga­muffins who leav­ing here and go to Eng­land and do that and if they co­op­er­ate with us they won’t have any refugees prob­lems.”