KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

An Amer­i­can Pan-African­ist is warn­ing Caribbean lead­ers against align­ing them­selves too close­ly with Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump or any oth­er US pres­i­dent, say­ing such re­la­tion­ships could draw the re­gion in­to poli­cies that are not in its best in­ter­ests.

Speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly with Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing a pub­lic meet­ing at the La Hor­quet­ta Pub­lic Li­brary yes­ter­day, Dr Umar John­son weighed in on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­la­tion­ship with Trump amid grow­ing crit­i­cism af­ter the De­moc­rats’ sweep­ing vic­to­ry in the US midterm elec­tions ear­li­er this week.

“I ab­solute­ly be­lieve that Caribbean lead­ers need to be very care­ful about align­ing them­selves with any Amer­i­can pres­i­dent, be they De­mo­c­rat or Re­pub­li­can,” John­son said.

“Speak­ing as a mem­ber of the Amer­i­can African vil­lage, nei­ther par­ty re­al­ly cares about Black peo­ple in Amer­i­ca and, by ex­ten­sion, they don’t care about Black peo­ple in the Caribbean ei­ther.”

John­son said Caribbean lead­ers must ex­er­cise cau­tion when cul­ti­vat­ing po­lit­i­cal re­la­tion­ships with Wash­ing­ton.

“They need to keep six de­grees of sep­a­ra­tion to make sure they don’t get en­tan­gled in some­thing that is not in the best in­ter­est of the Caribbean fam­i­ly,” he added.

His com­ments come as De­moc­rats pre­pare to take con­trol of both the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate, deal­ing Trump a sig­nif­i­cant po­lit­i­cal set­back and prompt­ing de­bate over the im­pli­ca­tions for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­eign pol­i­cy.

The elec­tion re­sults have al­so fu­elled crit­i­cism from for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and for­mer for­eign and Cari­com af­fairs min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne, all of whom have ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of com­pro­mis­ing the coun­try’s diplo­mat­ic in­de­pen­dence through its close align­ment with Trump.

Row­ley ar­gued that Trinidad and To­ba­go did not need to sac­ri­fice its prin­ci­ples to main­tain good re­la­tions with Wash­ing­ton, while Browne warned that Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean could face in­creased scruti­ny from Con­gress.

How­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dis­missed sug­ges­tions that the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ry could un­der­mine T&T’s re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States. She de­scribed the elec­tion out­come as pre­dictable and in­sist­ed that co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the two coun­tries would con­tin­ue re­gard­less of which par­ty con­trols Con­gress.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so ques­tioned the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s re­ac­tion to the re­sults, ar­gu­ing that the shift in con­gres­sion­al con­trol would not dis­rupt re­la­tions be­tween Port of Spain and Wash­ing­ton.

Mean­while, John­son said he does not ex­pect the De­moc­rats’ vic­to­ry to bring any sig­nif­i­cant changes to US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in­volv­ing Venezuela.

“De­mo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ry will not change Wash­ing­ton’s ap­proach be­cause, con­trary to what peo­ple be­lieve, the pres­i­dent is an em­ploy­ee, not a boss,” he said.

“The true pow­er of the Unit­ed States lies in the CIA. It lies in the Fed­er­al Re­serve. It lies in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Agency.”

John­son fur­ther al­leged that a “shad­ow gov­ern­ment” de­ter­mines Amer­i­ca’s in­volve­ment in mil­i­tary con­flicts and in­flu­ences for­eign pol­i­cy re­gard­less of which par­ty is in pow­er.

Ad­dress­ing the US mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean, John­son linked Wash­ing­ton’s ac­tions to the Mon­roe Doc­trine, in­tro­duced in 1823 to op­pose fur­ther Eu­ro­pean colo­nial ex­pan­sion in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. He ac­cused the US of us­ing the doc­trine to main­tain its own in­flu­ence over coun­tries in the re­gion.

“As far as Amer­i­ca’s mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean, that’s part of the Mon­roe Doc­trine, which ba­si­cal­ly said the Unit­ed States will refuse to al­low any oth­er coun­try to come in­to the re­gion and try to neo-colonise any ter­ri­to­ry,” he said.

“So what’s go­ing to hap­pen in­stead of that? Amer­i­ca is go­ing to be the new neo-colonis­er. You see what they’re do­ing in Venezuela. You see what they’re do­ing in Cu­ba, and they’re go­ing to work their way in­to the Caribbean.”

John­son is sched­uled to host an­oth­er pub­lic meet­ing to­day at the Kwame Ture Cen­tre in Laven­tille.