Sto­ries by Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the pho­to of what ap­pears to be a US mil­i­tary base in To­ba­go, in fact, shows what she de­scribed as “sup­port of­fices” for the mil­i­tary radar sys­tem on the is­land.

Her com­ment came yes­ter­day in re­sponse to a Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive drone pho­to­graph and sto­ry which cap­tured what ap­peared to be a US mil­i­tary base near the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Crown Point, To­ba­go.

The im­ages show sev­er­al trucks and util­i­ty ve­hi­cles po­si­tioned with­in the re­strict­ed area, along with a small tent and an­oth­er tem­po­rary struc­ture lo­cat­ed close to the equip­ment, sug­gest­ing use for op­er­a­tional or shel­ter pur­pos­es. A num­ber of portable toi­lets were al­so ob­served at the site.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions about what was on the site via What­sApp yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not ex­plic­it­ly de­scribe the com­pound as a mil­i­tary base.

“The pic­ture is self-ex­plana­to­ry. There is a radar with the sup­port of­fices to op­er­ate it,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar went on to ac­cuse this me­dia house and the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment of “ap­pear­ing ob­sessed” with get­ting the “radar and the Amer­i­cans out of the coun­try,” as she ar­gued that the on­ly peo­ple who would ben­e­fit from such an out­come would be drug traf­fick­ers.

“Keep go­ing, when peo­ple show you who they are be­lieve them,” she added.

But when pressed fur­ther to con­firm whether the struc­ture cap­tured would qual­i­fy as a mil­i­tary base, Per­sad-Bisses­sar again ac­cused this me­dia house of as­sist­ing the PNM in their bid for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) elec­tions, as she sharply dis­missed the ques­tion.

“Please stop wast­ing my time with this non­sense. Feel free to send any ques­tions on sen­si­ble is­sues in the fu­ture. Have a won­der­ful evening.”

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les yes­ter­day called on the Gov­ern­ment to clear­ly state what was in the pho­to and the ex­tent of the US mil­i­tary’s pres­ence in T&T.

She said the Op­po­si­tion will be re­spon­si­ble in ad­dress­ing the is­sue un­til Gov­ern­ment con­clu­sive­ly con­firms or de­nies whether the fa­cil­i­ty was a base, which she said fur­ther high­light­ed the im­por­tance of trans­paren­cy on the mat­ter.

“Now that this has been ex­posed, this sit­u­a­tion, the ques­tion still aris­es in­so­far as what the Gov­ern­ment has to say as it re­lates to the radar?” Beck­les said at the PNM’s Chil­dren’s Christ­mas Par­ty at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain.

“It can­not be that on each and every oc­ca­sion we get a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. If it is we have to re­spond ap­pro­pri­ate­ly and ac­cu­rate­ly, we do not want to run the risk that we sim­ply give off-the-cuff re­spons­es.”

Beck­les al­so not­ed that dur­ing a re­cent vis­it to To­ba­go, sev­er­al per­sons ap­peared to be un­easy with the in­stal­la­tion of a radar sys­tem, as she said the fear of con­flict un­fold­ing prompt­ed some peo­ple to can­cel their vis­its to the is­land.

She said this was fur­ther need for the Gov­ern­ment to come for­ward and speak out on the mat­ter.

Din­di­al an­tic­i­pates more mil­i­tary fa­cil­i­ties

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day re­tired Coast Guard Lt Cm­dr and Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Nor­man Din­di­al said he was not sur­prised by any pos­si­ble US mil­i­tary pres­ence in To­ba­go, as he be­lieved per­son­nel would be present on-site to as­sist in re­pairs, main­te­nance and up­keep of the radar.

He, how­ev­er, be­lieves the US mil­i­tary “foot­print” in T&T will con­tin­ue to grow, not­ing that this should be a con­cern to the pub­lic, as it fur­ther places the coun­try at risk of be­ing a tar­get of mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion.

“We’re go­ing to see the Gov­ern­ment jus­ti­fy­ing and say­ing, ‘Be­cause we have this radar and be­cause we are in this po­si­tion, we are ex­posed and Venezuela is threat­en­ing us, we need the US to de­fend us, so we need the US to come in­to Trinidad and have a base’,” he said.

“There will be more mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es and the foot­print will in­crease in the com­ing months in Trinidad and To­ba­go, un­less Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump says there is a to­tal de-es­ca­la­tion. We have brought the US in our ter­ri­to­ries, so we are go­ing to see a long-term sta­tion­ing of the US mil­i­tary back, maybe like in Ch­aguara­mas days in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Din­di­al said he was con­cerned a fur­ther es­ca­la­tion of mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ties would put T&T in dan­ger of be­ing “col­lat­er­al dam­age” if any con­flict arose.

He ac­knowl­edged that while Gov­ern­ment would be lim­it­ed in what it can di­vulge pub­licly, he felt it was nec­es­sary to ex­plain the na­ture of US in­volve­ment and pres­ence on the is­land.

“Strate­gic mes­sag­ing and strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tion is very im­por­tant for any gov­ern­ment to main­tain sta­bil­i­ty for their peo­ple. We have peo­ple look­ing for peo­ple to give them that guid­ance, they’re look­ing for peo­ple to calm them and that’s why you vot­ed peo­ple in gov­er­nance to do that, so it’s very im­por­tant they get their acts to­geth­er with that strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tion and say some­thing to the pub­lic.”

For­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith al­so felt Gov­ern­ment should adopt a more trans­par­ent ap­proach to the pres­ence of a pos­si­ble US mil­i­tary in­stal­la­tion.

He not­ed that the ab­sence of clear mes­sag­ing from Gov­ern­ment would give rise to pan­ic and al­low per­sons “with an agen­da” to un­der­mine any se­cu­ri­ty mis­sion in the re­gion.

Grif­fith, how­ev­er, dis­agreed that the US pres­ence would en­dan­ger T&T, not­ing it would act as a de­ter­rent to any at­tacks on the coun­try.

Re­fer­ring to past re­marks by Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, who have ac­cused T&T of co­op­er­at­ing with US forces to plan at­tacks on their coun­try, Grif­fith said such a mil­i­tary pres­ence was time­ly and nec­es­sary giv­en the ten­sion.

“With­out the US, Venezuela can ac­tu­al­ly im­ple­ment what they have been threat­en­ing to do for the past few months, which is to in­vade Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Grif­fith said.

“Venezuela said in the last few months that we (T&T) were har­bour­ing ter­ror­ists and per­sons bent on desta­bil­is­ing Venezuela and they will hunt these per­sons down wher­ev­er they are, that was a sign that they want­ed to en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go. They have made sev­er­al threats that they in­tend to at­tack Trinidad and To­ba­go, so we should wel­come any US pres­ence to pro­tect Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Grif­fith al­so said an­oth­er pos­si­ble ben­e­fit of hav­ing a US mil­i­tary base was T&T’s econ­o­my be­ing en­hanced with for­eign ex­change.

Ef­forts to con­tact Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.