Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is fac­ing mount­ing crit­i­cism over her com­ments on Cu­ba at the Cari­com sum­mit.

Dur­ing her speech at the meet­ing’s open­ing cer­e­mo­ny on Tues­day evening, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Trinidad and To­ba­go will not sup­port what she de­scribed as a com­mu­nist regime and re­buked re­gion­al lead­ers for what she called in­ter­fer­ence in Cu­ba’s in­ter­nal af­fairs.

This comes at a par­tic­u­lar­ly tur­bu­lent mo­ment for the is­land na­tion, amid claims that the Unit­ed States is seek­ing to re­move its cur­rent leader and in­stall a pre­ferred suc­ces­sor in the so­cial­ist state.

In ear­ly 2026, the US is­sued an ex­ec­u­tive or­der im­pos­ing a fu­el block­ade and threat­en­ing tar­iffs on third-par­ty coun­tries that sup­ply oil to Cu­ba. Crit­ics and Unit­ed Na­tions ex­perts ar­gue this “uni­lat­er­al eco­nom­ic co­er­cion” is de­signed to force a gov­ern­ment’s col­lapse by in­duc­ing a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments on Tues­day were no­tice­ably dif­fer­ent from the Prime Min­is­ter’s po­si­tion in 2016, when, as op­po­si­tion leader, she praised Fi­del Cas­tro fol­low­ing his death, for his role in the de­vel­op­ment of Cu­ba. Cas­tro was a known com­mu­nist.

But Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor and for­mer For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne de­scribed the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­cent com­ments on Cu­ba as “di­nosaur rhetoric in to­day’s world.”

“The Prime Min­is­ter, in a most un­usu­al fash­ion for Trinidad and To­ba­go, at­tacked the sov­er­eign­ty of Cu­ba and ba­si­cal­ly pre­sent­ed a nar­ra­tive that they must on­ly get food and fu­el when they have free and fair elec­tions, and went on a rant rem­i­nis­cent of the 1980s rhetoric about com­mu­nism ver­sus cap­i­tal­ism,” he said.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s Op­po­si­tion me­dia brief­ing, Browne said the PM had no busi­ness crit­i­cis­ing Cu­ba’s po­lit­i­cal struc­ture.

“Many of the coun­tries that we cur­rent­ly do busi­ness with have very dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal sys­tems. Some of them do not have what she la­belled as free and fair mul­ti-par­ty elec­tions. So, lec­tur­ing and hec­tor­ing the peo­ple of Cu­ba, who are lit­er­al­ly un­der siege to­day, be­ing starved of food and fu­el on that ba­sis, when at the same time prais­ing the Saud­is, the UAE, the Chi­nese and all oth­ers, is mon­u­men­tal hypocrisy.”

Mean­while, Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) leader David Ab­du­lah said the Prime Min­is­ter con­tin­ues to prove that she is a “lack­ey” for Wash­ing­ton.

“It was a state­ment made more for the ben­e­fit of Mr Ru­bio and Mr Trump than any­thing else. And it’s a hor­rif­ic re­jec­tion of the po­si­tion of Cari­com, tak­en very many years ago, that recog­nis­es the plu­ral­i­ty of po­lit­i­cal sys­tems in our re­gion. And is to­tal­ly dis­re­spect­ful and a vi­o­la­tion of the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions, which is re­spect for the sov­er­eign­ty of an­oth­er coun­try.”

And in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert, Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, be­lieves Per­sad-Bisses­sar took a strange po­si­tion, which he be­lieves will aid US coloni­sa­tion of the Caribbean.

“So, are we sup­port­ing some­thing here that will even­tu­al­ly colonise us? This is what I’m con­cerned about. Where are we go­ing with this? I think we need to sit down with the Cari­com coun­tries and work out some­thing with them. And take a po­si­tion, stand up and say, well, ‘we don’t agree with this and so forth.’ There may be con­se­quences, but we can’t agree to all re­coloni­sa­tion. Amer­i­ca may have force, yes, but is Amer­i­ca will­ing to use force on all these coun­tries to hold them in line?”

Gon­za­les said he con­tin­ues to ques­tion what T&T stands to gain from this un­flinch­ing sup­port for US poli­cies.