Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has un­der­scored the im­por­tance of due process as the Unit­ed States con­tin­ues its ef­forts to com­bat drug traf­fick­ing in the Caribbean.

Speak­ing on Fri­day at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA), Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared that Trinidad and To­ba­go was ful­ly com­mit­ted to the in­ter­na­tion­al fight against nar­co-traf­fick­ing.

She said, “We will fight fire with fire with­in the law. That is why we will­ing­ly sup­port­ed the in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty al­liance an­nounced by US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, in­volv­ing the US and sev­er­al coun­tries in South Amer­i­ca and, of course, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, to com­bat drug traf­fick­ing in the hemi­sphere.”

Her state­ment came amid on­go­ing con­cerns from some quar­ters about the le­gal­i­ty of US-led mil­i­tary and se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions against drug car­tels in the south­ern Caribbean.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­in­forced her po­si­tion, stress­ing that ad­her­ence to the rule of law was crit­i­cal in any joint se­cu­ri­ty ef­fort.

“We will very much want to op­er­ate with­in the law. The Unit­ed States is a sov­er­eign na­tion, and as they would see best for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, they will act as they see best with­in the rule of law. I don’t ex­pect, and I don’t think this is what hap­pened, that they are out­side of the law. Some peo­ple are say­ing that. I am not con­vinced of that; I have no ev­i­dence that that is the case.”

The Prime Min­is­ter em­pha­sised that while the threat posed by nar­co-traf­fick­ers re­quired “force­ful and de­ci­sive ac­tion”, it was equal­ly crit­i­cal that such ac­tion be car­ried out un­der le­gal frame­works that re­spect sov­er­eign­ty and in­ter­na­tion­al law.

“As a lawyer my­self, due process and the rule of law are of vi­tal im­por­tance. I have al­ready said that I have no ev­i­dence that what hap­pened was not with­out due process. If peo­ple have it, bring it for­ward.”

The White House has so far an­nounced three fa­tal strikes against ves­sels that it said were smug­gling drugs bound for Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties. It claimed two came from Venezuela.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ex­pressed strong sup­port for the Unit­ed States’ strikes, say­ing she has “no sym­pa­thy for traf­fick­ers” and that the US mil­i­tary should “kill them all vi­o­lent­ly”.

UN speech gar­ners mixed views

Ra­goonath backs PM’s call for ac­tion against drug car­tels

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath has backed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ment at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA) that stronger mea­sures are need­ed to tack­le the de­struc­tive in­flu­ence of drug car­tels in the Caribbean.

Dr Ra­goonath told re­porters that Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s po­si­tion was a prag­mat­ic one, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en T&T’s unique chal­lenges. He not­ed that the coun­try’s prox­im­i­ty to Venezuela has re­sult­ed in a sig­nif­i­cant in­flux of Venezue­lan na­tion­als, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine the ex­tent to which il­lic­it drug ac­tiv­i­ty has pen­e­trat­ed lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties.

“The Unit­ed States has made it quite clear that there are Venezue­lan gangs that have been termed ‘de­bil­i­tat­ing’ to us and for the rest of the world, and that is some­thing we have to deal with in terms of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and Cari­com does not deal with that.”

The po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist al­so raised con­cerns about the on­go­ing de­bate around the Caribbean as a “zone of peace”. He ques­tioned whether ob­jec­tions to US in­volve­ment were root­ed in con­sis­ten­cy.

“Here­in comes the big ques­tion: is this the first time that the US has had troops and ves­sels in the Caribbean?” And the an­swer is no. Every year they have their naval ex­er­cis­es, and every year those ships are in the re­gion, so how come all of a sud­den now their be­ing here makes it chal­leng­ing to the zone of peace? I don’t know, and that is where I have con­cerns.”

For­mer In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions di­rec­tor Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les main­tained that a law­ful ap­proach to the nar­co-traf­fick­ing fight is need­ed as op­posed to lethal force. He, how­ev­er, con­tin­ued to urge cau­tion.

“I un­der­stand her con­cerns, and I think prob­a­bly she is try­ing, to some ex­tent, to get clos­er to the Amer­i­cans to fight this drug prob­lem, and I have no dif­fi­cul­ty with that, but my prob­lem is that one has to be care­ful where the Amer­i­cans are go­ing. We don’t know if the Amer­i­cans are plan­ning to go in­to Venezuela or at­tack cer­tain in­sti­tu­tions or in­di­vid­u­als, and what are the con­se­quences of that?”

Amery on PM’s speech. A poor re­flec­tion on T&T

For­mer min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne said the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­marks at the UN­GA were “a very poor re­flec­tion on Trinidad and To­ba­go” and did “grave dis­ser­vice to the pres­tige and pro­file of our diplo­mat­ic stand­ing in the re­gion, the hemi­sphere, and glob­al­ly”.

Dr Browne con­tend­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s speech re­vealed a “fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing” of core in­ter­na­tion­al prin­ci­ples such as the con­cept of the Zone of Peace and failed to align with the po­si­tions of Cari­com and the wider Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean group.

“She let down the coun­try and all right-think­ing cit­i­zens of the plan­et by ig­nor­ing the plight of the Pales­tini­ans, who to­day are suf­fer­ing a geno­cide in Gaza as de­clared by the Unit­ed Na­tions,” Browne ar­gued.

Dr Browne fur­ther took is­sue with the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­marks on cli­mate change, say­ing she had “mis­la­belled and mis­di­ag­nosed” the cli­mate cri­sis and the glob­al re­sponse to it. He stressed that such mis­steps were par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling for small is­land de­vel­op­ing states like T&T, as well as for Cari­com part­ners “who have been dev­as­tat­ed by nat­ur­al dis­as­ters oc­ca­sioned by cli­mate change”.