As the US prepares to roll out whatever military plans it has for Venezuela, neighboring Trinidad and Tobago has increasingly sided with the US, allowing it to set up a military radar in Tobago, engaged in joint military exercises in Trinidad and has cheered on the deadly attacks on alleged narco-trafficking boats in international waters among other things.
The open cheerleading for Washington appears to have put the country, one of the four, which had helped to found the Caribbean Community back in 1973, at serious political and ideological odds with the rest of the region.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar again thought it best to launch a scathing attack on the 15-nation bloc, basically saying it has lost its way and is becoming useless in the current scheme of things. This is the second time in two months the PM has broadsided her own regional family grouping in public, causing political ripples at home as commentators and the opposition wonder if the administration is placing the federation in a position that would be geopolitically untenable in the future.
The latest outburst of political anger appears to have stemmed from a community statement late last week that had expressed concern about a move by the Trump administration to restrict visas and travel to the US for nationals from Dominica and Antigua. The restrictions would have taken effect from early January but emergency talks with officials between the two nations and the US have since resulted in an ease of restrictions with current visa holders now being allowed to still travel as usual. The regional leaders had also urged the US to engage the nations to clarify and settle the situation but PM Persad Bissessar was having none of it.
She labeled the grouping whose founding “Treaty of Chaguaramas” was signed off in Trinidad decades ago, as “unreliable partner” and “a dysfunctional and self-destructive” organization. “The organization is deteriorating rapidly due to poor management, lax accountability, factional divisions, destabilizing policies, private conflicts between regional leaders and political parties and the inappropriate meddling in the domestic politics of member states. That’s the plain truth. CARICOMis not a reliable partner at this time. The fact is that beneath the thin mask of unity, there are many widening fissures that if left unaddressed will lead to its implosion.”
She even lashed CARICOM for allegedly disparaging the US, saying it is “our greatest ally” and dubbed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as the leader of a “narco-government headed by a dictator who has imprisoned and killed thousands of civilians and opposition members.” CARICOM has called for a diplomatic solution to the Venezuela-US crisis, reminding all and sundry that it wants the Caribbean to be regarded as a zone of peace. The PM’s cabinet has argued that the current US action in the Southern Caribbean has led to a halving of felony crimes like murder, human and narco trafficking and other problems back home.
Continuing her rant against the regional grouping, the PM who won general elections in late April, stated that “the exercise of power by the US to advance its best interests must therefore be seen as a measured response to the conduct of other nations in the realities of the current environments that they place themselves in. T&T’s government does not bind itself to the political ideologies or foreign, economic and security policies of any other CARICOM member government. Member governments are free to make decisions in the best interests of their citizens,” she argued.
The PM even took a swipe at Antigua, urging her citizens and those in fellow member nations to be “careful, you don’t end up like Antigua and Barbuda and Dominica, bad-mouthing the US. Guess what happened? all their visas are rescinded now,” she said.
