An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Unit­ed States chargée d’af­faires in T&T, Dr Jenifer Nei­d­hart de Or­tiz, yes­ter­day com­mend­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for pub­licly chal­leng­ing au­thor­i­tar­i­an lead­er­ship in the re­gion and speak­ing on be­half of cit­i­zens liv­ing un­der re­stric­tive gov­ern­ments.

Ad­dress­ing the Women in Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence host­ed by the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Am­cham T&T), Nei­d­hart de Or­tiz high­light­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s will­ing­ness to speak against un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance in parts of the hemi­sphere.

“Thank you, Madame Prime Min­is­ter, for speak­ing for those who don’t have a right to speak,” she said, ref­er­enc­ing the strug­gles faced by peo­ple liv­ing in coun­tries where cit­i­zens can­not freely crit­i­cise gov­ern­ment ac­tions.

Her re­marks point­ed to po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions in Venezuela un­der de­posed Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro and the long-stand­ing po­lit­i­cal struc­ture as­so­ci­at­ed with Fi­del Cas­tro in Cu­ba, where pow­er re­mains con­cen­trat­ed among small groups of po­lit­i­cal lead­ers.

Nei­d­hart de Or­tiz not­ed that in many such so­ci­eties, in­di­vid­u­als who ques­tion au­thor­i­ty or de­mand ac­count­abil­i­ty face in­tim­i­da­tion, im­pris­on­ment or worse. She urged cit­i­zens in de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries not to take their free­doms for grant­ed and to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those un­able to speak freely.

Her com­ments came as part of a broad­er re­flec­tion on a 22-year diplo­mat­ic ca­reer that has tak­en her through mul­ti­ple post­ings fo­cused on democ­ra­cy, hu­man rights and po­lit­i­cal free­doms.

Dur­ing as­sign­ments across East Asia, the Mid­dle East, and the West­ern Hemi­sphere, she worked on cas­es in­volv­ing po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers and in­di­vid­u­als pun­ished for ac­tiv­i­ties that are con­sid­ered ba­sic rights in de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­eties.

“I have per­son­al­ly been sur­veilled, ha­rassed, in­tim­i­dat­ed, and threat­ened as a US diplo­mat work­ing on hu­man rights is­sues,” she said, de­scrib­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions that helped se­cure the re­lease of 11 po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

Those in­di­vid­u­als were de­tained for ac­tions such as prac­tis­ing re­li­gion, de­mand­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty from gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, ad­vo­cat­ing for ed­u­ca­tion or seek­ing the right to vote.

In some coun­tries, those ac­tiv­i­ties are il­le­gal, a re­al­i­ty she used to high­light how laws can some­times be struc­tured to main­tain po­lit­i­cal con­trol rather than pro­tect cit­i­zens.

“Not all laws are cre­at­ed equal­ly. Some laws are op­pres­sive, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, and de­signed to pro­tect pow­er­ful peo­ple,” she out­lined.

The con­fer­ence al­so fo­cused heav­i­ly on the role women must play in shap­ing the fu­ture econ­o­my of TT.

An­na Hen­der­son, Am­cham T&T pres­i­dent, high­light­ed that women al­ready ac­count for near­ly half of the coun­try’s labour force, but re­main un­der­rep­re­sent­ed in se­nior lead­er­ship roles and high-growth in­dus­tries.

She point­ed to strong fe­male par­tic­i­pa­tion in sec­tors such as ed­u­ca­tion, health ser­vices, re­tail, fi­nan­cial ser­vices, and pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion, along with con­sis­tent aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess among girls at sec­ondary and ter­tiary lev­els.

De­spite that pipeline, rep­re­sen­ta­tion de­clines sharply at ex­ec­u­tive and board­room lev­els, par­tic­u­lar­ly in sec­tors such as en­er­gy and tech­nol­o­gy.

Hen­der­son stressed that ex­pand­ing women’s ac­cess to lead­er­ship op­por­tu­ni­ties, cap­i­tal, and dig­i­tal skills train­ing will be es­sen­tial if the coun­try hopes to di­ver­si­fy its econ­o­my and strength­en long-term com­pet­i­tive­ness.

“In­vest­ing in women is not a so­cial pro­gramme. It is a growth strat­e­gy,” Hen­der­son added.