What's wrong with trac­ing one an­ces­try? For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan fired off that rhetor­i­cal re­tort yes­ter­day to crit­ics of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Biss­esar's re­cent trip to In­dia. In a lengthy state­ment to Par­lia­ment, punc­tu­at­ed by ex­cla­ma­tions of crit­i­cism and protest from Op­po­si­tion MPs, Ram­bachan hot­ly de­fend­ed the two-week trip which had elicit­ed var­i­ous com­ment. Ram­bachan said the Gov­ern­ment's ac­tions had come un­der an un­usu­al de­gree of scruti­ny de­spite the trans­paren­cy which Gov­ern­ment sought to bring to bear on trav­el de­ci­sions in­volv­ing the Prime Min­is­ter.

Not­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter had been in­vit­ed on a state vis­it to In­dia by that gov­ern­ment, he said she had al­so ex­pand­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty in­to a trade mis­sion on T&T's be­half. He al­so not­ed: "Those who sought to make her vis­it to her an­ces­tral vil­lage an is­sue have demon­strat­ed no ap­pre­ci­a­tion for his­to­ry. "What is wrong with a per­son want­i­ng to find out from whence he/she came?" he said. "Find­ing one's an­ces­try does not make one less Trin­bag­on­ian or less na­tion­al­is­tic. "In­deed, apart from bring­ing clo­sure to the an­ces­tral jour­ney to this coun­try, it al­so as­sists one in a de­gree of self un­der­stand­ing and a greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the role our fore­fa­thers played in build­ing T&T."

Ram­bachan said he agreed with Per­sad- Bisses­sar that every na­tion­al should be able to dis­cov­er his/her an­ces­try. He said the cost of the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fi­cial del­e­ga­tion was paid for by the In­di­an Gov­ern­ment. "In ad­di­tion, the In­di­an Gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed an A320 Air Bus for the del­e­ga­tion's in­ter­nal trav­el," he said. Ram­bachan said the long jour­ney re­quired a stopover in Lon­don "to fa­cil­i­tate the per­son­al health and phys­i­cal well-be­ing of the Prime Min­is­ter. He said the same ap­plied for her re­cent Aus­tralia trip last year.

Ram­bah­can said four days trav­el was nec­es­sary to go to In­dia and re­turn home. "This can­not be com­pro­mised since the long-term health of the PM must be a pri­or­i­ty," he said. He read out a let­ter of praise for the trip, writ­ten Eti­enne Mendez, head of the T&T Dry Dock com­pa­ny. Mendez was a PNM stal­wart of cen­tral Trinidad. Ram­bachan re­count­ed the mem­o­ran­dums of un­der­stand­ing signed, and meet­ings held by the var­i­ous min­is­ters who were on the trip. He list­ed a num­ber of jobs which would be cre­at­ed as a re­sult of ef­forts in cer­tain ar­eas. This in­clud­ed agree­ments signed by UWI for a sec­tion on Ayurve­da med­i­cine at UWI in con­junc­tion with the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Ayurve­da in In­dia.

Ram­bachan not­ed that in 2007, the late Ken Val­ley, a for­mer PNM min­is­ter, took a trade mis­sion to the Far East cost­ing $9 mil­lion. He said a cul­tur­al con­tin­gent ac­com­pa­ny­ing that team cost $3 mil­lion, and the pri­vate sec­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion cost a fur­ther $1 mil­lion in 2007. Ram­bachan said he had not heard ques­tions about why of­fi­cials of state agen­cies had ac­com­pa­nied Val­ley's mis­sion. "And since then, I have not heard of one dou­bles stall be­ing built, but (af­ter the In­dia trip), I've read that Rit­u­als founder Mario Sab­ga Aboud has an­nounced they are ne­go­ti­at­ing with an In­di­an group to set up 50 Rit­u­als in In­dia," he added. He said crit­ics of the PM's trip had not ad­vanced al­ter­na­tives on how to at­tract much-need­ed in­vest­ment.