Akash Sama­roo

Re­port­ing from Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica

Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Dr Ralph Gon­salves says while he was look­ing for­ward to meet­ing Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, he un­der­stands she had a de­mand­ing sched­ule due to the of­fi­cial vis­it of In­dia’s Prime Min­is­ter.

Dr Gon­salves said he was al­so hap­py that Trinidad and To­ba­go con­ferred its high­est award to Naren­dra Mo­di, as he be­lieves In­dia’s Prime Min­is­ter has the best in­ter­ests of the Caribbean as a whole at heart.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was a no-show at the Cari­com meet­ing, with the del­e­ga­tion be­ing led in­stead by For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers. Sobers ex­plained that na­tion­al is­sues are cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing her at­ten­tion.

But Gon­salves be­lieves Sobers deputised ef­fec­tive­ly in her ab­sence.

Af­ter the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the 49th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com in Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica, Gon­salves was seen walk­ing with his arm around Sobers as they left the au­di­to­ri­um. PM Gon­salves has been his coun­try’s head of gov­ern­ment for the last 24 years and has of­ten been de­scribed by oth­er re­gion­al heads as a fa­ther fig­ure in Cari­com. Asked by Guardian Me­dia if he shared any words of wis­dom with Min­is­ter Sobers, Dr Gon­salves said, “I said I be­lieve you had to learn when you’re in short pants who’s the Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and the an­swer was Ralph Gon­salves. He said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ So we had good fun. I like him. He’s a good young man. He’s bright, he’s sharp, he’s ar­tic­u­late, and he’s com­pre­hend­ing the is­sues. I think a great deal of him. My first im­pres­sion of him is very pos­i­tive.”

The St Vin­cent and the Grenadines PM was al­so asked if he was dis­ap­point­ed he did not get to meet Per­sad-Bisses­sar in Ja­maica, as it would have been her first Cari­com meet­ing since as­sum­ing her sec­ond term as Prime Min­is­ter.

Gon­salves de­clared that he missed her.

“I want­ed to meet my sis­ter Kam­la, but I can un­der­stand she had a tir­ing cou­ple of days with Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di, who’s my good brethren. I’m hap­py to see that she brought the In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter to Trinidad, and I’m very ... I’m not get­ting my­self in your pol­i­tics, but I’m very hap­py to see that he has been so spe­cial­ly ho­n­oured be­cause In­dia is im­por­tant to us. You know, I vis­it­ed In­dia my­self.”

The prime min­is­ter added, “The In­di­an pres­i­dent came to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and I know that when my brethren Mo­di came to Trinidad, he wasn’t just think­ing about Trinidad; he was think­ing about the Caribbean, in­clud­ing St Vin­cent and the Grenadines. I have no doubt about it be­cause he’s a vi­sion­ary. He’s a great man.”

Mean­while, the prime min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines said sev­er­al is­sues im­pact­ing his coun­try, the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States (OECS), of which it is a mem­ber, and Trinidad and To­ba­go were dis­cussed.

“A num­ber of his is­sues were raised Mon­day morn­ing, which point­ed to Cari­com be­ing un­equal­ly yoked and that cer­tain out­stand­ing mat­ters from even from my sis­ter Kam­la’s ear­ly ad­min­is­tra­tion, which she was try­ing to ad­dress and which were not ad­dressed ef­fi­ca­cious­ly at all in the last ten years. The re­sponse from the For­eign Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go was very en­cour­ag­ing that he had had a con­ver­sa­tion with his prime min­is­ter the night be­fore be­cause I’d spo­ken to him on the mar­gins of the open­ing about the is­sues which we have some con­cerns about.”

One of those is­sues dealt with the form of cur­ren­cy T&T pays to his coun­try. He made ref­er­ence to when he de­scribed the TT Dol­lar as “mo­nop­oly mon­ey” and sought to clar­i­fy to Guardian Me­dia what he meant.

“The fun­da­men­tal is­sue be­hind that was that we’re spend­ing, from St Vin­cent, 65 mil­lion US. We pay that in hard cur­ren­cy for im­ports from Trinidad. We used to sell about 15 mil­lion US dol­lars’ worth of agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce to Trinidad, and it has dwin­dled to un­der four mil­lion US and it’s get­ting low­er and low­er be­cause the farm­ers and the traders are paid TT dol­lars in Trinidad. They have to buy goods in Trinidad to come to St Vin­cent to sell them for them to get EC mon­ey to pay the farm­ers,” the prime min­is­ter ex­plained.

He added, “That is ridicu­lous. You have to pay us ei­ther in US dol­lars or EC dol­lars. You can’t give us TT dol­lars to take to St Vin­cent. What are we go­ing to do with it?”