Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has hit back at for­mer prime min­is­ters of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) who have signed a “Zone of Peace” de­c­la­ra­tion, say­ing re­gion­al lead­ers do not un­der­stand the lev­el of crime this coun­try has had to en­dure.

She re­newed her vow to place the safe­ty of cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) first. It comes as the USS Grave­ly is set to dock at the Port of Port-of-Spain from to­day with the 22nd US Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit on­board. It is ex­pect­ed to re­main in Port-of-Spain un­til Thurs­day.

On Fri­day, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley added his sig­na­ture to a joint de­c­la­ra­tion by ten for­mer Caribbean lead­ers call­ing for the re­gion to re­main “a ‘Zone of Peace’ where the rule of law pre­vails”. It urges re­gion­al gov­ern­ments to re­sist be­ing drawn in­to ex­ter­nal con­flicts, up­hold in­ter­na­tion­al law, and pre­serve the Caribbean as a space of peace and sta­bil­i­ty.

The sig­na­to­ries in­clude for­mer lead­ers Bald­win Spencer (An­tigua & Bar­bu­da); Said Musa and Dean Bar­row (Be­lize); Fre­un­del Stu­art (Bar­ba­dos); Edi­son James (Do­mini­ca); Till­son Thomas (Grena­da); Don­ald Ramo­tar (Guyana); Bruce Gold­ing and PJ Pat­ter­son (Ja­maica); and Ken­ny An­tho­ny (St Lu­cia).

How­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day hit back at her crit­ics who claim she has aban­doned Cari­com’s neu­tral po­si­tion and sided with the Unit­ed States in its con­flict with Venezuela.

Speak­ing to re­porters out­side of Par­lia­ment af­ter wrap­ping up the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee, she said, “We have had over 600 mur­ders last year and al­most every year count­ing. They have not had that ex­pe­ri­ence. So, I think they have a dif­fer­ent re­al­i­ty. In T&T the re­al­i­ty is we are crime-rid­den, we are drug-rid­den, we are car­tel-rid­den, we are gang-rid­den, and there­fore our ap­proach has to be dif­fer­ent. They are en­ti­tled to their view on the whole is­sue of a Zone of Peace, but in T&T there is clear­ly no Zone of Peace. There is none. There­fore, as I say, T&T first; we have to take care of our peo­ple first. I do not have the same view as they do be­cause I think we are the worst im­pact­ed by this is­sue.”

When asked specif­i­cal­ly about Row­ley’s sig­na­ture, she said, “That is why he was there for nine years; crime sky­rock­et­ed, and noth­ing was done. We can­not con­tin­ue to do the same thing and ex­pect a dif­fer­ent re­sult. I am not sur­prised by his take on it, and maybe that is why he is a for­mer prime min­is­ter. That is why the elec­torate vot­ed him out.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said his­tor­i­cal­ly and ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly, T&T was the clos­est to where the drugs are com­ing from, the nar­co­traf­fick­ing, the hu­man traf­fick­ing and the gun run­ning. “We are more south­ern and the clos­est to the South Amer­i­can main­land, and there­fore their ex­pe­ri­ences may be dif­fer­ent from ours in Trinidad.”

With the ar­rival of the US war­ship to­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there are ben­e­fits to the pop­u­la­tion that will be de­rived be­yond se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tees. She ex­plained, “Safe­ty is pri­or­i­ty num­ber one to help keep the nar­co­traf­fick­ers, drug traf­fick­ers, and hu­man traf­fick­ers out. They are al­so go­ing to give us some as­sis­tance, tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance, IT as­sis­tance and some hu­man­i­tar­i­an work in us­ing their Marines and their Navy mem­bers to help us with schools or maybe some of our bases to up­grade. Our in­fra­struc­ture has been so run down, so they have of­fered that as well. In ad­di­tion to the safe­ty, se­cu­ri­ty and the train­ing, they are al­so go­ing to give us some train­ing here in T&T.”

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with glob­al me­dia net­work Al Jazeera, which has a re­porter in Trinidad cov­er­ing the ris­ing ten­sions in the re­gion said, “If the US has deemed a coun­try to be—or per­sons op­er­at­ing as—nar­co-traf­fick­ers and deemed them ter­ror­ists and they are wag­ing a war on ter­ror, then it’s up to them to come to that con­clu­sion, be­cause, as you un­der­stand, law is ba­si­cal­ly all about in­ter­pre­ta­tion.

“You might not agree with their in­ter­pre­ta­tion, but if their in­ter­pre­ta­tion is that we have deemed these peo­ple to be nar­co-traf­fick­ers and they are—these nar­co-traf­fick­ers, sor­ry, to be ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions and they are wag­ing war on them, that’s their pre­rog­a­tive. It hasn’t hap­pened in our wa­ters.”

It comes af­ter two Trinida­di­an men were killed in US airstrikes on Au­gust 15. One has been iden­ti­fied as Chad Joseph and the oth­er on­ly as Sama­roo. The fam­i­ly of Joseph has in­sist­ed he was not in­volved in drug traf­fick­ing and that he was a fish­er­man.

SOE ex­ten­sion un­der re­view at NSC meet­ing

Mean­while, the Prime Min­is­ter said she will meet with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil this week­end to de­ter­mine the way for­ward for the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (S0E). The SoE was ex­tend­ed on Ju­ly 28 and will ex­pire on Oc­to­ber 28. The Gov­ern­ment will have to go to Par­lia­ment to seek an ex­ten­sion but will need a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “Over this week­end, we in­tend to meet the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, some of us, to­geth­er with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, to get their views on what their sug­ges­tions or rec­om­men­da­tions may be. We will act on the rec­om­men­da­tions of the se­cu­ri­ty forces.”

The Gov­ern­ment an­nounced an SOE on Ju­ly 18. The move came af­ter a for­mal rec­om­men­da­tion from Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, based on in­tel­li­gence point­ing to the ex­is­tence of a so­phis­ti­cat­ed crim­i­nal net­work op­er­at­ing from in­side the prison sys­tem.