Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Re­porter

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

Stake­hold­ers say while they wel­come the prime min­is­ter’s meet­ing with the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States as a pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment, she is be­ing ad­vised that, al­though sig­nif­i­cant, “ac­cess alone is not achieve­ment.”

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert and Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­ber­ta po­lit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor Dr Andy Knight said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is be­ing re­ward­ed for her strong align­ment with the US ad­min­is­tra­tion — de­scrib­ing the planned meet­ing with Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump as an ob­vi­ous re­ward for her loy­al­ty.

How­ev­er, Knight warned that act­ing like a “Lone Ranger” and dis­tanc­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go from Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) uni­ty to align with a US pres­i­dent with low ap­proval rat­ings car­ries risks.

“The re­al ques­tion is what Trinidad and To­ba­go ob­tains in sub­stan­tive pol­i­cy terms, and whether that en­gage­ment strength­ens or weak­ens Cari­com, par­tic­u­lar­ly Cari­com’s col­lec­tive diplo­mat­ic pos­ture,” Knight said. “The Caribbean’s lever­age has his­tor­i­cal­ly come from uni­ty and prin­ci­pled mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism with­in the rules-based in­ter­na­tion­al sys­tem. If bi­lat­er­al ac­tion such as Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s en­gage­ment comes at the ex­pense of re­gion­al co­he­sion, it could be detri­men­tal to both Cari­com and, in the long term, to Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Dr Garvin Heer­ah said the prime min­is­ter would ben­e­fit from en­ter­ing the meet­ing with a firm strat­e­gy for what Trinidad and To­ba­go hopes to se­cure.

“It is crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant that these ex­changes are ground­ed in mu­tu­al re­spect, strate­gic clar­i­ty, and sov­er­eign con­fi­dence. Diplo­mat­ic ac­cess at this lev­el is sig­nif­i­cant but ac­cess alone is not achieve­ment. The true mea­sure of suc­cess lies in prepa­ra­tion, ne­go­ti­a­tion strength, and the abil­i­ty to ar­tic­u­late na­tion­al in­ter­ests clear­ly and firm­ly,” Heer­ah said.

Heer­ah said Trinidad and To­ba­go needs to press for US co­op­er­a­tion on stem­ming the per­sis­tent flow of il­le­gal firearms across its bor­ders, en­hanced con­sul­ta­tion on fi­nan­cial crimes, ca­pac­i­ty build­ing in se­cu­ri­ty train­ing, and greater ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy.

Mean­while, the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion said it is elat­ed by the news be­cause its in­dus­try is in need of sup­port. Pres­i­dent Regi­nald McLean said the State of Emer­gency made To­ba­go less at­trac­tive to tourists, and al­though it end­ed on Jan­u­ary 31, it is too soon for the tourism sec­tor to feel a pos­i­tive im­pact.

The as­so­ci­a­tion is specif­i­cal­ly seek­ing greater ac­cess to US se­cu­ri­ty ex­per­tise, be­liev­ing that low­er crime will boost To­ba­go tourism. It al­so wants the US Em­bassy to fa­cil­i­tate reg­u­lar on-is­land visa ap­pli­ca­tions in To­ba­go and more di­rect flights from the Unit­ed States to the is­land.

The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce ex­pressed sim­i­lar en­thu­si­asm. Pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj said the prime min­is­ter has al­ready ben­e­fit­ed from her close al­liance with the US by help­ing to re­duce crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly pira­cy in wa­ters be­tween Trinidad and Venezuela.

How­ev­er, he said his mem­bers want im­prove­ments in the ease of do­ing busi­ness.

“We have seen our tar­iffs re­duced to 10 per cent, which is among the low­est for US trad­ing part­ners. Be­cause most of our ex­ports go to the US, this makes us com­pet­i­tive. With tar­iffs this low, our goods can en­ter the US mar­ket at a much low­er price com­pared to coun­tries with high­er tar­iffs,” Ma­haraj said.

As Trinidad and To­ba­go’s largest trad­ing part­ner, Ma­haraj re­mind­ed that the coun­try’s fu­ture is tied to how the Unit­ed States per­ceives it.