Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

While An­tigua and Bar­bu­da sup­ports T&T’s up­com­ing bid for a seat on the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (UN­SC), for­mer St Vin­cent prime min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves be­lieves T&T’s bid would em­bar­rass Cari­com due to this coun­try’s pro-Unit­ed States po­si­tion.

Sim­i­lar­ly, for­mer Unit­ed Na­tions am­bas­sador Rod­ney Charles has cit­ed the chal­lenge T&T may face to get the UN­SC seat, where Brazil, Colom­bia, Cu­ba, Mex­i­co, and some Cari­com mem­bers may have con­cerns. This, as T&T bids for a non-per­ma­nent seat on the UN­SC in a June 3 elec­tion.

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers re­cent­ly said T&T has se­cured the sup­port of more than 100 coun­tries, in­clud­ing Cari­com states, in its bid.

The 15-mem­ber UN­SC has five per­ma­nent mem­bers (Chi­na, Rus­sia, France, US and UK) and ten non-per­ma­nent seats.

The seat which T&T seeks falls with­in the al­lo­ca­tion of seats for the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Group (GRU­LAC). This is one of the five ge­o­graph­ic re­gions at the UN.

GRU­LAC has sole au­thor­i­ty to present can­di­dates for two of the ten ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly al­lo­cat­ed non-per­ma­nent seats. The elec­tion will be con­duct­ed by se­cret bal­lot.

The is­sue of T&T’s bid has ob­tained re­newed fo­cus fol­low­ing the im­passe be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Cari­com over T&T’s ob­jec­tion to the reap­point­ment process of Cari­com’s Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett.

Af­ter the Cari­com lead­ers’ meet­ing last Fri­day on the is­sue, Cari­com chair­man Dr Ter­rance Drew is­sued de­tails of the reap­point­ment. How­ev­er, T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has in­sist­ed on cer­tain re­quest­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion - and Cari­com Am­bas­sador Ralph Maraj said T&T would not par­tic­i­pate in Cari­com meet­ings un­til this is ob­tained.

On T&T’s bid for the UN­SC seat, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne - who’d said he was stay­ing out of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al reap­point­ment is­sue said yes­ter­day, “Yes, An­tigua will sup­port T&T’s (bid for the UN­SC seat). Cari­com first - Trinidad has our un­equiv­o­cal sup­port.”

Last Sun­day, St Vin­cent Op­po­si­tion leader Gon­salves said on so­cial me­dia, “The cur­rent out­look of the Gov­ern­ment of T&T would em­bar­rass Cari­com. So they’d have to give iron-clad as­sur­ances. These mat­ters have to be spo­ken about very frankly. She says she wants frank­ness, open­ness and trans­paren­cy - fine. She must get that on that (UN­SC) ques­tion too.”

For­mer am­bas­sador to the UN Charles said, “The chal­lenge for T&T to­day is whether, giv­en our ut­ter­ances, un­crit­i­cal sup­port for Pres­i­dent Trump and, our re­put­ed ‘bad john’ diplo­ma­cy, some mem­bers of the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Group - which has sole au­thor­i­ty to present can­di­dates for two of the UN­SC’s ten ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly al­lo­cat­ed non-per­ma­nent seats - may feel T&T can­not re­flect the group’s in­ter­est on the Coun­cil.”