Ra­mona Ram­di­al

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump op­er­ates with the non­cha­lance of one who knows he is the most pow­er­ful man in the world. With a slash of his pen, he can bring na­tions to their knees as eas­i­ly as he can up­lift them. No­tably, our most pow­er­ful cit­i­zen, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, was a beam­ing fan­girl when Pres­i­dent Trump gave her the ac­tu­al mark­er he used to sign the Procla­ma­tion of the Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion (“The Shield of the Amer­i­c­as”). She was the on­ly fe­male leader in at­ten­dance, and he spent con­sid­er­able time es­tab­lish­ing the dis­tinc­tion and his pref­er­ence for “Kam­la” over the sim­i­lar­ly named “Ka­mala (Har­ris),” the De­moc­rats’ 2024 pres­i­den­tial can­di­date whom he de­feat­ed.

Be­low these su­per­fi­cial pleas­antries lie great pos­si­bil­i­ties for our na­tion. Any al­leged faux pas at the Cari­com Sum­mit last month pales in com­par­i­son. From the Caribbean, on­ly Guyanese Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali and our own PM were in­vit­ed to the ex­clu­sive meet­ing.

The sit-down with US En­er­gy Sec­re­tary Chris Wright, be­yond the pho­to ops and sound bites, was al­ways go­ing to be where our pri­or­i­ty busi­ness was go­ing to be dis­cussed.

Con­se­quent­ly, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Mooni­lal was able to re­port that oil ma­jor Chevron had soon af­ter com­mu­ni­cat­ed they were con­sid­er­ing re­sum­ing busi­ness in our coun­try af­ter with­draw­ing in 2017. Min­is­ter Mooni­lal men­tioned Chevron’s in­ter­est in “stor­age” and “not just ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion.” Will about four mil­lion bar­rels of stor­age be enough for them? How much of this ca­pac­i­ty can we of­fer as we at­tend to our do­mes­tic re­quire­ments and oth­er cur­rent busi­ness arrange­ments?

Min­is­ter Mooni­lal al­so said an­oth­er Amer­i­can com­pa­ny is in­ter­est­ed in our Pointe-à-Pierre re­fin­ery. As such, in­ter­est has been record­ed from In­dia, Italy, France and Africa, be­sides the USA. All this glob­al at­ten­tion must mean that we will get our re­fin­ery up and run­ning soon. Did any­one sug­gest the re­fin­ing of Venezue­lan crude there, though? It is hoped that the Amer­i­can en­er­gy gi­ants can re­main at­tract­ed to our en­er­gy province, with­out the need for fur­ther in­struc­tion from the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

I have al­so read about a pro­pos­al for an es­ti­mat­ed US $4.5 bil­lion steel plant by Aeter­nus Steel. The T&T Iron Steel Com­pa­ny has not yet restart­ed pro­duc­tion af­ter ac­quir­ing the old Arcelor­Mit­tal plant in 2024. It is hoped that they can both pro­duce “green steel” soon.

Of course, es­tab­lish­ing the “Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion” was the pri­ma­ry pub­li­cised pur­pose of the meet­ing with Pres­i­dent Trump, telling the 17 lead­ers of the Amer­i­c­as that “we need a coali­tion to erad­i­cate the car­tels.” Fol­low­ing the US mil­i­tary’s strikes on al­leged nar­co traf­fick­ing boats, which re­sult­ed in the deaths of at least 157 peo­ple, Mex­i­can drug lord Neme­sio “El Men­cho” Cer­vantes was killed with the help of US in­tel­li­gence. All this hap­pened be­fore the “Shield of the Amer­i­c­as.” Per­haps the “ki­net­ic strike” ter­mi­nol­o­gy will be­come rou­tine now.

Sup­pos­ed­ly, a “List of Per­sons of In­ter­est” com­piled by US in­tel­li­gence has been shared with our Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty. The in­di­vid­u­als on the list are, al­leged­ly, linked to nar­co­traf­fick­ing, guns and oth­er se­ri­ous crimes. I think the pho­tographs and names of these per­sons should be re­leased via so­cial me­dia to the pub­lic, along with oth­er sus­pects “want­ed” for se­ri­ous crimes. Cap­tured/ex­on­er­at­ed per­sons should have their pho­tographs re­moved. Crime Stop­pers’ 800-TIPS num­ber or oth­er easy ways of in­form­ing the po­lice of the where­abouts of sus­pects should be vi­ral. I be­lieve this is an un­der­utilised re­source. Help the pub­lic as­sist the po­lice. This “Per­sons of In­ter­est” list is a re­minder. What about re­wards? Is that still a thing?

More cyn­i­cal peo­ple would say that the “Shield of the Amer­i­c­as” is pri­mar­i­ly an in­stru­ment of the “Trump Corol­lary” to the “Mon­roe Doc­trine” or the “Don­roe Doc­trine,” which seeks to shore up US hege­mo­ny in the West­ern Hemi­sphere and be­yond, es­pe­cial­ly in the face of Russ­ian and Chi­nese in­flu­ences in the re­gion. The ma­jor­i­ty of our pop­u­la­tion is far more con­cerned about the en­hance­ment of their qual­i­ty of life and will sup­port whichev­er for­eign pol­i­cy can di­rect­ly ease their bur­dens. Greater com­forts will al­low their minds to con­tem­plate the no­tion of “sov­er­eign­ty.” This is where the Do­ral meet­ing will be held at a high­er val­ue than the pre­vi­ous one in Bas­seterre.

Last week, the cost to tax­pay­ers of a TSTT ex­ec­u­tive “re­treat” raised pub­lic ire. I saw one cit­i­zen com­plain about mon­ey wast­ed “frol­ick­ing on a boat.” I doubt that an ex­pe­ri­enced chair­man and board of di­rec­tors, es­pe­cial­ly in a state agency re­port­ing loss­es, would have green­lit that “ex­pe­ri­ence” in the cur­rent cli­mate. The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union’s “bon­fire” was well stoked fol­low­ing the ex­posé. Has the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress par­ty run out of ex­pe­ri­enced in­di­vid­u­als who can “gih dem per­for­mance” with­out wast­ing tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars? The work­ers and the wider pub­lic will not take this board se­ri­ous­ly.

Will this prompt the Gov­ern­ment to re­view the com­po­si­tion of its var­i­ous boards and make the ap­pro­pri­ate changes to en­sure this kind of wastage of tax­pay­ers’ funds does not re­cur? Whether $436,000 or $175,000 was spent on the re­treat, a re­port­ed loss of $82.2 mil­lion in the last fis­cal year does not in­vite un­nec­es­sary ex­pen­di­ture. PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar does not like it when she, her par­ty, or her Gov­ern­ment is em­bar­rassed. Are “buss heads” im­mi­nent then?