Mick­ela Pan­day

If this Gov­ern­ment tru­ly be­lieves Cari­com is “dys­func­tion­al” and “un­re­li­able,” then a sim­ple ques­tion must be an­swered: Why wasn’t Trinidad and To­ba­go in the room when it mat­tered most?

Lead­er­ship, es­pe­cial­ly in for­eign af­fairs, re­quires pres­ence, en­gage­ment and the will­ing­ness to con­front is­sues in re­al time. Yet by leav­ing the Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in St Kitts and Nevis be­fore its con­clu­sion, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for­feit­ed that op­por­tu­ni­ty. You can­not ac­cuse a process of lack­ing trans­paren­cy while ab­sent­ing your­self from the very fo­rum where trans­paren­cy could be de­mand­ed.

That con­tra­dic­tion mat­ters be­cause it points to a deep­er is­sue: What ex­act­ly is this Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy on Cari­com?

Be­yond strong lan­guage and pub­lic out­rage, there has been no clear ar­tic­u­la­tion of how Trinidad and To­ba­go in­tends to en­gage, in­flu­ence, or re­form the re­gion­al bloc. If Cari­com is not func­tion­ing “op­ti­mal­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly,” as claimed, then what is the plan? What re­forms are be­ing pro­posed? How will this coun­try use its po­si­tion to strength­en re­gion­al gov­er­nance rather than weak­en it?

These are not the­o­ret­i­cal con­cerns. Cari­com is a crit­i­cal eco­nom­ic part­ner. Trinidad and To­ba­go earns over US$1.1 bil­lion in for­eign ex­change from ex­ports to the re­gion, with rough­ly 10 per cent of our glob­al ex­ports tied to Cari­com mar­kets. This is about jobs, busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty. Diplo­ma­cy in this space is about pro­tect­ing na­tion­al in­ter­ests.

In­stead, what we have seen is es­ca­la­tion. Words like “sur­rep­ti­tious,” “odi­ous,” and “ruth­less” do not build al­liances or re­solve dis­putes. Se­ri­ous diplo­ma­cy re­quires dis­ci­pline, con­sis­ten­cy and cred­i­bil­i­ty.

It is with­in this con­text that the per­for­mance of Min­is­ter Sean Sobers must be ex­am­ined.

From the out­set, his han­dling of this mat­ter has been marked by con­tra­dic­tion. The Gov­ern­ment’s cen­tral claim is that Trinidad and To­ba­go was ex­clud­ed from the Cari­com re­treat in Nevis, where the reap­point­ment of Dr Car­la Bar­nett was fi­nalised.

How­ev­er, that claim is not un­con­test­ed. Re­gion­al lead­ers have of­fered a very dif­fer­ent ac­count. Dr Ter­rence Drew, Chair­man of Cari­com, stat­ed that the PM de­part­ed on Feb­ru­ary 25, ahead of the Feb­ru­ary 26 re­treat, and ef­forts were made to en­sure Trinidad and To­ba­go’s par­tic­i­pa­tion. Ac­cord­ing to him, Min­is­ter Sobers was in­vit­ed to at­tend but de­clined, cit­ing con­cerns about trav­el­ling by wa­ter taxi, a stan­dard mode of trans­port be­tween St Kitts and Nevis.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Dr Ir­fan Ali has main­tained that the process used to reap­point Dr Bar­nett fol­lowed es­tab­lished prece­dent, re­in­forc­ing the po­si­tion that nor­mal pro­ce­dures were ob­served.

Tak­en to­geth­er, these ac­counts di­rect­ly chal­lenge the Gov­ern­ment’s nar­ra­tive.

Min­is­ter Sobers, for his part, has re­ject­ed these claims out­right. He has de­scribed them as a “big, bald-faced lie,” in­sist­ing he nev­er re­fused to at­tend due to sea­sick­ness and that any such re­mark was made in jest. He main­tained he was ready to at­tend but was in­formed on the morn­ing that on­ly Heads of Gov­ern­ment would be per­mit­ted.

He said he ver­i­fied this through of­fi­cial chan­nels and point­ed to a mes­sage in­di­cat­ing that For­eign Min­is­ters were to re­main for Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil meet­ings while Heads con­vened sep­a­rate­ly.

But this on­ly sharp­ens the is­sue. The coun­try is now faced with two fun­da­men­tal­ly op­pos­ing ver­sions of events.

If there is clear ev­i­dence con­firm­ing that min­is­ters were not al­lowed to at­tend, why has it not been pre­sent­ed prompt­ly and pub­licly?

Equal­ly trou­bling is the tone that has now tak­en hold. Sean Sobers did not sim­ply re­spond to crit­i­cism; he told Dr Ralph Gon­salves to fo­cus on “what is tak­ing place in St Vin­cent” and on win­ning an­oth­er seat. That is not diplo­ma­cy. That is po­lit­i­cal grand­stand­ing and it has no place in the con­duct of for­eign af­fairs.

Worse, it is be­gin­ning to feel like a pat­tern. There is an emerg­ing per­cep­tion that some min­is­ters treat se­ri­ous re­gion­al en­gage­ment as an ex­ten­sion of do­mes­tic po­lit­i­cal rhetoric, dis­mis­sive, com­bat­ive and at times out­right rude. That ap­proach does not project strength; it sig­nals in­dis­ci­pline. Trinidad and To­ba­go has long been re­gard­ed as a se­ri­ous voice in Cari­com. That rep­u­ta­tion is now be­ing test­ed.

That mat­ters be­cause in diplo­ma­cy, per­cep­tion shapes re­al­i­ty and the sig­nal be­ing sent is a trou­bling one. Trinidad and To­ba­go now risks iso­lat­ing it­self from a bloc it claims to sup­port, in a re­gion where co­op­er­a­tion is crit­i­cal to trade, se­cu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty.

Min­is­ter Sobers’ own state­ments add to the in­con­sis­ten­cy. His re­mark that the Prime Min­is­ter’s pres­ence “wouldn’t have changed the price of peas” rais­es an ob­vi­ous ques­tion: if at­ten­dance would not have mat­tered, why is ex­clu­sion now be­ing framed as a cri­sis?

None of this is to dis­miss con­cerns about trans­paren­cy. If pro­ce­dures were not prop­er­ly fol­lowed, they must be ad­dressed. But that re­quires en­gage­ment, ev­i­dence and diplo­ma­cy.

Trinidad and To­ba­go does not have the lux­u­ry of get­ting this wrong. Too much is at stake, eco­nom­i­cal­ly, diplo­mat­i­cal­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly.

This is not just about a dis­put­ed ap­point­ment. It is about whether this coun­try is show­ing up, speak­ing with cred­i­bil­i­ty and lead­ing with pur­pose in a re­gion where its voice has al­ways mat­tered.

Right now, the sig­nals are mixed, the mes­sag­ing is in­con­sis­tent and the ap­proach is re­ac­tive. If that con­tin­ues, Trinidad and To­ba­go risks los­ing in­flu­ence in a re­gion where it can least af­ford to.

Mick­ela Pan­day is the Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front and At­tor­ney at Law.