Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany

The in­vi­ta­tion for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to trav­el to the USA to meet Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is in­deed a feath­er in her cap and will open the door to favourable de­vel­op­ments for this coun­try in en­er­gy and se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion and oth­er re­lat­ed ar­eas.

She has re­opened a re­la­tion­ship that pre­vi­ous­ly ex­ist­ed in Cari­com when for­mer Bar­ba­dos prime min­is­ter Tom Adams, for­mer Ja­maican prime min­is­ter Ed­ward Sea­ga and for­mer Do­mini­can prime min­is­ter Dame Eu­ge­nia Charles si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly had very favourable re­la­tion­ships with the then-Rea­gan ad­min­is­tra­tion in the 1980s.

In­deed, it was then Ja­maican prime min­is­ter Ed­ward Sea­ga who was the first of­fi­cial vis­i­tor to the White House at the in­vi­ta­tion of pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan on Jan­u­ary 28, 1981 (just eight days af­ter Rea­gan’s in­au­gu­ra­tion).

The Rea­gan ad­min­is­tra­tion was con­cerned about the spread of so­cial­ism and So­vi­et in­flu­ence in the hemi­sphere. A sig­nal was sent by hav­ing Sea­ga as the first vis­i­tor to the White House.

Pres­i­dent Rea­gan em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of the Caribbean Basin to his for­eign pol­i­cy when he paid of­fi­cial vis­its to Ja­maica (April 7-8, 1982) and Bar­ba­dos (April 8-11, 1982). He rekin­dled the re­la­tion­ship with Sea­ga in Ja­maica, and he opened a strate­gic di­a­logue with Bar­ba­di­an prime min­is­ter Tom Adams. In­deed, just over a year lat­er, in Oc­to­ber 1983, Bar­ba­dos be­came the main stag­ing ground for the US mil­i­tary ac­tion in Grena­da up­on the im­plo­sion of the so­cial­ist Grena­di­an Peo­ple’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Gov­ern­ment.

It was the prime min­is­ter Eu­ge­nia Charles who, as Chair of the OECS, re­quest­ed the US in­volve­ment in Grena­da. She flew to Wash­ing­ton on Oc­to­ber 24, 1983, so that she could ap­pear with Rea­gan the next morn­ing to an­nounce that US and Caribbean mil­i­tary forces had land­ed in Grena­da to re­store sta­bil­i­ty to the is­land fol­low­ing the bloody as­sas­si­na­tion of PM Bish­op and some of his col­leagues by fir­ing squad.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar is re­viv­ing a tra­di­tion that brought sta­bil­i­ty to our re­gion in the face of the threat of in­sta­bil­i­ty from a left-wing ex­per­i­ment in Grena­da that went wrong in 1983.

In be­ing in­vit­ed to meet a US Pres­i­dent in the USA, Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­comes the sec­ond T&T Prime Min­is­ter to re­ceive such an in­vi­ta­tion. On Feb­ru­ary 21, 1975, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams was in­vit­ed to the White House to meet then pres­i­dent Ger­ald Ford.

Ac­cord­ing to the Mem­o­ran­dum of the Con­ver­sa­tion, the T&T del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ed Williams, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance George Cham­bers, and T&T Am­bas­sador to Wash­ing­ton, Vic­tor McIn­tyre. The US del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ed Ford, Sec­re­tary of State Hen­ry Kissinger, US Am­bas­sador to T&T Lloyd Miller, and Lt Gen­er­al Brent Scow­croft, Deputy As­sis­tant to the Pres­i­dent for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Af­fairs.

Kissinger and Scow­croft in­ject­ed the ar­eas of con­cern to the dis­cus­sions, and Ford float­ed the diplo­mat­ic ques­tions. There was con­cern about the po­ten­tial de­vel­op­ment of trade re­la­tions with Chi­na and Japan.

The read­out shows the fol­low­ing:

“Sec­re­tary Kissinger: Are you and the Japan­ese trad­ing part­ners?

Prime Min­is­ter Williams: No, we are just build­ing it. There are in­vest­ment pos­si­bil­i­ties. There may be a steel plant, etc.

Gen­er­al Scow­croft: The Prime Min­is­ter has vis­it­ed Chi­na and In­done­sia al­so.

The Pres­i­dent: When were you in Chi­na ?

Prime Min­is­ter Williams: Six days ago and six weeks ago. If you go in Feb­ru­ary, don’t go to Shang­hai and Can­ton.

The Pres­i­dent: Are you es­tab­lish­ing trade re­la­tions ?

Prime Min­is­ter Williams: We are be­gin­ning. They have a lot of things we want, and we think they can use our fer­tilis­er.” (Source: Ger­ald Ford Li­brary and Mu­se­um).

There was great in­ter­est in what T&T would do with its emerg­ing oil wealth in cre­at­ing new trad­ing re­la­tion­ships. Chi­na and Japan were clear­ly on the US radar. Lat­er in De­cem­ber 1975, Dr Er­ic Williams re­fused the re­quest of the Cuban Gov­ern­ment to per­mit Cuban air­craft trans­port­ing troops to the civ­il war in An­go­la to re­fu­el at Pi­ar­co on their way to south­west Africa (See 1975 Par­lia­men­tary Bud­get De­bate, De­cem­ber 18, 1975).

Williams moved to­ward the right as T&T be­gan to earn in­creased oil rev­enues and pur­sued a pol­i­cy of state cap­i­tal­ism by de­vel­op­ing a grow­ing num­ber of state en­ter­pris­es that func­tioned in a cap­i­tal­ist eco­nom­ic sys­tem.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has made it clear where she stands on cap­i­tal­ism, and she has al­so con­demned the one-par­ty state con­cept. The ab­sence of any am­bi­gu­i­ty in her ide­o­log­i­cal po­si­tion has dis­turbed sev­er­al crit­ics who would clear­ly pre­fer an em­brace of so­cial­ism.

She stood firm against the im­pe­ri­al­ist in­sults and threats to our ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty, as well as Guyana’s, by the for­mer Maduro regime in Venezuela, which was neutered on Jan­u­ary 3. She was al­ways on the right side of his­to­ry with her stand, and in­deed, his­to­ry will ab­solve her.

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.