Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has nev­er been the most diplo­mat­ic of politi­cians.

In fact, when she took of­fice in 2010 as Trinidad and To­ba­go’s first fe­male prime min­is­ter, it wasn’t long be­fore she an­gered Caribbean col­leagues and friends with an open de­c­la­ra­tion that T&T was not an au­to­mat­ed teller ma­chine, as she all but closed off years of T&T fi­nan­cial sup­port to re­gion­al coun­tries dur­ing times of need.

A few years ago, she al­so wrote to the US gov­ern­ment claim­ing that the T&T Gov­ern­ment had breached sanc­tions against Venezuela, amid on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions for the Drag­on Gas deal, while sug­gest­ing that the US should sanc­tion Cab­i­net mem­bers in Port-of-Spain, but not mem­bers of her op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

Now she has tak­en an un­nec­es­sary and un­pro­voked dig against out­go­ing US pres­i­dent Joseph Biden in a state­ment that was meant to con­grat­u­late in­com­ing US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on his in­au­gu­ra­tion.

In her words, the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion was a “dis­as­ter for the Amer­i­can peo­ple and the world,” be­fore dou­bling down and us­ing the term “ab­solute dis­as­ter” yes­ter­day af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a pow­er­ful blow­back from her com­ments on Mon­day.

Like many oth­ers, we ask why Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar lacked the courage to ex­press her ob­vi­ous dis­dain while the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion was in of­fice—some­thing she could eas­i­ly have done by writ­ing to the US Am­bas­sador or di­rect­ly to Wash­ing­ton, as she had done pre­vi­ous­ly.

But alas! Hav­ing been called out on her stance on so­cial me­dia and by var­i­ous com­men­ta­tors, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar has list­ed 20 rea­sons for her po­si­tion, fo­cus­ing on the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion’s poli­cies on re­li­gious tol­er­ance, gen­der af­fairs and cen­sor­ship, all of which she de­fined as el­e­ments of a ‘woke’ cul­ture.

Like any oth­er cit­i­zen, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is en­ti­tled to her per­son­al con­vic­tions.

How­ev­er, to use her con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly ap­point­ed of­fice to dis­par­age the for­mer pres­i­dent of one of our clos­est al­lies is alien to this coun­try’s ap­proach to diplo­ma­cy and in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions.

While we have in the past man­aged to dis­agree with the po­si­tions of oth­er coun­tries, our for­eign pol­i­cy over the years has been to stay out of the in­ter­nal pol­i­tics of oth­er na­tions.

Ar­guably, T&T and Cari­com en­joyed clos­er ties with the Biden regime than any oth­er US ad­min­is­tra­tion in re­cent his­to­ry, even though many of the ini­tia­tives an­nounced were not ful­filled by the end of his tenure.

Cer­tain­ly, un­der the last De­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment, we have met more open doors in Wash­ing­ton than we have had in a long time.

T&T has its own bat­tles to fight and the re­sults of the gen­er­al elec­tion this year will de­ter­mine who will speak di­rect­ly to Wash­ing­ton on our be­half.

Whether that par­ty is the in­cum­bent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, the UNC or any oth­er, as a coun­try, we would want the best diplo­mat­ic tal­ent to safe­guard and ex­pand our in­ter­ests with the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.

In this light, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar would do well to fo­cus on con­vinc­ing vot­ers that her par­ty is the best poised to lead this coun­try in that re­gard, as it is the per­for­mance at home that will sway the T&T elec­torate, and not the per­for­mance of ei­ther the Biden or Trump ad­min­is­tra­tions in the US.