First off, it must be said that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar can­not uni­lat­er­al­ly dic­tate that “there will be a sig­nif­i­cant re­align­ment” of the for­eign pol­i­cy of Trinidad and To­ba­go in re­la­tion to Cari­com. The charge about Cari­com mem­ber states not be­ing a “re­li­able part­ner” is a dis­tor­tion of the re­al­i­ty of the im­me­di­ate his­to­ry.

It was our Prime Min­is­ter who de­clared that she want­ed no part of the es­tab­lished pol­i­cy of keep­ing the Caribbean as a “Zone of Peace.” She fol­lowed it by say­ing that Cari­com mem­ber states can do what they want on the is­sue of the US in­ter­ven­ing mil­i­tar­i­ly and with dead­ly force in the re­gion; she has made her choice.

As a means of seem­ing­ly so­lid­i­fy­ing her po­si­tion in re­la­tion to T&T and Cari­com, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­fused to at­tend the Cari­com sum­mit, the fo­rum de­ter­mined by the Ch­aguara­mas Agree­ment of 1973 and the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas of 2001 to be the fo­rum for ar­riv­ing at com­mon poli­cies. All of that and more make her most re­cent state­ment of re­align­ing T&T’s for­eign pol­i­cy to fo­cus out­side of Cari­com an ab­sur­di­ty, to say the least.

But if the Prime Min­is­ter wants to test the ef­fi­ca­cy of her state­ment, she must deal with the re­al­i­ty of T&T’s ex­port econ­o­my be­ing al­most com­plete­ly de­pen­dent on the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor’s ex­ports in­to Cari­com. The PM must al­so con­sid­er the links of T&T’s fi­nan­cial sec­tor in­to Cari­com through all of our ma­jor banks and fi­nance hous­es.

On the morn­ing af­ter the dis­as­ter of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the TTMA, Dr Ramesh Ramdeen, stressed the im­por­tance of Ja­maica as a ma­jor trad­ing part­ner with T&T. The boost in Guyana’s hy­dro­car­bon econ­o­my has al­so re­sult­ed in dozens of T&T’s busi­ness es­tab­lish­ments mak­ing tracks to George­town to par­tic­i­pate in that Cari­com mem­ber state’s wind­fall. 

Be­yond such im­me­di­ate re­al­i­ties, the ties be­tween this coun­try and all of the Cari­com mem­ber states are gen­er­a­tional and his­tor­i­cal. If a sur­vey were to be done on the fa­mil­ial con­nec­tions among T&T and the oth­er 14 Cari­com mem­bers, es­pe­cial­ly those in the east­ern Caribbean, it will re­veal a ma­jor por­tion of this coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion hav­ing links there.

No prime min­is­ter can wake up one morn­ing with uni­lat­er­al chat­ter about re­align­ment away from Cari­com, af­ter hav­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly ig­nored their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to come to­geth­er in Cari­com to dis­cuss dif­fer­ences of per­spec­tives and poli­cies.

More­over, the Prime Min­is­ter is fun­da­men­tal­ly at odds with the re­al­i­ty of per­ceiv­ing and talk­ing about the coun­try’s for­eign pol­i­cy as if it is com­plete­ly linked to Cari­com. For cen­turies, Trinidad and To­ba­go has had deep re­la­tions with the Unit­ed King­dom, the wider Eu­rope and the Unit­ed States. Post-In­de­pen­dence T&T has es­tab­lished and grown re­la­tions with In­dia, Chi­na, sev­er­al African coun­tries and with Venezuela. It is there­fore un­for­tu­nate that the Prime Min­is­ter would make it seem as if this coun­try is on­ly aligned with Cari­com and so hav­ing the need to ex­pand its for­eign pol­i­cy.

In­deed, on­ly re­cent­ly, as the Drag­on gas arrange­ment with Venezuela has had dif­fi­cul­ties, she has talked about en­er­gy con­tracts with Grena­da, Guyana and Suri­name.

Our Prime Min­is­ter and her ad­vi­sors need a re­al­i­ty check, rather than mere­ly shoot­ing off from the hip with­out con­sid­er­a­tion for the re­al­i­ty, which is on­ly par­tial­ly list­ed above.