PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

One day af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter was crit­i­cal of the state of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty, the im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ty, lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly was re­flect­ed up­on by busi­ness and re­li­gious lead­ers, who urged Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ac­knowl­edge Cari­com’s im­por­tance to T&T on Sun­day.

At the Fa­thers’ As­so­ci­a­tion ‘I Love Com­mu­ni­ty’ event at Sta­lagnite Park, Cunu­pia, Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin, who al­so at­tend­ed the event, urged the Prime Min­is­ter to be re­flec­tive par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­gard to her re­la­tion­ship with Cari­com.

“My be­lief is that every leader has what I call some­thing called re­set and re­think. And I sup­pose in the fu­ture, go­ing on, the sit­u­a­tion with Venezuela and Amer­i­ca is very un­sta­ble. And I have heard what she said. She doesn’t want to be part of any at­tack by the US, for ex­am­ple, on Venezuela, “ said Dot­tin, “But I think we have to look se­ri­ous­ly at how we could pull the Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries to­geth­er, be­cause we don’t have all the re­sources of any one na­tion.”

Al­lan Fer­gu­son, pres­i­dent of Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, how­ev­er urged the Prime Min­is­ter to con­sid­er cor­dial dis­course with Cari­com as he not­ed many of his mem­bers have trade re­la­tion­ships with oth­er Caribbean coun­tries.

“It’s not that I dis­agree with her, but what I could say is that I think Trinidad needs to think over the po­si­tion and not to go so hard at Cari­com. I think we need to sit down with all the dif­fer­ent Prime Min­is­ters of the Caribbean and try to come to a neu­tral po­si­tion,” he said,” And that we should have a neu­tral ground, mean­ing that if it’s a safe ground, or what­ev­er it is.”

Fer­gu­son said it was not in T&T’s in­ter­est to dis­tant it­self from the rest of Caribbean.

“We mustn’t fight against our broth­ers and sis­ters in the Caribbean. I think that the Prime Min­is­ter needs to get prob­a­bly a lit­tle more ad­vice where that is con­cerned,” said Fer­gu­son, “Think about, if things go bad and we fall out with peo­ple from dif­fer­ent coun­try, what could hap­pen to us? Be­cause a lot of busi­ness peo­ple like my­self send a lot of things to these coun­tries. We do a lot of busi­ness with peo­ple from dif­fer­ent Cari­com coun­tries, and we aren’t look­ing to have a dis­pute with Cari­com coun­tries.”

Fer­gu­son al­so made a plea to keep T&T out of any pos­si­ble war zone, as he stressed even a sin­gle at­tack on the coun­try could be dis­as­trous for the lo­cal econ­o­my.

Fa­thers’ As­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent and event or­gan­is­er Rhon­dall Fee­les said the event was im­por­tant giv­en the var­i­ous pres­sures that cur­rent­ly ex­ist­ed in and around the coun­try.

“We must be able to still work to­geth­er, even though we have dif­fer­ences, whether we are dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal views, whether we are dif­fer­ence in eth­nic­i­ty, dif­fer­ent re­li­gious be­liefs. We have to be able, as hu­man be­ings, come to­geth­er and make our coun­try a bet­ter place,” said Fee­les, who hoped the event, which gave peo­ple from var­i­ous back­grounds, in­clud­ing the Venezue­lan mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty, a chance to es­cape the anx­i­ety be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced due to ten­sions be­tween the US and Venezuela.

“If we could do any­thing that could al­le­vi­ate the anx­i­ety of any­one, that’s what we have to do. We’re not telling peo­ple to stick their head in the sand and be fool­ish, but at the end of the day, we are say­ing, let’s hope for the best. Let’s still pray that good sense pre­vails,” he said, “I mean, you’ll be a fool not to be con­cerned. At this point in time, peo­ple have their con­cerns. But we are still hope­ful that good sense will pre­vail, not on­ly with­in our shores, but those ex­ter­nal el­e­ments as well and that this will be end­ed am­i­ca­bly for every­body’s ben­e­fit.”