Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

While po­lit­i­cal par­ties are ex­press­ing hope for a pos­i­tive out­come for T&T fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s up­com­ing meet­ing with US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, they are al­so voic­ing some reser­va­tions.

Those con­cerns range from calls for full trans­paren­cy on what will be dis­cussed, to ques­tions about the Prime Min­is­ter’s ca­pac­i­ty to rep­re­sent not on­ly T&T but the wider re­gion, and fears that the talks could pave the way for an ex­pand­ed US mil­i­tary pres­ence lo­cal­ly.

PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, along with Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali, are the on­ly two Cari­com coun­tries in­vit­ed to the sum­mit called the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as on March 7.

The sum­mit, to be host­ed by Pres­i­dent Trump, is the first of its kind, dis­tinct from the tra­di­tion­al Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as, and ap­pears to be a more ex­clu­sive, se­cu­ri­ty-fo­cused ini­tia­tive by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion to align with spe­cif­ic re­gion­al al­lies.

The sum­mit will fo­cus on hemi­spher­ic se­cu­ri­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly what the ad­min­is­tra­tion calls “for­eign in­ter­fer­ence” in the re­gion. Cen­tral to the agen­da is a co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse to Chi­na’s grow­ing eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence in Latin Amer­i­ca, along­side dis­cus­sions on transna­tion­al crime, mi­gra­tion, bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty amid re­cent po­lit­i­cal and mil­i­tary de­vel­op­ments in coun­tries such as Venezuela. Some an­a­lysts see the meet­ing as re­flect­ing a re­newed as­ser­tion of US pri­ma­cy in the hemi­sphere, echo­ing a mod­ern-day Mon­roe Doc­trine.

The guest list is un­der­stood to com­prise lead­ers viewed as ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion. Ex­pect­ed at­ten­dees in­clude lead­ers from Ar­genti­na, Paraguay, El Sal­vador, Chile, Bo­livia, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Ecuador, Hon­duras and Cos­ta Ri­ca.

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne yes­ter­day said while the par­ty wants what is best for T&T, the PM’s ac­tions in St Kitts and Nevis leaves him con­cerned about her com­pe­tence to at­tend such a meet­ing.

“The Prime Min­is­ter com­plete­ly squan­dered the op­por­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed by her at­ten­dance at this week’s Cari­com Heads Con­fer­ence in St Kitts.”

He sug­gest­ed that her ad­ver­sar­i­al ap­proach demon­strat­ed a clear lack of judge­ment and a dis­in­cli­na­tion to­ward re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty and pru­dence.

“Be­yond the pho­to op­por­tu­ni­ties and the abil­i­ty to boast that one has met Pres­i­dent Trump, it would have been ide­al if our Prime Min­is­ter would have used this week to try to re­store at least an io­ta of con­fi­dence in her abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly and pru­dent­ly rep­re­sent her alert and aware cit­i­zen­ry and the peo­ple of the wider Caribbean re­gion when she en­ters a meet­ing room with the US Pres­i­dent,” Browne said.

He added, “We will be mon­i­tor­ing close­ly for out­comes in the best in­ter­est of the peo­ple of our coun­try (and re­gion), based not on short-term con­ve­nience but rather on the im­pli­ca­tions for our sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and con­sis­ten­cy with our re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions.”

Mean­while, Pa­tri­ot­ic Front leader Mick­ela Pan­day said while diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment is al­ways wel­come, the coun­try de­serves clar­i­ty about the pur­pose of those dis­cus­sions and how they ad­vance T&T’s na­tion­al in­ter­est.

Pan­day said fol­low­ing the meet­ing, the pub­lic is en­ti­tled to ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“In light of the un­re­solved con­cerns about the Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent deal­ings with the Unit­ed States, in­clud­ing con­flict­ing state­ments about US mil­i­tary pres­ence and the radar in To­ba­go, the pop­u­la­tion can­not sim­ply be asked to ac­cept as­sur­ances with­out in­for­ma­tion. We are not ask­ing for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty se­crets, but when you act on be­half of a na­tion, there must be hon­esty and ac­count­abil­i­ty.”

The Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) is al­so con­cerned that the meet­ing will pave the way for a larg­er US mil­i­tary pres­ence in T&T.

NTA leader Nor­man Din­di­al told Guardian Me­dia, “The PM has open­ly said that she is will­ing to sup­port the US in all its ef­forts. We can there­fore log­i­cal­ly as­sume that the foot­print of US per­son­nel will on­ly in­crease, and we are look­ing at bases be­ing reestab­lished to sup­port fur­ther and on­go­ing US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in our sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ry.”

He added, “We can on­ly pray that if these arrange­ments do ma­te­ri­alise, they are done with a broad con­sul­ta­tion and agree­ment of the cit­i­zens; with­out these con­sul­ta­tions and agree­ments, it will be a usurpa­tion of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol.”

In­vite a feath­er PM’s cap, says Ghany

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Hamid Ghany be­lieves Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s up­com­ing meet­ing with Trump rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant diplo­mat­ic gain for T&T and could pave the way for deep­er co­op­er­a­tion in key ar­eas.

De­scrib­ing the in­vi­ta­tion as “a feath­er in her cap,” Ghany said the en­gage­ment has the po­ten­tial to open doors to “favourable de­vel­op­ments for this coun­try in en­er­gy and se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion and oth­er re­lat­ed ar­eas.”

He al­so ar­gued that Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent re­marks at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the 50th Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing in St Kitts and Nevis must be viewed with­in that broad­er geopo­lit­i­cal con­text.

At the re­gion­al fo­rum open­ing on Mon­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar drew a dis­tinc­tion be­tween Cari­com’s mul­ti-par­ty democ­ra­cies and Cu­ba’s one-par­ty po­lit­i­cal sys­tem. Those com­ments drew crit­i­cism from some quar­ters.

Ghany, how­ev­er, de­fend­ed the ap­proach.

“It was high­ly ap­pro­pri­ate to praise our mul­ti-par­ty sys­tems of democ­ra­cy that our coun­tries en­joy in Cari­com,” he said.

“Yet, sur­pris­ing­ly, some found that dis­turb­ing.”

He al­so took is­sue with what he de­scribed as lin­ger­ing re­gion­al sym­pa­thy for left-wing ide­ol­o­gy, ar­gu­ing that “the track record of left-wing ex­per­i­ments in Guyana, Ja­maica and Grena­da has been abysmal­ly poor and caused great suf­fer­ing.”

Ac­cord­ing to Ghany, the Prime Min­is­ter’s pos­ture sig­nals a re­vival of a pe­ri­od in the 1980s when cer­tain Caribbean lead­ers main­tained close ties with Wash­ing­ton.

“Cari­com has been here be­fore,” he said, adding that Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s stance re­flects a tra­di­tion that, in his view, con­tributed to re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty dur­ing mo­ments of geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sion.

He fur­ther con­tend­ed that her po­si­tion on Venezuela and her sup­port for ex­ist­ing se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments demon­strate re­solve.

“His­to­ry will ab­solve her,” Ghany said.