DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce is adding its voice to calls for peace in the South­ern Caribbean, as the Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly dis­tances the is­land from ris­ing ten­sions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela.

AM­CHAM T&T CEO Ni­rad Tewarie and THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine spoke with Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing a joint event host­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) and the Unit­ed Na­tions to mark the 80th an­niver­sary of the UN’s found­ing.

Tewarie said peace across the re­gion is not on­ly a diplo­mat­ic goal, but a foun­da­tion for eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty.

“We would like a sit­u­a­tion in which all our neigh­bours and the coun­tries of the hemi­sphere can op­er­ate in peace be­cause a cli­mate of safe­ty and peace is bet­ter for busi­ness than any­thing else, and it’s bet­ter for all our peo­ple of the hemi­sphere.”

He al­so ac­knowl­edged that the tem­po­rary clo­sure of the Port of Port-of-Spain dur­ing the vis­it of the USS Grave­ly from Oc­to­ber 26 to 30—which Venezuela on Sun­day deemed a hos­tile provo­ca­tion and a se­ri­ous threat to re­gion­al peace—may have dis­rupt­ed trade op­er­a­tions. The vis­it co­in­cides with joint mil­i­tary train­ing ex­er­cis­es be­tween the 22nd US Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit and the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force.

Tewarie, how­ev­er, praised the swift co­or­di­na­tion with Cus­toms to redi­rect port ac­tiv­i­ty to Point Lisas, de­scrib­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tion as a pos­i­tive step.

With the Unit­ed States ex­pand­ing its mil­i­tary foot­print in the Caribbean, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine made it clear that To­ba­go does not sup­port war in any form.

He re­it­er­at­ed con­cern that the is­land has no in­put in na­tion­al for­eign pol­i­cy de­ci­sions but in­sist­ed that con­flict is not a vi­able path.

“Cer­tain­ly, I will not be sup­port­ing war any­where in the world. I don’t think that we need to go to war to re­solve con­flicts nec­es­sar­i­ly. So that won’t get my sup­port from a moral per­spec­tive, but from a pure­ly le­gal per­spec­tive, un­for­tu­nate­ly, the THA doesn’t even get the ben­e­fit of con­sul­ta­tion.”

Au­gus­tine said leg­isla­tive changes may be re­quired to give To­ba­go a voice in shap­ing for­eign pol­i­cy.

“I would love to be con­sult­ed. Since I have been at the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, as Chief Sec­re­tary in par­tic­u­lar, and this is my third prime min­is­ter, I have nev­er been con­sult­ed on a sin­gle in­ter­na­tion­al is­sue. And that’s be­cause the law just doesn’t pro­vide for such a priv­i­lege, un­for­tu­nate­ly,” he said, echo­ing pre­vi­ous com­ments made to re­porters last week.

He said he has since re­mind­ed fish­er­men to re­main law-abid­ing and avoid in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters, urg­ing them to fo­cus on lo­cal fish­ing wa­ters in­stead. Au­gus­tine al­so re­called ear­li­er warn­ings about To­ba­go’s lim­it­ed Coast Guard as­sets, an is­sue he said con­tin­ues to be his top pri­or­i­ty.

Speak­ing ear­li­er at the UN fo­rum vir­tu­al­ly, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Unit­ed Na­tions, Am­bas­sador Dr Neil Parsan, de­scribed the cur­rent glob­al en­vi­ron­ment as one marked by “the am­bi­gu­i­ty of mul­ti­po­lar­i­ty and mul­ti­plex­i­ty,” where eco­nom­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, and geopo­lit­i­cal pow­er dy­nam­ics are re­shap­ing the world or­der.

He said trust in ma­jor glob­al in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing the UN, World Bank, and In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, has erod­ed, while grow­ing ri­val­ry among the Unit­ed States, Chi­na, and Rus­sia pos­es new risks for small is­land de­vel­op­ing states. For the Caribbean, he warned, this could lead to fur­ther mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion and loss of agency, com­pound­ing ex­ist­ing eco­nom­ic and cli­mate vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties.

Yet Parsan viewed the tur­bu­lence as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for re­new­al rather than de­spair.

“Pro­found crises matched by un­prece­dent­ed op­por­tu­ni­ty re­al­ly brings an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the re­new­al of mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism in its purest form,” he said.

“I think we have an op­por­tu­ni­ty here to re­assert some moral lead­er­ship on very salient is­sues... re­de­fine some of our part­ner­ships and al­so lever­age some as­pects of what I would term col­lec­tive diplo­ma­cy,” he added.

He called for an eq­ui­table and bu­reau­cra­cy-free op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the Loss and Dam­age Fund, and high­light­ed the up­com­ing COP ne­go­ti­a­tions as a key mo­ment for small is­land states to push for cli­mate-smart, re­spon­si­ble de­vel­op­ment.

Parsan al­so urged re­newed coali­tion-build­ing with­in Cari­com, the Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS), and the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (CELAC), while press­ing for re­gion­al lever­age in ar­eas such as dig­i­tal in­clu­sion, debt re­form, and trade.

He con­clud­ed that even as glob­al sys­tems face un­prece­dent­ed strain, the mo­ment presents “more op­por­tu­ni­ty than cause to harp on ex­ist­ing crises.”