The Op­po­si­tion is de­mand­ing an­swers from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar over her ab­sence at the 49th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of Cari­com, which re­cent­ly con­clud­ed in Ja­maica. 

In her ab­sence, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der at­tend­ed the meet­ing from Ju­ly 6 to 8.

While Sobers ex­clu­sive­ly told Guardian Me­dia “cer­tain na­tion­al is­sues en­gag­ing her at­ten­tion” kept the Prime Min­is­ter from at­tend­ing, his pre­de­ces­sor, Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne, isn’t sat­is­fied with that an­swer.

Con­demn­ing the Prime Min­is­ter for fail­ing to show up, Dr Browne said it sends all the wrong mes­sages to our re­gion­al fam­i­ly. 

Dur­ing an Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence held at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader on Charles Street, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Browne said, “We (Op­po­si­tion) are ful­ly dis­ap­point­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, did not at­tend this heads of gov­ern­ment meet­ing… The ab­sence of our Prime Min­is­ter, a full two months af­ter be­ing elect­ed, sends all the wrong sig­nals to Cari­com, sends all the wrong sig­nals to the OAS, sends all the wrong sig­nals to IN­TER­POL and cer­tain­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly to fel­low heads of gov­ern­ment in this re­gion,” he said.

He’s called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to state what the na­tion­al is­sues were, as he ques­tioned if she’s hid­ing some­thing else from the pop­u­la­tion.

And, ac­cord­ing to him, the Op­po­si­tion isn’t the on­ly one de­mand­ing an­swers. 

“I must tell you that this came as a sur­prise to oth­er heads of gov­ern­ment across the re­gion and we have been be­sieged by queries, ques­tions, and mat­ters of spec­u­la­tion from across the re­gion as to the rea­son and ra­tio­nale for the ab­sence of the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go… The Prime Min­is­ter owes an ex­pla­na­tion to this coun­try and al­so to our re­gion­al fam­i­ly.”

He al­so bashed Per­sad-Bisses­sar for what he de­scribes as “squan­der­ing” great op­por­tu­ni­ties to es­tab­lish re­la­tion­ships with re­gion­al lead­ers.

Browne said mak­ing mat­ters worse de­spite hav­ing two Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters at Cari­com, Trinidad and To­ba­go failed to con­tribute to per­ti­nent mat­ters, in­clud­ing join­ing Cari­com’s Free Move­ment Regime, which al­lows re­gion­al na­tion­als to move freely with­in mem­ber states for work with­out need­ing work per­mits. 

The four coun­tries mov­ing for­ward with this ini­tia­tive are Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Do­mini­ca, though un­der the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion, T&T held a lead­er­ship role in form­ing the regime.

Browne asked, “My ques­tion to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and the Prime Min­is­ter of to­day is, where  is Trinidad and To­ba­go on this very crit­i­cal is­sue of re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion? Why have we not tak­en a lead­er­ship role on this mat­ter? Why are we be­ing left be­hind? And what is the im­ple­men­ta­tion agen­da for this coun­try?”