Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of De­fence, Wayne Sturge, says he and Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, Roger Alexan­der, along with Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers, held talks with for­mer UNC sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen in a meet­ing that last­ed over two hours yes­ter­day.

Ramdeen served as a tem­po­rary op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor from 2016 till his res­ig­na­tion in 2019.

He was charged along­side for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan in 2019 with con­spir­a­cy to en­gage in mon­ey-laun­der­ing, cor­rup­tion and mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

The charges against Ramdeen and Ram­lo­gan were dis­con­tin­ued by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) in 2022 when the state’s main wit­ness, Vin­cent Nel­son, re­fused to tes­ti­fy un­til an­oth­er mat­ter he had against the State was com­plet­ed.

In 2023, Ramdeen was crit­i­cal of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al as he said it was not a vi­able al­ter­na­tive to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

How­ev­er, Ramdeen was seen en­ter­ing and leav­ing the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s Tem­ple Court, Aber­crom­by Street build­ing yes­ter­day.

Sobers spoke briefly with Guardian Me­dia be­fore en­ter­ing the meet­ing, not­ing that some of the is­sues he ex­pect­ed to be dis­cussed in­clud­ed the on­go­ing sit­u­a­tion of Trinida­di­an na­tion­als strand­ed abroad in “war-torn” coun­tries, the dis­ap­pear­ance of Thomas Vasquez in An­tigua and the UK gov­ern­ment’s im­po­si­tion of a visa re­quire­ment to vis­it­ing cit­i­zens.

At­tempts to find out how the meet­ing pro­gressed from Sobers as he left just af­ter 4 pm were un­suc­cess­ful, as he de­clined to com­ment, say­ing it was still on­go­ing.

When con­tact­ed, Ramdeen de­ferred ques­tions to De­fence Min­is­ter Sturge.

Sturge said he pre­ferred not to di­vulge the spe­cif­ic de­tails of the meet­ing but de­scribed it as be­ing “ex­treme­ly pro­duc­tive” giv­en the ex­per­tise of those who at­tend­ed.

“We had the in­sti­tu­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence of Mr Alexan­der to bear up­on some of the is­sues and we had Mr Sobers present to make the arrange­ment.

“I tried yes­ter­day (Mon­day) to ini­ti­ate con­tact, but the prop­er pro­to­col is through the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs, so Mr Sobers came over to­day be­cause this is the sec­ond day and we still haven’t spo­ken with the British High Com­mis­sion­er, so we just in­vit­ed him over to en­sure we are all on the same page.”

When asked if he and Alexan­der would be shar­ing the of­fice fa­cil­i­ties on Aber­crom­by Street, Sturge said it was still too ear­ly to say.

He said that while of­fice fa­cil­i­ties were avail­able at Tow­er C of the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Build­ing, Wright­son Road, the de­ci­sion was still not fi­nalised.

‘US re­la­tions still strong’

Be­fore en­ter­ing the meet­ing, Sobers told Guardian Me­dia the is­sue of US for­eign pol­i­cy and its po­ten­tial im­pact on re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty may al­so arise. How­ev­er, he said he was con­fi­dent that T&T-US re­la­tions were still strong.

“It may (come up), but we have very close ties with the US, so we have no dif­fi­cul­ties with the US at all.”

In Jan­u­ary, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump signed an ex­ec­u­tive or­der, stop­ping his coun­try’s aid to for­eign coun­tries.

Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Cari­com Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty (IM­PACS) Lt Col Michael Jones said there would be some “re­align­ment” as a re­sult of this.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to Cari­com IM­PACS via email yes­ter­day.

In re­sponse, the agency on­ly con­grat­u­lat­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Sturge and Alexan­der on their ap­point­ments.

"We are com­mit­ted to work­ing close­ly with the new gov­ern­ment to ad­dress shared se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges. Cari­com IM­PACS stands ready to of­fer our ex­per­tise and re­sources to sup­port the gov­ern­ment’s se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tives," Cari­com IM­PACS said.