Akash Sama­roo

Re­port­ing from Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica

Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Dr Ralph Gon­salves has once again in­vit­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go to join the Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem (RSS), stat­ing that the ini­tia­tive could sig­nif­i­cant­ly as­sist the coun­try in tack­ling its crime chal­lenges.

The RSS is an in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ment for the de­fence and se­cu­ri­ty of the East­ern Caribbean re­gion. The stat­ed goal of the RSS is to pro­vide mu­tu­al as­sis­tance to its mem­ber states on re­quest, par­tic­u­lar­ly in times of na­tion­al emer­gen­cies, se­cu­ri­ty threats, and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia in Ja­maica dur­ing the 49th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Cari­com, Dr Gon­salves said, “I’d love to see Trinidad (and To­ba­go) come aboard.”

He ex­plained that T&T ex­pressed an in­ter­est in the past, but there were some chal­lenges.

“Un­der my friend Patrick Man­ning, Patrick want­ed to join the RSS, but Owen Arthur, at the time when he was prime min­is­ter, God bless his soul, was not so keen on Trinidad and To­ba­go be­ing a mem­ber of the RSS. He want­ed them to have a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with the RSS. Patrick didn’t want any halfway house on that. He want­ed to be part of it ful­ly or not at all.”

Asked what ben­e­fit it would bring to T&T, Gon­salves said, “Oh, it would help you to deal with your crim­i­nal sit­u­a­tion be­cause we will co­or­di­nate things bet­ter. RSS is a very well-re­spect­ed agency. We have IM­PACS (Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Im­ple­men­ta­tion Agency for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty) in Trinidad. Trinidad had pushed that. Patrick had pushed it. Kam­la had pushed it. Row­ley had pushed it.”

Gon­salves be­lieves the RSS has cer­tain as­sets that can help this coun­try in the realm of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

“So, I see this as a log­i­cal step, and I hope that takes place. Co­or­di­nat­ing bet­ter your Coast Guard fa­cil­i­ties, your air. We have C-29 air­craft, equipped with prop­er radar sys­tems and so on. I have no doubt you have al­so.”

The St Vin­cent and the Grenadines PM added, “So we work to­geth­er for bet­ter co­or­di­na­tion to deal with the ter­ri­ble boys and girls, those who are caus­ing a lot of ter­ror to or­di­nary cit­i­zens across the re­gion.”

The RSS op­er­ates on the prin­ci­ple that an armed at­tack against one mem­ber state is con­sid­ered an at­tack against all. It was found­ed in 1982 and is head­quar­tered in Bar­ba­dos. Guyana joined in 2022.