Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les has crit­i­cised the Prime Min­is­ter over re­cent state­ments re­gard­ing bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and as­sis­tance from the Unit­ed States.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­cent­ly an­nounced that Trinidad and To­ba­go would re­ceive ad­di­tion­al sup­port from the Unit­ed States, in­clud­ing ves­sels and mil­i­tary per­son­nel, as part of on­go­ing ef­forts to strength­en bor­der se­cu­ri­ty.

Re­spond­ing to those com­ments, Gon­za­les re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion had failed to pur­sue sim­i­lar ini­tia­tives, in­sist­ing that ex­ten­sive dis­cus­sions had al­ready been un­der­way with both Aus­tralia and the Unit­ed States.

“In 2024, the PNM Gov­ern­ment, work­ing close­ly with Am­bas­sador Can­dace Bond and re­gion­al part­ners, se­cured agree­ment from the US Gov­ern­ment to make avail­able ad­di­tion­al mar­itime re­sources to bol­ster bor­der se­cu­ri­ty in T&T.

“The Gov­ern­ment agreed with the Unit­ed States that five ves­sels would be pro­vid­ed, and dis­cus­sions were on­go­ing at the time the PNM left of­fice in 2025,” he said.

Gon­za­les ac­cused the Prime Min­is­ter of mis­lead­ing the pub­lic and point­ed to the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ac­qui­si­tion of Cape-class pa­trol ves­sels from Aus­tralia af­ter tak­ing of­fice in 2015, fol­low­ing the can­cel­la­tion of Off­shore Pa­trol Ves­sel (OPV) con­tracts by the pre­vi­ous Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He fur­ther claimed that the PNM had been en­gaged in ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Unit­ed States be­tween 2024 and 2025 to ac­quire five ad­di­tion­al ves­sels to strength­en mar­itime sur­veil­lance and bor­der pro­tec­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­les, those dis­cus­sions in­volved the US Gov­ern­ment, the US Ex­port-Im­port Bank, and Amer­i­can diplo­mat­ic of­fi­cials, and were still on­go­ing when the PNM left of­fice in 2025.

He said the Prime Min­is­ter should clar­i­fy whether the ad­di­tion­al ves­sels re­cent­ly ref­er­enced by Gov­ern­ment stem from those ear­li­er ne­go­ti­a­tions ini­ti­at­ed un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“So when the cit­i­zens of T&T lis­tened to the Prime Min­is­ter say­ing that the pre­vi­ous PNM Gov­ern­ment did not make use of re­sources avail­able to it, noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth,” he said.

The for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter al­so high­light­ed the long­stand­ing se­cu­ri­ty re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and the Unit­ed States, not­ing that is­sues such as bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, transna­tion­al crime, drug traf­fick­ing, and re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty were dis­cussed dur­ing a high-lev­el vis­it by then US Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken to T&T in 2023.