Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

Op­po­si­tion leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is press­ing the Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers on whether the Gov­ern­ment is shift­ing its po­si­tion on Cu­ba.

“I want to ask the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs whether they are plan­ning to end diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with Cu­ba and whether or not they in­tend to close the em­bassy in Cu­ba,” Beck­les asked at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

“I al­so want to ask the Gov­ern­ment whether they are will­ing to sac­ri­fice all the val­ues and stan­dards of this coun­try and car­ry them on the al­tar of some sort of for­eign script and whether or not this coun­try re­al­ly is in con­trol of our for­eign pol­i­cy. So tell us what is hap­pen­ing.”

Beck­les al­so crit­i­cised the Prime Min­is­ter’s lack of en­gage­ment with the me­dia.

“Be­cause this is linked to the Prime Min­is­ter her­self fail­ing to make her­self avail­able to the press. Whether she trav­els, whether she’s here, she’s fail­ing to make her­self avail­able. So these very crit­i­cal ques­tions can be an­swered.”

Beck­les was re­spond­ing to a Guardian Me­dia re­port which de­tailed grow­ing un­cer­tain­ty fac­ing Cuban medics work­ing in To­ba­go, many of whom are urg­ing au­thor­i­ties to al­low them to se­cure in­de­pen­dent con­tracts as their ex­ist­ing arrange­ments ex­pire in June.

The is­sue has come un­der scruti­ny fol­low­ing pres­sure from the Unit­ed States, where Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio de­scribed Cu­ba’s over­seas med­ical mis­sions as forced labour and warned of pos­si­ble visa re­vo­ca­tions for of­fi­cials in coun­tries par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pro­gramme.

A Cuban health­care work­er in To­ba­go, speak­ing anony­mous­ly, re­ject­ed claims of ex­ploita­tion and said many medics will­ing­ly en­ter the pro­gramme and lat­er tran­si­tion in­to in­de­pen­dent roles with­in the lo­cal health sys­tem.

Beck­les’ com­ments al­so came as In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira raised con­cerns in the Sen­ate over Gov­ern­ment’s for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tion in re­la­tion to Venezuela and re­cent ac­tions by the Unit­ed States.

Vieira said he was “deeply con­cerned and dis­ap­point­ed” af­ter Sobers de­clined to an­swer sev­er­al ques­tions, in­vok­ing Stand­ing Or­der 26(3) on the ba­sis of pub­lic in­ter­est.

For­mer Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for what he de­scribed as a sud­den and un­ex­plained shift in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­eign pol­i­cy to­wards Cu­ba.

He said the long­stand­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with Cu­ba, which has sur­vived mul­ti­ple ad­min­is­tra­tions, in­clud­ing the for­mer UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion, ap­pears to have been aban­doned.

“So this cur­rent gov­ern­ment seems to have flip-flopped com­plete­ly with no rea­son or ra­tio­nale of­fered to the peo­ple of this coun­try,” he added.

Browne said a se­ri­ous Prime Min­is­ter would at min­i­mum have ex­plained such a shift to Par­lia­ment.

“There’s a long list of is­sues where the prime min­is­ter, in a democ­ra­cy, would have ad­dressed the par­lia­ment. This is our un­der­stand­ing. This is the ev­i­dence that has been brought to us. This is our rea­son­ing. And this is our jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for chang­ing a na­tion­al po­si­tion and ac­tu­al­ly a re­gion­al po­si­tion,” he said.

He con­demned the Gov­ern­ment for what he called a be­tray­al at the re­cent CELAC meet­ing.

“That is a shame and dis­grace,” Browne said.