Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has de­scribed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s crit­i­cism of Cari­com as “reck­less,” as she stressed the im­por­tance of strong re­gion­al ties with oth­er Caribbean coun­tries.

On Fri­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was crit­i­cal of Cari­com, as she ac­cused the in­sti­tu­tion of be­ing an “un­re­li­able part­ner” which op­er­at­ed in a “dys­func­tion­al and self-de­struc­tive” man­ner.

In re­sponse, Prime Min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Gas­ton Browne ar­gued that while Cari­com re­spects the rights of in­di­vid­ual na­tions to con­duct their own bi­lat­er­al af­fairs, sim­i­lar con­sid­er­a­tion and re­spect should be giv­en to their own ap­proach with the Unit­ed States.

Browne fur­ther stressed that T&T earned more than $1.1 bil­lion from the re­gion, as he cit­ed trade da­ta from 2024.

Re­spond­ing to the ex­change, dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s Chil­dren’s Christ­mas par­ty at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Beck­les said she was dis­ap­point­ed in Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s stance to­wards Cari­com, not­ing that the or­gan­i­sa­tion has al­ways been sup­port­ive of T&T.

“We are very con­cerned be­cause at the end of the day, Cari­com has al­ways sup­port­ed us. It al­so re­minds us of the ir­re­spon­si­ble state­ments of whether Trinidad and To­ba­go is an ATM ma­chine, we have to link both,” Beck­les said in re­la­tion to a state­ment Per­sad-Bisses­sar made in her first term as prime min­is­ter (2010-2015).

“I would hate to think the Prime Min­is­ter does not recog­nise that Trinidad and To­ba­go... we don’t want to be iso­lat­ed, at the end of the day, it’s not just about nar­co-traf­fick­ing, it’s not just about drugs, it’s about every­thing.

“It’s about tourism, it’s about nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, it’s about mu­sic, it’s about every, sin­gle thing... when we think about Cari­com it’s about us be­ing stronger as a re­gion.”

Al­so at the event was for­mer Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne, who de­scribed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments as “em­bar­rass­ing,” as he ac­cused her of fail­ing to recog­nise the val­ue of the re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion, even dur­ing the ear­ly days of her as­sum­ing of­fice.

“This is the first time this coun­try has had a Prime Min­is­ter who is overt­ly against the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty, and she has laid that foun­da­tion from very ear­ly af­ter the Gen­er­al Elec­tion. She re­fused to at­tend the heads of gov­ern­ment meet­ing, she has been at­tack­ing the zone of peace con­sis­tent­ly and re­fer­ring to Cari­com as an un­re­li­able part­ner and im­plod­ing... the on­ly thing im­plod­ing is the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T,” Browne said.

“These ex­changes that are oc­cur­ring in the pub­lic do­main are un­prece­dent­ed; every prime min­is­ter we ever had, in­clud­ing Bas­deo Pan­day, have been re­gion­al­ists from Dr Er­ic Williams up to to­day and it is an em­bar­rass­ment to T&T.”

He added, “We un­der­stand Cari­com, we ap­pre­ci­ate it’s val­ue. We were found­ing mem­bers of this com­mu­ni­ty and on­ly in this Christ­mas sea­son to see our Prime Min­is­ter at­tack­ing Gas­ton Browne, it is a shame and dis­grace and this coun­try and re­gion de­serves bet­ter.”

Dr Browne added that such com­ments shared by Per­sad-Bisses­sar were not the views of all T&T’s cit­i­zens.