The Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States an­swers not to Trinidad and To­ba­go but to his own peo­ple, and like­wise, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar must an­swer to the peo­ple of this coun­try.

So said Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne yes­ter­day.

Browne was re­spond­ing to ques­tions about US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s state­ments on 60 Min­utes that he doubt­ed the US would go to war with Venezuela. But Trump warned that Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro’s days were num­bered.

Browne ques­tioned the Prime Min­is­ter’s thoughts on Trump’s com­ments and said she must an­swer to the peo­ple of T&T. “Thus far, her state­ments and ac­tions have worked di­rect­ly against our sov­er­eign na­tion­al in­ter­ests.”

“In diplo­ma­cy, when you stand on prin­ci­ple, you don’t have to shift your po­si­tion de­pend­ing on con­ve­nience, the di­rec­tion of the wind, or where you think our First World friends would pre­fer us to be po­si­tioned. If the Prime Min­is­ter had been of sound judge­ment and more amenable to good ad­vice, she would have paid clos­er at­ten­tion to the his­to­ry of mil­i­tary de­ploy­ments and regime change ad­ven­tures in our hemi­sphere and glob­al­ly.”

The for­mer min­is­ter of for­eign af­fairs said, “She com­mit­ted the car­di­nal of­fence of iso­lat­ing T&T from Cari­com on this most im­por­tant mat­ter of re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, for which she ac­tu­al­ly is ac­count­able with­in Cari­com’s qua­si-Cab­i­net. The Prime Min­is­ter al­so has farmed out our for­eign pol­i­cy to the ex­tent that if oth­er na­tions shift their pri­or­i­ties, as is their right, our own coun­try can find it­self in an even more un­ten­able and un­sus­tain­able po­si­tion.

“Our en­er­gy in­ter­ests have al­ready been set back by decades be­cause of her mis­cal­cu­la­tions and the rep­re­hen­si­ble rhetoric de­ployed by mem­bers of her Cab­i­net and her­self to­ward Venezuela. When you find your­self as a Head of Gov­ern­ment pub­licly en­cour­ag­ing the ex­e­cu­tion at sea of your own na­tion­als and those of sev­er­al neigh­bour­ing states with­out any due process, you should know that you have be­trayed the trust that the na­tion had re­posed in you.

“When you re­peat­ed­ly mis­con­strue and den­i­grate the con­cept of our Zone of Peace, which you your­self had signed off on, you should know that as a leader you have be­trayed Cari­com and all Caribbean civil­i­sa­tion cit­i­zens,” Browne added.

“When you paint your­self in­to a cor­ner where­by your die-hard sup­port­ers see a lit­er­al mil­i­tary con­flict as the best way for­ward for re­gion­al re­la­tions and sta­bil­i­ty, you know that you have sep­a­rat­ed your­self com­plete­ly from the right-think­ing peo­ple of our land.”

The Prime Min­is­ter has cho­sen a path that is in­com­pat­i­ble with the Unit­ed Na­tions Char­ter and in­ter­na­tion­al law, and sad­ly, our econ­o­my, our good re­la­tions, our re­gion­al sov­er­eign­ty, and our na­tion­al in­ter­ests will suf­fer while she con­tin­ues to care­ful­ly avoid op­por­tu­ni­ties for full pub­lic en­gage­ment and prop­er ex­am­i­na­tion by the me­dia.”

Nei­ther For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers nor Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der re­spond­ed to Guardian Me­dia’s What­sApp query on Trump’s state­ments.

—Gail Alexan­der