Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has hailed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s achieve­ment of a Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (UN­SC) seat as a vote of con­fi­dence in T&T’s lead­er­ship, cred­i­bil­i­ty and grow­ing in­flu­ence with­in the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has point­ed out that T&T was al­so on the UN­SC in 1985 due to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment’s work.

Both faced off on the is­sue in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­liv­ered a state­ment on T&T’s achieve­ment of the UN­SC seat on Thurs­day. She said it was a ma­jor diplo­mat­ic vic­to­ry for T&T, which came af­ter on­ly one year of the UNC’s tenure.

She said the suc­cess “was the re­sult of strate­gic plan­ning, sus­tained diplo­ma­cy and de­lib­er­ate en­gage­ment with the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.”

She said she for­mal­ly launched T&T’s cam­paign at the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in New York in Sep­tem­ber 2025, and T&T had se­cured a place at one of the world’s most in­flu­en­tial de­ci­sion-mak­ing ta­bles.

“For a small state of just over one mil­lion peo­ple, that’s no small ac­com­plish­ment ... We ac­cept this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty with hu­mil­i­ty and as a re­sound­ing vote of con­fi­dence in T&T’s lead­er­ship, cred­i­bil­i­ty and grow­ing in­flu­ence with­in the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so cit­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s meet­ings with lead­ers of In­dia, the Unit­ed States, Kuwait, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates and re­cent­ly Chi­na’s For­eign Min­is­ter Wang Yi.

The PM said an elec­tion to the coun­cil re­quired the sup­port of a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty of the 129 UN Mem­ber States, and T&T se­cured “far more than that.”

T&T re­ceived sup­port from 181 of the 191 coun­tries el­i­gi­ble to vote, rep­re­sent­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 95 per cent of the vote.

The man­date in­clud­ed sup­port of the coun­cil’s five Per­ma­nent Mem­bers—the US, UK, France, Chi­na, and Rus­sia.

But Beck­les said, “Prime Min­is­ter, are you aware that T&T first served at the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil in 1985—fol­low­ing the de­ci­sion of the PNM gov­ern­ment?”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­tort­ed an­gri­ly, “I’m re­mind­ed that is al­most 50 years ago! Many of you sit­ting here were prob­a­bly not even born ... to­day we’re in 2026 and we’re now in a more com­pli­cat­ed world geopo­lit­i­cal­ly and oth­er­wise ...”

PNM lob­by­ist cost $67m

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that on as­sum­ing of­fice, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers dis­cov­ered the PNM gov­ern­ment had tak­en no mean­ing­ful steps to ad­vance T&T’s UN­SC bid in 2026.

She said the Gov­ern­ment’s Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil cam­paign cost tax­pay­ers very lit­tle, with ex­pen­di­ture large­ly lim­it­ed to pro­mo­tion­al ma­te­ri­als and a sin­gle re­cep­tion in New York.

“Con­trast that with the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion. On Oc­to­ber 18, 2016, the (PNM) gov­ern­ment re­tained the Group DC LLC to lob­by on be­half of T&T—an arrange­ment re­peat­ed­ly re­newed un­til 2025.

“Its prin­ci­pal was Arthur Collins, a New York-based lob­by­ist whom for­mer prime min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley pub­licly ac­knowl­edged he knew quite well. Over that pe­ri­od, tax­pay­ers paid US$10,127,500, ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$67 mil­lion, or rough­ly US$1.2 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­leged.

“Yet there’s lit­tle ev­i­dence of mea­sur­able achieve­ments, sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties, or mean­ing­ful diplo­mat­ic out­comes aris­ing from that ex­pen­di­ture. While (the PNM) spent tens of mil­lions to pur­chase ac­cess, this Gov­ern­ment earned re­spect,” she added.

Row­ley warns Govt on UN­SC con­duct

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has wel­comed T&T’s elec­tion to the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil but warned that the Gov­ern­ment’s con­duct on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage will come un­der scruti­ny dur­ing its tenure.

In a so­cial me­dia post, Row­ley said he was proud that T&T would once again rep­re­sent the na­tion and the Caribbean re­gion on the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, de­scrib­ing the achieve­ment as the re­sult of work ini­ti­at­ed and pre­pared by his ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“I am there­fore pleased that the work we ini­ti­at­ed and pre­pared has borne the ex­pect­ed fruit, and once again this lit­tle na­tion will as­sume its po­si­tion to rep­re­sent our na­tion and re­gion on the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil for the next year,” he wrote.

Row­ley thanked for­mer for­eign and Cari­com af­fairs min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne, his suc­ces­sor and the coun­try’s diplo­mat­ic of­fi­cers at home and abroad for help­ing se­cure the seat.

While wel­com­ing the de­vel­op­ment, Row­ley ex­pressed con­cern about how T&T would con­duct it­self at the fo­rum, ar­gu­ing that the coun­try’s diplo­mat­ic lega­cy had re­cent­ly been un­der­mined.

He claimed the Gov­ern­ment had aban­doned cau­tion in its for­eign re­la­tions, dam­aged ties with neigh­bour­ing coun­tries and di­min­ished the coun­try’s diplo­mat­ic stand­ing.

Row­ley al­so crit­i­cised what he de­scribed as sup­port for ac­tions that vi­o­lat­ed the Unit­ed Na­tions Char­ter and in­ter­na­tion­al law.

“I trust that there will be a re­set and re­think­ing by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go so that when the in­evitable votes come to the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, we will not be found want­i­ng on is­sues such as op­po­si­tion to the geno­cide in Gaza and sup­port for the two-state so­lu­tion,” he wrote.

Row­ley said T&T would be ex­pect­ed to ad­vo­cate for re­spect for in­ter­na­tion­al law and the UN Char­ter, while tak­ing po­si­tions on is­sues in­clud­ing the hu­man­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion in Cu­ba, the Rus­sia-Ukraine con­flict and ten­sions in­volv­ing Iran and the Gulf re­gion.

He ar­gued that the coun­try must up­hold prin­ci­ples of non-in­ter­fer­ence and op­pose ef­forts by pow­er­ful states to dom­i­nate small­er na­tions and re­gions.

“We, the cit­i­zens, will be watch­ing, since this mat­ter is not one for chest beat­ing and tak­ing cred­it, but the very soul of the na­tion is on tri­al, and we re­main ready and re­spon­si­ble for these isles,” he wrote.