KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dis­missed con­cerns that Trinidad and To­ba­go could lose re­gion­al back­ing for its bid to sit on the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, say­ing she does not care if oth­er coun­tries with­draw their sup­port.

“I sim­ply do not care if any­one with­draws their sup­port. That is their choice,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day, re­spond­ing to a re­port by the Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC) which sug­gest­ed that Port-of-Spain’s de­ci­sion to sup­port the Unit­ed States’ mil­i­tary build-up in the Caribbean could jeop­ar­dise its 2027–2028 Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil nom­i­na­tion.

The re­port quot­ed re­gion­al sources as say­ing some Cari­com lead­ers were un­hap­py with Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­si­tion, which stood apart from the re­gion­al con­sen­sus reaf­firm­ing the Caribbean as a “Zone of Peace.”

“You should ask Cari­com lead­ers about this. Quite frankly my on­ly care and con­cern is for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

She added, “I have made it ex­plic­it­ly clear that Trinidad and To­ba­go will al­ways come first un­der my lead­er­ship. No oth­er coun­try be­sides the US is will­ing to as­sist us to ag­gres­sive­ly fight the drug and arms traf­fick­ers. I am not go­ing to toe Cari­com’s line while our coun­try is go­ing to hell with drugs, out-of-con­trol vi­o­lent crime and mur­ders for the last 20 years. Added to that we have tens of thou­sands of il­le­gal Venezue­lan im­mi­grants here who are putting a strain on our ser­vices.”

Her com­ments fol­low re­marks made dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last month in New York, af­ter meet­ing with Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res on the side­lines of the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed that meet­ing as “very, very good” for Trinidad and To­ba­go, say­ing dis­cus­sions fo­cused on cli­mate change, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, food and fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty, and non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases. She al­so con­firmed that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil bid was raised.

“You may or may not know, we ap­plied for a seat on the UN Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, there has been no ob­jec­tion to that, there has been no oth­er nom­i­na­tion, so it means we would have suc­ceed­ed,” she said then.

CMC, how­ev­er, has since re­port­ed that the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on US op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean may now place that en­dorse­ment in ques­tion.

For­mer For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne said the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ments and for­eign pol­i­cy pos­ture were un­der­min­ing years of diplo­mat­ic work and could harm T&T’s rep­u­ta­tion across the re­gion.

“As a for­mer Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs I have joined with my Leader and col­leagues in the Op­po­si­tion and with many oth­er right-think­ing mem­bers of our na­tion­al and re­gion­al com­mu­ni­ty in re­peat­ed­ly sound­ing the alarm at the grave harm this Gov­ern­ment is do­ing to our coun­try’s stand­ing, rep­u­ta­tion, re­gard and prospects for suc­cess,” Browne said.

He said the Op­po­si­tion had long warned that the Gov­ern­ment’s “iso­la­tion­ist and ex­cep­tion­al­ist pos­ture” could jeop­ar­dise the cam­paign for the UN seat.

“It should be no sur­prise that there are now ques­tions about the suit­abil­i­ty of this UNC Gov­ern­ment to ful­fil that crit­i­cal man­date,” he said, not­ing that se­cur­ing en­dorse­ment from the wider Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean group (GRU­LAC) “should not be as­sumed or tak­en for grant­ed in the cir­cum­stances.”