DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has de­fend­ed the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) against the cri­tique of Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, urg­ing the rest of the re­gion to ig­nore her “in­sin­cer­i­ty”.

He com­ment­ed on a Face­book post yes­ter­day in re­sponse to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ment on Ju­ly 8 that the bloc should have achieved more in its 50 years of ex­is­tence.

Tak­ing of­fence, Dr Row­ley ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of seek­ing to damp­en the mood as he not­ed that Cari­com demon­strat­ed its uni­ty and diplo­mat­ic clout by cel­e­brat­ing for one week, at­tract­ing the pres­ence of T&T’s ma­jor trad­ing part­ners.

While he ac­cused her of at­tempt­ing to “un­der­mine the re­gion­al body”, the Prime Min­is­ter said Cari­com na­tions should dis­re­gard her sen­ti­ments.

“My ad­vice to Trinidad and To­ba­go and the re­gion is to please ig­nore her in­sin­cer­i­ty and let’s press on to an­oth­er 50 years of progress led by those who be­lieve in the bound­less faith in our des­tiny as a coun­try and as a unit­ed and ever more ef­fec­tive Cari­com,” he said.

He went on to list mo­ments where he felt the Op­po­si­tion leader demon­strat­ed a lack of sup­port for Cari­com, be­gin­ning with her com­ments on Ju­ly 6, 2010, that T&T was not an ATM card. Per­sad-Bisses­sar, then prime min­is­ter, was re­spond­ing to calls from St Kitts Prime Min­is­ter Den­zil Dou­glas and Grena­da Prime Min­is­ter Till­man Thomas for the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion to com­plete projects that were start­ed un­der the PNM.

Mean­while, Dr Row­ley re­called that Per­sad-Bisses­sar trig­gered a trade war and boy­cott of T&T prod­ucts in Ja­maica when ten peo­ple were de­port­ed back to their coun­try.

“It took this new Prime Min­is­ter lead­ing a del­e­ga­tion to Ja­maica to smooth the ruf­fled feath­ers and re­store a good work­ing re­la­tion­ship with Ja­maica,” he said.

Dr Row­ley re­mind­ed the leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) that her par­ty re­fused to ac­cept the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice as the fi­nal Court of Ap­peal de­spite sup­port from oth­er na­tions.

As he con­tin­ued to de­fend the bloc, he re­called that last week’s 45th Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing led to the ex­pan­sion of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my.

“This mat­ter was stalled un­der the UNC that she led and by 2015 was re­moved as an agen­da item on the Meet­ing of Heads of Gov­ern­ment. In­ci­den­tal­ly, this ac­tion was tak­en in the ab­sence of any rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Trinidad and To­ba­go present and or ob­ject­ing. This was be­cause the then prime min­is­ter, who is now the Op­po­si­tion Leader and is now ask­ing ques­tions about the ef­fec­tive­ness of Cari­com, saw it fit to be at a par­ty cel­e­bra­tion at Co­co Reef Ho­tel in To­ba­go, at the very mo­ment, rather than at the Cari­com meet­ing where se­ri­ous de­ci­sions were be­ing tak­en,” he said.

He al­so hit back at Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments on re­gion­al food se­cu­ri­ty. The Prime Min­is­ter said 70,000 pounds (about 31751.44 kg) of high-qual­i­ty rice seeds ar­rived from Guyana on Ju­ly 4 and are be­ing dis­trib­uted to lo­cal farm­ers to plant about 3,000 acres of rice in Trinidad.

“The rice, shade house, and shrimp projects are di­rect­ly out of the Cari­com ini­tia­tives in Guyana and Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­volv­ing the train­ing and de­vel­op­ment of thou­sands of young peo­ple in many pro­grammes in both coun­tries in an ef­fort to re­duce our food im­port bill by 25 per cent in the first in­stance. It al­so in­cludes the pro­duc­tion of trade­able vol­umes of corn and soya for an­i­mal feed re­quire­ments,” he said.

UNC: Fo­cus on the Govt’s busi­ness

UNC PRO Dr Kirk Meighoo re­spond­ed to Dr Row­ley’s ‘c com­ments on be­half of the Op­po­si­tion Leader. He urged him to fo­cus on the Gov­ern­ment’s busi­ness.

“We have to won­der if the Prime Min­is­ter doesn’t have any­thing sen­si­ble to do to help im­prove cit­i­zens’ lives oth­er than whine on Face­book like a spoiled child. Our ad­vice is to stop cry­ing on Face­book and go to work please,” he said.