KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The fu­ture of T&T’s in­ter­ac­tion with the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty now rests with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in the face of last month’s diplo­mat­ic blun­der, when this coun­try vot­ed against hur­ri­cane-rav­aged Do­mini­ca’s plea to have its con­tri­bu­tions to the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) waived for the next two years.

Weigh­ing in on the con­tro­ver­sy yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Maukesh Bas­deo told the T&T Guardian that there was still time to mend any strained re­la­tion­ship caused by T&T’s vote at the Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Per­ma­nent Coun­cil of the OAS on March 23. He said a state­ment by Row­ley to the coun­try and the gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Do­mini­ca was the most cru­cial as­pect of mit­i­gat­ing or quelling the furore.

At the meet­ing, T&T’s Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the OAS, re­tired Brigadier Gen­er­al An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer, com­mu­ni­cat­ed this coun­try’s al­ter­na­tive to the re­quest­ed waiv­er, not­ing a de­fer­ral of pay­ments should be con­sid­ered and a pay­ment plan be im­ple­ment­ed. Do­mini­ca was bat­tered by Hur­ri­cane Maria in Sep­tem­ber 2017 and suf­fered loss­es es­ti­mat­ed at US$ 1.3 bil­lion, se­vere­ly dam­ag­ing their tourism-based econ­o­my.

Bas­deo yes­ter­day de­scribed the de­vel­op­ments as a “for­eign pol­i­cy dis­as­ter.” He be­lieves it was the Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Den­nis Moses and his min­istry that dropped the ball in pro­vid­ing guid­ance to Phillips-Spencer on T&T’s po­si­tion.

“The Do­mini­ca is­sue is re­al­ly strange giv­en the re­sponse T&T put for­ward re­gard­ing the re­lief ef­forts af­ter Hur­ri­cane Maria. The sup­port cit­i­zens, the pri­vate sec­tor and the Gov­ern­ment gave state­ments af­ter the hur­ri­cane, this vote goes counter to the ac­tions of the pop­u­la­tion and the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. There seemed to have been a dis­con­nect be­tween the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs and our am­bas­sador,” Bas­deo said.

“At the end of the day, every­thing comes down to the Prime Min­is­ter as the head of the Cab­i­net. I am await­ing a state­ment from the Prime Min­is­ter and maybe, the Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs. This is go­ing to give us an in­di­ca­tion as to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­si­tion on this mat­ter.”

He added, how­ev­er, “What was pre­sent­ed by the am­bas­sador, that was our for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tion be­cause he spoke as our rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Whether we try to change it, the record will still stand as that was our po­si­tion.”

A mem­o­ran­dum, ob­tained by the T&T Guardian, showed that T&T’s Mis­sion in Wash­ing­ton DC had sug­gest­ed to the min­istry that this coun­try should sup­port Do­mini­ca’s bid. Fol­low­ing fur­ther cor­re­spon­dence be­tween the min­istry and the mis­sion, Phillips-Spencer told the meet­ing that T&T had of­fered the pro­pos­al for con­sid­er­a­tion of de­fer­ral of pay­ments of con­tri­bu­tions by mem­ber states and where pos­si­ble, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a pay­ment plan.

As calls for Moses dis­missals con­tin­ued, Bas­deo said the Min­is­ter was not void of knowl­edge of for­eign af­fairs, hav­ing been a ca­reer diplo­mat.

Fol­low­ing crit­i­cisms lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, the min­istry is­sued a re­lease last Thurs­day stat­ing that Row­ley had re­quest­ed a re­port and it was in­ves­ti­gat­ing the cir­cum­stances which led to a pub­lic of­fi­cial’s op­pos­ing vote and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of T&T’s po­si­tion dur­ing the OAS meet­ing.

Ques­tions sent to Row­ley and Moses, which were pub­lished in the Sun­day Guardian, were yet to be an­swered up to yes­ter­day.

T&T’s vote has been con­demned but a ques­tion aris­ing from this is­sue was whether it was based on set for­eign pol­i­cy.

Bas­deo said while there was an is­sue when T&T ab­stained from vot­ing on a Unit­ed Na­tions res­o­lu­tion af­ter US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump de­clared Jerusalem as the cap­i­tal of Is­rael last De­cem­ber, the Do­mini­ca vote was more im­por­tant as it “hit clos­er to home.”