Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Am­bas­sador Plenipo­ten­tiary to Cari­com Ralph Maraj has called for small, vul­ner­a­ble states in the Caribbean to re­assess their se­cu­ri­ty pos­ture in the face of ris­ing threats from both state and non-state ac­tors.

In a state­ment, Maraj chal­lenged the no­tion that the Caribbean is a “zone of peace”, point­ing to the per­va­sive in­flu­ence of transna­tion­al crim­i­nal car­tels en­gaged in nar­cotics, arms, and hu­man traf­fick­ing. Cit­ing com­ments by Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali, he not­ed that these or­gan­i­sa­tions have the pow­er to “over­whelm state in­sti­tu­tions, un­der­mine democ­ra­cy, per­vert the rule of law and threat­en hu­man dig­ni­ty and de­vel­op­ment”.

He said, “The big ques­tion is, what should small, vul­ner­a­ble states like Trinidad and To­ba­go do to pro­tect them­selves in a world of in­creas­ing volatil­i­ty where mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism is be­ing chal­lenged?”

Ac­cord­ing to him, the an­swer lies in main­tain­ing ex­ist­ing mul­ti­lat­er­al frame­works while al­so deep­en­ing ties with the Unit­ed States, which he de­scribed as “the large, pow­er­ful de­mo­c­ra­t­ic al­ly in our hemi­spher­ic neigh­bour­hood”.

He urged the re­gion to aban­don “ef­fete ide­o­log­i­cal pre­oc­cu­pa­tions” and in­stead em­brace the ad­van­tages of prox­im­i­ty to the world’s fore­most su­per­pow­er.

Maraj cred­it­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ad­min­is­tra­tion for set­ting what he de­scribed as “a new mo­men­tum in TT/US re­la­tions”.

He high­light­ed a re­cent call be­tween US Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau and Per­sad-Bisses­sar, dur­ing which the US reaf­firmed T&T’s role as “a strong part­ner in the Caribbean”.

The dis­cus­sions un­der­scored shared com­mit­ments to com­bat­ing nar­cotics and firearms traf­fick­ing, while al­so ac­knowl­edg­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pub­lic sup­port for US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the South Caribbean Sea.

On the ques­tion of re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, Maraj point­ed to the Gov­ern­ment’s firm stance in the on­go­ing Guyana-Venezuela bor­der dis­pute.

He not­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pledge that if Venezuela acts on its threats to seize two-thirds of Guyana’s ter­ri­to­ry, T&T would al­low US forces to op­er­ate from its soil in de­fence of its Cari­com neigh­bour.

Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Hamid Ghany, de­scribed the po­si­tion as un­prece­dent­ed, not­ing that no oth­er Cari­com state has made such a “de­fin­i­tive state­ment” in sup­port of Guyana.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go is wise to know where its se­cu­ri­ty lies,” Maraj con­tend­ed.