Kevon Felmine

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was not among the Caribbean lead­ers who at­tend­ed the sec­ond Africa-Cari­com Sum­mit in Ethiopia, Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers has as­sured that T&T is prop­er­ly rep­re­sent­ed.

Speak­ing to jour­nal­ists in Gas­par­il­lo yes­ter­day, Sobers said the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs’ deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and the head of the Cari­com Di­vi­sion are lead­ing a well-briefed del­e­ga­tion.

Sobers ex­plained that the del­e­ga­tion is ful­ly ca­pa­ble of ad­vanc­ing T&T’s po­si­tion at the sum­mit, de­spite the Prime Min­is­ter’s ab­sence. He not­ed that not all heads of state at­tend­ed the sum­mit, not­ing Ja­maica and Guyana had na­tion­al elec­tions last week.

Cari­com chair­man Mia Mot­t­ley post­ed on so­cial me­dia that she and the prime min­is­ters of Grena­da, St Kitts and Nevis, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, The Ba­hamas, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines ar­rived at Ad­dis Aba­ba Bole In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Sat­ur­day. Cari­com Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett de­scribed the sum­mit as a sym­bol­ic “home­com­ing,” em­pha­sis­ing the shared her­itage and en­dur­ing bonds be­tween Africa and the Caribbean.

How­ev­er, T&T’s ab­sence among the at­tend­ing prime min­is­ters drew crit­i­cism from for­mer Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, who post­ed on so­cial me­dia: “Is it that we are no longer part of Cari­com? Or is our re­al head of gov­ern­ment busy play­ing golf at one of his golf clubs in the US?”

Re­spond­ing to the re­marks, Sobers said: “I have no idea who she was re­fer­ring to, and as far as I am aware, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar does not play golf. There is not much to say on ridicu­lous state­ments that em­anate from the Op­po­si­tion.”

He added: “We have an agen­da, which is, as far as I am aware, the last re­port I would have read is be­ing dealt with in a com­pre­hen­sive way, so yes, Trinidad and To­ba­go is prop­er­ly rep­re­sent­ed con­trary to any type of ridicu­lous nar­ra­tive that may be spun by any­body op­po­site and ap­po­site to us. Not all heads of state were present at the sum­mit. Not all at­tend­ed be­cause we have oth­er things to do. This does not mean that the sum­mit is not im­por­tant. In fact, the Gov­ern­ment saw its im­por­tance and sent a high-lev­el del­e­ga­tion.”

Sobers al­so ad­dressed re­marks made by Venezuela’s Min­is­ter of In­te­ri­or, Jus­tice and Peace Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, who re­cent­ly re­ferred Per­sad-Bisses­sar a “drunk leader” fol­low­ing her sup­port of last week’s US mil­i­tary strike on a Venezue­lan ves­sel with 11 mem­bers of the Tren de Aragua gang which was al­leged­ly car­ry­ing drugs. Sobers said such state­ments were un­for­tu­nate but not­ed they were not new.

“The Prime Min­is­ter has al­ready said be­fore In­de­pen­dence Day that Dios­da­do is free to make his state­ments as they are. De­spite the war of words, we con­tin­ue to have close diplo­mat­ic ties with Venezuela,” Sobers said.

He em­pha­sised that the min­istry main­tains dai­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion with T&T’s mis­sion in Cara­cas.

“As a mat­ter of fact, I had a very lengthy, cor­dial con­ver­sa­tion with my good friend, who is the am­bas­sador for Venezuela. As the coun­try may or may not know, he is ac­tu­al­ly the act­ing dean of the diplo­mat­ic corps and will soon be the con­firmed dean for the diplo­mat­ic corps, so we do have very good re­la­tions and we con­tin­ue to have very good re­la­tions.”

On US in­ter­ven­tion in the re­gion’s counter-nar­cotics op­er­a­tions, Sobers re­it­er­at­ed that T&T wel­comes the sup­port.

“The Amer­i­cans have made it clear that their in­ter­ven­tion is to com­bat transna­tion­al crime, which has dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect­ed T&T and some oth­er coun­tries. We have re­ceived tech­ni­cal and lo­gis­ti­cal help from larg­er na­tions in the past to com­bat it, but it has not borne the fruits the coun­try would like. There­fore, the Gov­ern­ment wel­comes phys­i­cal in­ter­ven­tion at this time.”

He added that oth­er Caribbean na­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the East­ern Caribbean, have al­so seen a rise in transna­tion­al crime.

“I think all of us, all right-think­ing mem­bers of so­ci­ety, will wel­come this type of in­ter­ven­tion. As the po­lice com­mis­sion­er has in­di­cat­ed at a press con­fer­ence, and sta­tis­ti­cal­ly demon­strat­ed, we have al­ready seen a re­duc­tion in the lev­els of crime in this coun­try.”

Re­gard­ing con­cerns from lo­cal fish­er­men about be­ing caught in the US pur­suit of nar­co­traf­fick­ers, Sobers re­as­sured them: “Once lo­cal fish­er­men go out to fish, they have noth­ing to be fear­ful of. If I am go­ing to pull fish, I have noth­ing to be fear­ful of. If I am go­ing to pro­cure some­thing else, then I should be afraid.”