DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj is dis­miss­ing fears of a diplo­mat­ic rift with­in Cari­com, fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s sharp crit­i­cism of the re­gion­al bloc ear­li­er this week.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had de­scribed Cari­com as “an un­re­li­able part­ner,” ac­cus­ing the body of sid­ing with Venezuela amid es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions be­tween Port-of-Spain and Cara­cas. Yes­ter­day, she an­nounced plans to “re­align” T&T’s for­eign pol­i­cy but stopped short of sug­gest­ing any with­draw­al from the bloc.

Speak­ing out­side the Red House, Min­is­ter Ma­haraj said he does not an­tic­i­pate the PM’s re­marks will lead to a ma­jor fall­out.

“I don’t see any prob­lem. We have a long his­to­ry to­geth­er,” Ma­haraj told re­porters. Asked whether the Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments could have wider diplo­mat­ic im­pli­ca­tions, he replied, “That’s a ques­tion for the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has since main­tained that she en­joys good re­la­tions with this coun­try’s re­gion­al neigh­bours de­spite the con­tro­ver­sy.

Mean­while, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Mar­lene Attzs said that while Cari­com re­mains a “work in progress” more than five decades af­ter its found­ing, it con­tin­ues to play an es­sen­tial role in re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion and cri­sis re­sponse.

“Cari­com is 52 years old. It has been the an­chor of re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion for much of that time. We know that it has not re­alised all of its ob­jec­tives—we still strug­gle with things like the Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my,” she told Guardian Me­dia.

She said­de­spite un­even progress on ar­eas such as labour mo­bil­i­ty and eco­nom­ic har­mon­i­sa­tion, the re­gion­al body has been “cat­alyt­ic” in ad­vanc­ing co­op­er­a­tion.

“I think Cari­com has, in fact, been cat­alyt­ic for some of the ad­vance­ments that we’ve seen in the re­gion,” Dr Attzs said.

Re­fer­ring to the dev­as­ta­tion caused by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa in Ja­maica, she said re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty re­mains crit­i­cal.

“At a time like this, giv­en what has hap­pened to one of our Cari­com broth­ers and sis­ters in Ja­maica, I think we’ll see all of the Cari­com coun­tries ris­ing to the oc­ca­sion to lend the sup­port that is re­quired.”

On spec­u­la­tion that T&T’s for­eign pol­i­cy might be shift­ing in ways that could strain re­gion­al ties, she said it was too ear­ly to draw con­clu­sions.

“The Gov­ern­ment is fair­ly new, so it will still be un­fold­ing and re­veal­ing some of its pol­i­cy mea­sures, in­clud­ing its for­eign pol­i­cy. I think time will tell, and we have to wait and see what de­fin­i­tive state­ment comes from the gov­ern­ment be­fore we can make any sort of judg­ment on it,” she said.