Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s most re­cent state­ments re­gard­ing the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), give need for pause. In fact, they would seem to in­di­cate that mat­ters are com­ing to a boil, as the pos­si­bil­i­ty ex­ists that Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump may launch a war against Venezuela, which can re­sult in a widen­ing di­vi­sion be­tween this coun­try’s Gov­ern­ment and the oth­er gov­ern­ments with­in the re­gion.

“The or­gan­i­sa­tion is de­te­ri­o­rat­ing rapid­ly due to poor man­age­ment lax ac­count­abil­i­ty, fac­tion­al di­vi­sions desta­bil­is­ing poli­cies, pri­vate con­flict be­tween re­gion­al lead­ers and be­tween po­lit­i­cal par­ties and the in­ap­pro­pri­ate med­dling in the do­mes­tic pol­i­tics of mem­ber states,” stat­ed Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar in her most re­cent state­ment against Cari­com.

Over­ar­ch­ing­ly, she warned that “Cari­com can­not con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in this dys­func­tion­al and self-de­struc­tive man­ner, as it’s a grave dis­ser­vice to the peo­ple of Cari­com.”

Giv­en this per­spec­tive, it is im­por­tant to note that Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not at­tend the Ju­ly Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing.

She has al­so stat­ed un­equiv­o­cal­ly that Cari­com is not a zone of peace, per the 2014 de­c­la­ra­tion by Cari­com and the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (CELAC)—of the re­gion as a Zone of Peace; an agree­ment she signed on­to as T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter in 2014.

As de­ter­mined at the sign­ing, the de­c­la­ra­tion was in­tend­ed to pre­serve the re­gion as a Zone of Peace, avoid­ing con­flict and war from break­ing out amongst gov­ern­ments in the Caribbean Sea.

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter has since re­ject­ed the Cari­com Treaty, con­struct­ed on three pil­lars - one of them be­ing the co­or­di­na­tion of for­eign pol­i­cy amongst mem­ber states in their re­la­tions with third coun­tries. Her cur­rent po­si­tion is that each coun­try must do as it feels the need to in its ex­ter­nal af­fairs.

As far as is pub­licly known, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, since as­sum­ing of­fice in April of this year, in all of her crit­i­cisms against Cari­com mem­ber states, has not met face-to-face in cau­cus with oth­er prime min­is­ters and pres­i­dents in the 52-year-old in­te­gra­tion move­ment to dis­cuss and in­deed make her com­plaints known to them, but has used oth­er means to ven­ti­late her con­cerns about Cari­com.

In her most re­cent state­ment re­lat­ing to the US re­stric­tions on trav­el by na­tion­als of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and Do­mini­ca, the T&T Prime Min­is­ter charged that “they bad-mouthed the US, and guess what hap­pened? All their visas are now re­strict­ed.” How­ev­er, sub­se­quent to the first an­nounce­ment, the US said the visa re­stric­tions have been sus­pend­ed.

For Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, it’s the sec­ond time around of be­ing caus­tic against Cari­com gov­ern­ments. In her first pe­ri­od as PM (2010-2015), she made it known that T&T was not an “ATM ma­chine” for re­gion­al states.

Un­doubt­ed­ly, there has been wide­spread crit­i­cism of Cari­com’s fail­ures to in­te­grate in eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal mat­ters in the man­ner en­vis­aged by the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas. How­ev­er, that is a col­lec­tive fail­ure of all the lead­ers.

We, there­fore, would wish to sug­gest to our Prime Min­is­ter that she en­gage in face-to-face com­mu­ni­ca­tion with fel­low lead­ers of Cari­com to give them her per­spec­tives on the im­por­tant mat­ters and how the re­gion­al group­ing should deal with the cur­rent US-Venezuela con­flict.