For many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, their dai­ly hus­tle has fo­cused their con­cerns on their im­me­di­ate do­mes­tic en­vi­ron­ment and less on wider Cari­com is­sues. I have ob­served that lo­cal per­spec­tives on the cur­rent im­passe be­tween our Gov­ern­ment and the Cari­com lead­er­ship tend to align them­selves, lazi­ly, with in­su­lar par­ti­san­ship. Some ask: “What Cari­com ever do for me?” and oth­ers: “What go hap­pen to we with­out Cari­com?”

I learned in my CXC Caribbean His­to­ry class­es that Ja­maica’s with­draw­al, in 1961, from the British Crown-ruled “West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion” in­spired Dr Er­ic Williams to say “one from ten leaves nought.” This her­ald­ed the in­de­pen­dence of Ja­maica and Trinidad and To­ba­go the fol­low­ing year. The Caribbean is­lands would re­unite in 1965’s CARIF­TA, which was re­placed by Cari­com in 1973 with the sign­ing of the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas. All this is an­cient his­to­ry for many of us, but we can recog­nise that our na­tion has been in­stru­men­tal in Cari­com’s birth and de­vel­op­ment all along. As such, T&T will re­main in Cari­com. Our Prime Min­is­ter has said as much, even while ex­hibit­ing bel­liger­ence in some of her cri­tiques of Cari­com’s cur­rent op­er­a­tions.

Was the im­por­tant reap­point­ment of Dr Car­la Bar­nett as Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al omit­ted from the of­fi­cial agen­da and ple­nary dis­cus­sion at Cari­com’s Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in Feb­ru­ary? Was our “head of del­e­ga­tion” dis­in­vit­ed from the vote (or did he skip it due to fear of sea­sick­ness)? If our Prime Min­is­ter or her rep­re­sen­ta­tive were present at the vote, would it have gone an­oth­er way? Have the oth­er coun­tries that did not have a rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the vote in­di­cat­ed their dis­sat­is­fac­tion as well? If so, who are the oth­er can­di­dates for the role?

Did Dr Bar­nett ig­nore our Prime Min­is­ter’s in­quiry in­to the Brent Thomas mat­ter when she was Op­po­si­tion Leader? If so, why? Did Dr Bar­nett snub our Prime Min­is­ter by not con­grat­u­lat­ing her and her par­ty on win­ning gov­ern­ment last year, as she did with oth­ers? If so, is this a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for Dr Bar­nett be­ing ac­cused of po­lit­i­cal bias? Is there ev­i­dence that Cari­com is a “cor­rupt back­room op­er­a­tion?”

T&T is the largest fi­nan­cial con­trib­u­tor to the Cari­com sec­re­tari­at and is as se­nior a part­ner as any oth­er. I think the sec­re­tari­at should, con­fi­den­tial­ly, send the doc­u­men­ta­tion re­quest­ed by our Prime Min­is­ter. Enough has been placed in the pub­lic do­main. A closed-door meet­ing be­tween PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Cari­com chair­man Ter­rence Drew could bring clar­i­ty, away from the pub­lic are­na. There cer­tain­ly has been mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For the sake of Cari­com, diplo­ma­cy should be re­stored. If there needs to be a re-elec­tion and/or fir­ing, why not? Cari­com is T&T’s largest non-en­er­gy ex­port mar­ket. No amount of tough talk is go­ing to change that. There is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for reeval­u­a­tion, though. It will not hap­pen with­out a meet­ing. Maybe it could be held in Ch­aguara­mas for old time’s sake?

The elec­tion for the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil non-per­ma­nent seat for the 2027–2028 term will be held dur­ing the 80th ses­sion of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly at the UN Head­quar­ters in New York in June. T&T is the can­di­date for the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Group. We need the sup­port of two-thirds of the mem­ber states present at the vote, but if re­gion­al part­ners are un­hap­py, they could vote dif­fer­ent­ly in se­cret, even while show­ing their pub­lic dis­play of sup­port. Our Gov­ern­ment has dis­played align­ment with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, and we are part of the Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion, along with Guyana. Our sup­port of US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in Cari­com’s oth­er­wise “zone of peace” was an­oth­er di­ver­gence of per­spec­tive. Will this be held against us ahead of the vote?

It seems that per­sons with­in the Cab­i­net, the Min­istry of Hous­ing, or the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) leaked to Op­po­si­tion MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is that the Gov­ern­ment had pro­posed to award $3.4 bil­lion in hous­ing con­tracts to 11 par­tic­u­lar con­trac­tors. Both MP Robin­son-Reg­is and MP Stu­art Young raised alarm re­gard­ing the ar­bi­trary pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion and lack of rel­e­vant ex­pe­ri­ence of the con­trac­tors; ef­fi­cien­cy and cost; lack of project de­tails and se­lec­tive ten­der­ing. Last Thurs­day, the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion or­dered the HDC to halt the award of these con­tracts while it in­ves­ti­gates. This is good. The OPR will alert the pub­lic in due course whether all is above board. Nev­er­the­less, the idea of a mega in­fra­struc­ture project to stim­u­late the econ­o­my is a good one, once the fi­nanc­ing is avail­able and there is trans­paren­cy, fair­ness and ef­fi­cien­cy in the award of con­tracts.

The Gov­ern­ment is un­der­stand­ably seek­ing to stim­u­late the econ­o­my in its first year. In­fra­struc­ture spend­ing cre­ates jobs and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty. Our 2010-2015 UNC-led Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment had em­barked on the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin project in 2010. It was fraught with le­gal chal­lenges and al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion. I am yet to hear of any large gov­ern­ment project in T&T that isn’t so crit­i­cised, though. That is ex­act­ly why I am pleased with the OPR’s pause of the HDC while they in­ves­ti­gate.

Dur­ing Guyanese Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali’s re­cent vis­it, he sug­gest­ed a “72-hour” “locked-in” meet­ing be­tween the lead­er­ship of Guyana and T&T to es­tab­lish a strong eco­nom­ic part­ner­ship. He is in­ter­est­ed in re­fin­ing Guyanese crude at our Pointe-à-Pierre Re­fin­ery. Why hasn’t that meet­ing hap­pened yet? And the one with Cari­com?