The fre­quen­cy with which fault lines have been de­vel­op­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go-Guyana re­la­tions in re­cent years should not be tak­en light­ly.

On pa­per, these two Cari­com mem­ber states share re­li­gious, cul­tur­al and so­cial sim­i­lar­i­ties, as well as ge­o­graph­ic prox­im­i­ty, that should en­sure more cor­dial re­la­tions but in­ci­dents in re­cent months sug­gest oth­er­wise.

The lat­est source of T&T-Guyana dis­cord is a YouTube video in which Guyana Vice Pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo de­clares that T&T is falling apart, then goes on to de­scribe the state of this coun­try in a way that has drawn an­gry re­ac­tions in some quar­ters.

“No jobs, sus­tained pe­ri­ods of neg­a­tive growth and can’t see the light of day for the near fu­ture,” the for­mer pres­i­dent said at an event. It was an is­sue se­ri­ous enough for For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne to have a con­ver­sa­tion with his Guyana coun­ter­part, Hugh Hilton Todd, to calm the ill feel­ings on both sides.

Some weeks ago, the unau­tho­rised leak of an email about the South Amer­i­can na­tion’s lo­cal con­tent laws caused some fric­tion, af­ter it was sug­gest­ed that the leg­is­la­tion vi­o­lates pro­vi­sions of the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas.

Re­la­tions were al­so de­cid­ed­ly frosty sev­er­al months ago, dur­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s tenure as chair­man of Cari­com, over T&T’s per­ceived re­luc­tance to back Guyana in its bor­der dis­pute with Venezuela.

In an­oth­er in­ci­dent, Dr Row­ley was harsh­ly crit­i­cised by Dr Leslie Ram­sam­my, ad­vi­sor to Guyana’s Health Min­istry, for his com­ments about their vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme. The is­sue was lat­er re-ig­nit­ed dur­ing a talk show host­ed by Guyanese At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anil Nand­lall.

This re­cent his­to­ry of dis­agree­ments and mis­un­der­stand­ings be­tween Cari­com’s two most south­ern­ly mem­ber states is not a sim­ple mat­ter of con­tempt bred by fa­mil­iar­i­ty and prox­im­i­ty but a more com­pli­cat­ed sit­u­a­tion with po­lit­i­cal over­tones.

Not on­ly is there a per­cep­tion that Guyana’s Ir­faan Ali ad­min­is­tra­tion is aligned with T&T’s main op­po­si­tion par­ty, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), but al­so a be­lief that the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion was more sym­pa­thet­ic to the for­mer AP­NU/AFC gov­ern­ment of David Granger.

To the cred­it of the two ad­min­is­tra­tions, there have been at­tempts to iron out the po­lit­i­cal dis­cord. The most re­cent was last Ju­ly, when Dr Browne and Mr Todd met to dis­cuss ways to deep­en co­op­er­a­tion and “reaf­firmed the com­mit­ment of their gov­ern­ments to strength­en­ing the bonds of friend­ship.”

These are bonds be­tween T&T and Guyana that date back many decades to the two na­tions’ shared colo­nial past. These are bonds that have en­dured through chal­leng­ing times and chang­ing for­tunes.

Some years ago, when T&T was the Caribbean’s eco­nom­ic pow­er­house, there was an in­flux of Guyanese na­tion­als, many of whom ar­rived as un­doc­u­ment­ed im­mi­grants. Now, the sit­u­a­tion is re­versed, and T&T na­tion­als are head­ing to Guyana to take ad­van­tage of the many op­por­tu­ni­ties in that coun­try’s flour­ish­ing oil and gas sec­tor.

This is threat­en­ing to be­come an­oth­er source of con­tention.

How­ev­er, it should nev­er be for­got­ten that the ties be­tween the two coun­tries run much deep­er than trade and pol­i­tics and in­clude cen­turies-old fam­i­ly and so­cial con­nec­tions.

There are con­cerns about a grow­ing T&T-Guyana di­vide but the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing re­la­tion­ship can be re­paired through diplo­ma­cy. Both sides are urged to em­brace this op­por­tu­ni­ty for a high­er lev­el of lead­er­ship and di­a­logue.