Prof Hamid Ghany

For the sec­ond time in its his­to­ry, Trinidad and To­ba­go has been elect­ed to a non-per­ma­nent seat on the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. The last time was in 1985-86. For small states, this is al­ways a ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment; how­ev­er, on this oc­ca­sion, the elec­tion as­sumes even greater im­por­tance.

In the lat­ter part of last year, there were many lo­cal, re­gion­al and di­as­poric com­men­ta­tors who were pre­dict­ing that T&T would be jeop­ar­dis­ing its chances of be­ing elect­ed to the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil if Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar were to con­tin­ue to adopt her sup­port­ive stand for US mil­i­tary ac­tion against drug smug­glers and hu­man traf­fick­ers in the south­ern Caribbean Sea. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, some of them al­so ex­pressed the view that by not adopt­ing the Cari­com de­f­i­n­i­tion of the Zone of Peace, she was alien­at­ing Cari­com and this would be detri­men­tal to this coun­try’s Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil bid for the 2027-2028 term.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port in the T&T Guardian on Oc­to­ber 21 last year by Ke­jan Haynes:

“Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dis­missed con­cerns that T&T could lose re­gion­al back­ing for its bid to sit on the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, say­ing she does not care if oth­er coun­tries with­draw their sup­port. ‘I sim­ply do not care if any­one with­draws their sup­port. That is their choice,’ Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day, re­spond­ing to a re­port by the Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC), which sug­gest­ed that Port-of-Spain’s de­ci­sion to sup­port the Unit­ed States’ mil­i­tary build-up in the Caribbean could jeop­ar­dise its 2027–2028 Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil nom­i­na­tion.”

The CMC was wrong in its spec­u­la­tion. In­stead, the ex­act op­po­site oc­curred. For the one seat to rep­re­sent the Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean Group, there were 191 votes to be cast. In or­der to be elect­ed, a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty was re­quired in spite of be­ing un­op­posed.

There were nine ab­sten­tions, so 182 coun­tries vot­ed. T&T had to se­cure 122 votes to be elect­ed. At the fi­nal count, 181 coun­tries vot­ed for T&T and, in­ter­est­ing­ly, the UN Pre­sid­ing Chair an­nounced that one vote was cast for Guyana. There has been no ex­pla­na­tion as to how that oc­curred be­cause it means that one coun­try de­lib­er­ate­ly opt­ed to spoil its vote by vot­ing for Guyana, which was not on the bal­lot. How­ev­er, the UN Pre­sid­ing Chair was ob­lig­at­ed to record the coun­try named in the spoiled bal­lot. T&T still need­ed to se­cure a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty to con­firm its elec­tion.

The Per­ma­nent Mem­bers of the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, USA, UK, France, Rus­sia and Chi­na, all vot­ed for T&T for the one po­si­tion in the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Group.

The oth­er groups cho­sen were

(i) the African Group, for which Zim­bab­we was elect­ed on the first bal­lot,

(ii) in the West­ern Eu­ro­pean and Oth­er States Group, for which Por­tu­gal and Aus­tria edged out Ger­many for the two po­si­tions in that group on the first bal­lot, while

(iii) in the Asia-Pa­cif­ic Group, Kry­gys­tan was elect­ed af­ter four rounds of vot­ing, pre­vail­ing over The Philip­pines.

The dis­ap­point­ment over T&T’s elec­tion was pal­pa­ble among those com­men­ta­tors who were hop­ing that Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s po­si­tions last year on US sup­port by T&T would have led to fail­ure in the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil vote.

Now they are en­gag­ing in spec­u­la­tion about whether any of the nine ab­sten­tions were from Cari­com. How far will they go in try­ing to frac­ture Cari­com be­cause their nar­ra­tive was dis­proven?

One hun­dred and eighty one out of 191 coun­tries vot­ed for T&T to join the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil for the 2027-2028 term. There are 14 in­de­pen­dent coun­tries in Cari­com, so math­e­mat­i­cal­ly it would be wrong to say that Cari­com did not sup­port T&T, which is why they are now try­ing to push the di­vid­ed Cari­com nar­ra­tive to keep stir­ring the pot of di­vi­sion.

There are those who would pre­fer to pour cold wa­ter on any ac­com­plish­ment by this coun­try be­cause they dis­agree with its for­eign pol­i­cy. Their dis­like for T&T is mo­ti­vat­ed by their dis­like for Per­sad-Bisses­sar, which might best be de­scribed as Kam­la De­range­ment Syn­drome (KDS).

On the con­trary, there was a very ex­plic­it con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage put out on X by the Chi­nese Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain. That ob­vi­ous­ly elud­ed the naysay­ers. Con­grat­u­la­tions on X al­so came from the In­di­an For­eign Min­is­ter Dr Sub­rah­manyam Jais­hankar, who vis­it­ed here re­cent­ly. Even Cari­com it­self put out con­grat­u­la­tions.

When T&T was last on the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil in 1985-86, the world was a dif­fer­ent place. The Berlin Wall would not fall un­til 1989 and the So­vi­et Union would not col­lapse un­til 1991. There are some who can­not hide their Cold War ta­ban­ca in their analy­sis as they yearn for that era when so­cial­ism had im­por­tant sym­bols of op­pres­sion be­fore the demise of the Berlin Wall and the USSR.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly for them, the world has changed and so have we.

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI. He was se­lect­ed by the THA to guide the dis­cus­sions on To­ba­go au­ton­o­my.